“It couldn’t have been. Grenfell said he walked round it in a couple of hours.”
Ida looked thoughtful.
“Still, when you had the spot where you came upon Verneille to work from, you should have seen it from one of the spurs of the range.”
“Yes,” admitted Weston, “that seems reasonably evident, though we certainly saw no sign of it.” He broke off and laughed. “The whole thing sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Still, as I said, I believe we are going to be successful.”
He turned away and busied himself with some of the gear; and neither of them said anything further until they ran into the bay before the house. Three or four days later Weston conveyed the party down the lake to the carriage that was waiting to take them to the station; and Ida laid her hand in his for only a moment before she drove away.
SCARTHWAITE-IN-THE-FOREST
Ida Stirling had spent some time in England when, one autumn evening, she descended the wide oak staircase of Scarthwaite Hall at Scarthwaite-in-the-Forest. There was no forest in the vicinity, though long ago a certain militant bishop had held by kingly favor the right of venery over the surrounding moors, and now odd wisps of straggling firs wound up the hollows that seamed them here and there. Nobody seemed to know who first built Scarthwaite Hall, though many a dalesman had patched it afterward and pulled portions of it down. It was one of the ancient houses, half farm and half stronghold, which may still be found in the north country. They were, until a few decades ago, usually in possession of the Statesmen who worked their own land. The Statesmen have gone—economic changes vanquished them—but the houses they inherited from the men who bore pike and bow at Bannockburn and Flodden are for the most part standing yet. They have made no great mark in history, but their stout walls have time and again been engirdled by Scottish spears, and after such occasions there was not infrequently lamentation by Esk and Liddell.
It was clear that Scarthwaite Hall had been built in those days of foray, for one little, ruined, half-round tower rose from the brink of a ravine whose sides the hardiest of moss-troopers could scarcely have climbed. A partly filled-in moat led past the other, and in between stretched the curtain wall which now formed the facade of the house itself. Its arrow slits had been enlarged subsequently into narrow, stone-ribbed windows, and a new entrance made, while the ancient courtyard was girt with decrepit stables and barns. Most of the deep, winding dale still belonged to it, but the last Weston had signally failed to make a living out of it, or to meet his debts. He lived in a little town not far away, and let Scarthwaite for the shooting when he could, which explains how Major Kinnaird had taken it.
Ida looked about her as she came down the stairway. It led into a dark-paneled, stone-arched hall, which, since habitable space was rather scarce at Scarthwaite, served as general living-room. A fire was burning in the big, ancient hearth, and a handful of people were scattered here and there, waiting for dinner, which should have been ready a few minutes earlier. Kinnaird, who appeared a trifle impatient, was standing near his wife and a couple of shooting men, and his daughter was talking to one or two of his neighbors. Ida smiled as one of the latter glanced up at her, and she moved toward him when she reached the foot of the stairway. Ainslie, the owner of some quarries in the vicinity, was a middle-aged man whom she had met once or twice before.