"The catalogue is ample!" said Glenfernie. "But still, having your orders to make no exception, you must search my house. It is at your service. I will show you from room to room."
Lieutenant and soldiers and laird went through the place, high and low and up and down. "Perfunctory!" said the lieutenant twice. "But we must do as we are told!"
"Yes," said the laird. "This is my sister's garden. The small building there is an old school-room."
They met Alice walking in the garden, in the winter sunshine. Strickland, too, joined them here. Presentations over, the lieutenant again repeated his story.
"Perfunctory, of course, here—perfunctory! The only trace that we think we have we found in a glen near you. There is a cave there that I understand he used to haunt. We found ashes, still warm, where had been a fire. Pity is, the ground is so frozen no footstep shows!"
"You are making escape difficult," said Strickland.
"I flatter myself that we'll get him between here and the sea! I am going presently," said the lieutenant, "to a place called White Farm. But I am given to understand that there are good reasons—saving the lady's presence—why he'll find no shelter there."
"Over yonder is the old keep," said Glenfernie. "When that is passed, I think you will have seen everything."
They left Strickland and Alice and went to the keep. Their footsteps and those of the soldiers behind them rang upon the stone stairs.
"Above is the room," said the laird of Glenfernie, "where as a boy I used to play at alchemy. I built a furnace. I had an intention of making lead into gold. I keep old treasures there still, and it is still my dear old lair—though with a difference as I travel on, though with a difference, Lieutenant, as we travel on!"