“You are making escape difficult,” said Strickland.

“I flatter myself that we’ll get him between here and the sea!  I am going presently,” said the lieutenant, “to a place called White Farm.  But I am given to understand that there are good reasons—­saving the lady’s presence—­why he’ll find no shelter there.”

“Over yonder is the old keep,” said Glenfernie.  “When that is passed, I think you will have seen everything.”

They left Strickland and Alice and went to the keep.  Their footsteps and those of the soldiers behind them rang upon the stone stairs.

“Above is the room,” said the laird of Glenfernie, “where as a boy I used to play at alchemy.  I built a furnace.  I had an intention of making lead into gold.  I keep old treasures there still, and it is still my dear old lair—­though with a difference as I travel on, though with a difference, Lieutenant, as we travel on!”

They came into the room, quiet, filled with books and old apparatus, with a burning fire, with sunlight and shadow dappling floor and wall.  “Well, he would hardly hide here!” said the lieutenant.

“Not by received canons,” answered Glenfernie.

The lieutenant spoke to the soldiers.  “Go about and look beneath and behind matters.  There are no closets?”

“There are only these presses built against the stone.”  The laird opened them as he spoke.  “You see—­blank space!” He moved toward a corner.  “This structure is my ancient furnace of which I spoke.  I still keep it fuel-filled for firing.”  As he spoke he opened a sizable door.

The lieutenant, stooping, saw the piled wood.  “I don’t know much of alchemy,” he said.  “I’ve never had time to get around to those things.  It’s bringing out sleeping values isn’t it?”

“Something like that.”  He shut the furnace door, and they stood watching the soldiers search the room.  In no long time this stood a completed process.

“Perfunctory!” said again the lieutenant.  “Now men, we’ll to White Farm!”

“There is food and drink for them below, on this chilly day,” said the laird, “and perhaps in the hall you’ll drink another glass of wine?”

All went down the stairs and out of the keep.  Another half-hour and the detail, lieutenant and men, mounted and rode away.  Glenfernie and Strickland watched them down the winding road, clear of the hill, out upon the highway.

Alexander went back alone to the keep that, also, from its widened loopholes, might watch the searchers ride away.  He mounted the stair; he came into his old room.  Ian stood beside the table.  The sizable furnace door hung open, the screen of heaped wood was disarranged.

“It was a good notion, that recess behind my old furnace!” said Glenfernie.  “You took no harm beyond some cobwebs and ashes?”

“None, Senor Nobody,” said Ian.

That day went by.  The laird and Strickland talked together in low voices in the old school-room.  Davie, too, appeared there once, and an old, trusted stableman.  At sunset came Robin Greenlaw, and stayed an hour.  The stars shone out, around drew a high, windy crystal night.