It was a terrible shock. Alexa cried out with indignation. Dawtie turned white and then red, but uttered never a word.
“Dawtie,” said her mistress, “tell me what you know about the cup. You do know something that you have not told me!”
“I do, ma'am, but I will not tell it except I am forced.”
“That you are going to be, my poor girl! I am very sorry, for I am perfectly sure you have done nothing you know to be wrong!”
“I have done nothing you or anybody would think wrong, ma'am.”
She put on her Sunday frock, and went down to go with the policeman. To her joy she found her mistress at the door, ready to accompany her. They had two miles or more to walk, but that was nothing to either.
Questioned by the magistrate, not unkindly, for her mistress was there, Dawtie told everything—how first she came upon the likeness and history of the cup, and then saw the cup itself in her master's hands.
Crawford told how the laird had warned him against Dawtie, giving him to understand that she had been seized with a passion for the goblet such that she would peril her soul to possess it, and that he dared not let her know where it was.
“Sir,” said Dawtie, “he could na hae distrusted me like that, for he gae me his keys, and sent me to fetch the cup when he was ower ill to gang till't.”
“If that be true, your worship,” said Crawford, “it does not affect the fact that the cup was in the hands of the old man when I left him and she went to him, and from that moment it has not been seen.”