m of
the water-mist, whence the stone road labored up to Scargate. But Sir
Duncan's eyes--though as keen as an eagle's while young--had now seen
too much of the sun to make out that gray atom gliding in the sunset
haze.

Upon the whole, it was a lucky thing that he could not overtake the car;
for Jordas would never have yielded his trust while any life was in him;
and Sir Duncan having no knowledge of him, except as a boy-of-all-work
about the place, might have been tempted to use the sword, without which
no horseman then rode there. Or failing that, a struggle between two
equally resolute men must have followed, with none at hand to part them.

When the horseman came to the foot of the long steep pull leading up to
the stronghold of his race, he just caught a glimpse of the car turning
in at the entrance of the court-yard. "They have half an hour's start of
me," he thought, as he drew up behind a rock, that the house might not
descry him; "if I ride up in full view, I hurry the mischief. Philippa
will welcome me with the embers of my title. She must not suspect that
the matter is so urgent. Nobody shall know that I am coming. For many
reasons I had better try the private road below the Scarfe."

CHAPTER LII

THE SCARFE

Jordas, without suspicion of pursuit, had allowed no grass to grow under
the feet of Marmaduke on the homeward way. His orders were to use all
speed, to do as he had done at the lawyer's private door, and then,
without baiting his horse, to drive back, reserving the nose-bag for
some very humpy halting-place. There is no such man, at the present time
of day, to carry out strict orders, as the dogman was, and the chance
of there being such a one again diminishes by very rapid process.
Marmaduke, as a horse, was of equal quality, reasoning not about his
orders, but about the way to do them.

There was no special emergency now, so far as my lady Philippa knew; but
the manner of her mind was to leave no space between a resolution and
its execution. This is the way to go up in the world, or else to go down
abruptly; and to her the latter would have been far better than to halt
between two opinions. Her plan had been shaped and set last night, and,
like all great ideas, was the simplest of the simple. And Jordas, who
had inklings of his own, though never admitted to confidence, knew how
to carry out the outer part.

"When the turbot comes," she said to Welldrum, as soon as her long sight
showed