For a time he did not sleep but lay thinking about the extinguished light. It seemed impossible that the lamp should have gone out accidentally, and he was not satisfied that the explanation he had humorously offered was altogether absurd. His friends had had another narrow escape not long before, and it might be significant that although they were together on both occasions, Andrew had run the greater risk. Whitney admitted that this might be coincidence and he must not let his imagination run away with him. One must use sense and not wrap up in romantic mystery a matter that might be perfectly simple. For all that, he meant to seize any clue that chance might offer him.
Next morning they landed and joined Murray at a village among the hills. They spent the day upon the heather, working inland across broad, grassy spaces and red moors where the sheep fled before them, and then climbed a line of rugged hills. These were not high, but Whitney found them romantically interesting as he scrambled among black peat-hags where the wild cotton grew, up marshy ravines, and past great granite boulders. Stopping now and then to get his breath, he watched the line of small figures stretched out across the waste and thought that nobody lurking among the stones and heather could escape. Still, when the different detachments met upon a windy summit, none of them had seen anything suspicious.
"We've drawn blank," Murray remarked, as they ate some sandwiches behind a boulder.
"Yes," said Andrew. "If there is anything to be found out, I'd locate it farther east."
Murray looked at him keenly for a moment and then answered:
"On the whole, I agree with you. It's my business, however, to search where I am told."
They went downhill soon afterward, and the next day the Rowan sailed west along the coast, carrying Dick, who had reluctantly consented to go with the others.
CHAPTER X
THE YOUNG OFFICER
It was a fine afternoon when the train ran down from the granite wilds round Cairnsmuir into a broad green valley. Behind, the red heath, strewn with boulders and scarred by watercourses, rolled upward into gathering clouds; in front, yellow stubble fields and smooth meadows lay shining in the light, with a river flashing through their midst. Whitney, watching the scene from a window, thought the change was typical of southern Scotland, which he had found a land of contrasts.