A bitter east wind, bringing always more snow, had blown almost ceaselessly for the best part of a fortnight before any change came in the wildest weather that had befallen Loquhariot in long years.
The mountain roads for miles in all directions were quite impassable. The mail-cart, with its driver and horses, and also the hastily improvised snow-plough which had attempted their rescue, lay buried deep below the ever deepening drift into which it had plunged on its last outward journey. The single telegraph-line that served the locality had broken down at a dozen points which were quite unapproachable. Stress of weather had prevented the weekly steamer from making its usual call. Loquhariot was absolutely cut off from the outer world.
And then, with a wet westerly wind which soon grew into a gale, the snow on the mountains began to melt and floods made matters still worse, swelling every unconsidered stream into a destructive torrent, cutting wide chasms across the precipitous main-road over the Pass, under-mining its bridges and even washing some of them away bodily. In several of the more outlying districts sheer famine began to grow imminent. The flocks and herds of the countryside were in still worse case than the wild deer which had escaped from their forest sanctuaries before the first of the snow and had been huddling about the village while it endured.
No word had come through from Mr. Jobling in all that time. And Captain Dove was almost beyond the end of his outworn patience before, scowling blackly out of the library window one day when the westerly gale had all but blown itself out, he caught sight of a shabby, sea-going, cargo-tramp, flying the Norwegian flag, which seemed to be seeking an anchorage behind the Small Isles at the mouth of the loch.
It was the Olive Branch. He would have known her in the dark, disguise or no disguise.
"Uh-hum!" he exclaimed, in an ecstasy of relief. "Now I can make things move a little at last. Now we'll soon see who's who here."
He dashed off a peremptory note to his chief engineer, put that in his pocket, clapped his smoked spectacles on his nose and his soft felt hat on his head, and made for the village, where he hoped to find, in the Jura Arms, a local poacher who would undertake an errand out to the steamer.
He found his man at the inn, and his credit there enabled him to drive a speedy bargain. It also helped him to pass the time contentedly enough till the fishing-boat returned from its wet trip with word for the public that the strange steamer had put into the loch on account of an accident in her engine-room which would delay her there for a little, although she would need no help from the village; and with a hasty private note from the chief engineer for Captain Dove—to the effect that Mr. Brasse refused to come ashore.
"Curse him!" snarled Captain Dove as his messenger retired to the bar again. "I suppose he's afraid of the police—though there isn't a policeman within thirty miles, and, even if there were, it wouldn't matter very much." And he sat down to compose another and still more peremptory note, bidding Brasse obey his lawful commands or take the consequences of disobedience.
He would have put off to the steamer himself but for the obvious reasons against that course. And, to induce his messenger to make the trip again after dark, he had to promise the man twice as much as for the first run, still outstanding.