Chapter Thirty Seven.
A Title of Honour.
Duncan Leslie sought patiently and well, but he was as unsuccessful as the rest, and after searching from a boat and being pulled close in along the shore, he rose at daybreak one morning, and crossing the harbour, went up along the cliff away to the east, and wherever he could find a place possible for a descent, he lowered himself from among the rocks, and searched there.
The work was toilsome, but it was an outlet for his pent-up energy, and he went on and on, reaching places where the boat could not land him; but even here he found that he had been forestalled, for hunting along among the broken rocks, he could see a figure stepping cautiously from crag to crag, where the waves washed in, and the slimy sea-wrack made the task perilous, the more so that it was the figure of a woman whom he recognised as the old fish-dealer by the maund hanging on her back from the band across her forehead.
As he toiled after her she looked round, and waited till he came up, and addressed him in a singing tone.
“Not found him, have you, sir?”
Leslie shook his head, and continued his search, seeing the old woman on two alternate days still peering about among the rocks, like many more, for the young master, and more stubborn in her search than any of the rest.
By slow degrees the search was given up. It had been kept up long after what would have been customary under the circumstances, some of the searchers working from sheer respect for the Vines, others toiling on in the hope of reward.