‘What can I say?’ asked Desmond. ‘Where is my mother?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Is it to her that ye’re taking me?’
‘Ay,’ said Peebles. ‘We’re gaun to Larry’s mill, and there we’ll find her. Desmond, my man, she mustn’t stay there. There’s danger abroad.’
They were in the middle of the wide, waste country, but the old man could not repress the searching look he cast around him.
‘She has ill-wishers, blackguards, who’ll stick at nothing to gain their cruel ends. Blake told me this afternoon of a thing I find it hard to credit. Your uncle, Richard Conseltine, and his son, and that scoundrel Feagus, know that Moya’s alive, and where she’s living. Feagus saw her wi’ me in the kirkyard, and listened to our talk. Blake thinks they might molest her while she’s there asleep! We’ll just hope it’s nothing but one of his drunken havers, but I’ve kent Richard Conseltine for well-nigh thirty years, and, man, he’s a mean creature. There’s not much he’d stick at, I’m thinking, for the price is the title and estates of Kilpatrick. Anyway, ’tis just sober prudence to warn Moya and get her awa’ oot o’ danger. Her proper place is the Castle, but if she’ll no consent to gang there, we’ll just find her another shelter for awhile.’
While Peebles and Desmond were earnestly discussing the strange news of her resurrection and reappearance, Moya Macartney was seated alone in the desolate tenement known to the country people as ‘Larry’s Mill.’
It was a dreary, tumble-down place, ill-fitted for human habitation, and the ‘Larry’ by whom it had been owned had long gone the way of all flesh. The house itself was built on wooden pillars, and consisted of an upper and a lower chamber; the former utterly abandoned, save in the spring of the year, when it was temporarily occupied by an old shepherd; the latter now and again used as a sort of byre, or shelter-place for cattle. A rough ladder, several rungs or which had fallen away, led from the under to the upper room.
The mill-wheel itself, choked with filth and weeds, stood still and broken, the waters of the stream which had once turned it forcing their way through its torn fissures and gaps, and forming a slimy pool. On the night of which we write there had been heavy rains, and the stream, swollen and black, was pouring through the moveless wheel with the force and the roar of a torrent.
A truckle-bed with a coarse straw mattress, and a few coarse utensils, were the only furniture of the upper room. The floor was strewn with straw. A rude window looked down on the wheel and on the dismal pool beneath, and as the water roared, and the wind blew, the whole building shook as if about to be swept away.
The sound of someone stirring below startled the woman as she stood at the window gazing silently out into the night.
‘Who’s there?’ she cried, turning and looking down the open trap-door which opened on the ladder.