'I am sure he is after no good,' continued Polly. 'He looks almost as tall and shadowy as Leonard in Dr. Heriot's story; and he was crouching just as Leonard did when the phantom of the headless maiden came up the glen.'
Of course this little sally was received with shouts of laughter, but as Polly still persisted in her incredible story, the young men declared their intention of searching for the mysterious stranger, and as the girls wished to accompany them, the little party dispersed across the glen.
Mildred, who was busy with one of the maids in clearing the remnants of the feast and choosing a place where they should boil their gipsy kettle, heard every now and then ringing peals of laughter mixed with odd braying sounds.
Chriss was the first to reappear.
'Oh, Aunt Milly,' she exclaimed breathlessly, 'what do you think Polly's mysterious Leonard has turned out to be? Nothing more or less than an old donkey browsing at the head of the glen. Polly will never hear the last of it.'
'Leonard-du-Bray "In a bed of thistles,"' observed Richard, mischievously. 'Oh, Polly, what a mare's nest you have made of it.'
Polly looked hot and discomposed; the laugh was against her, and to put a stop to their teasing, Mildred proposed that they should all go up to the Fox Tower as they had planned, while she stayed behind with her brother.
'We will bring you back some of the shield and bladder fern,' was Chriss's parting promise. Mildred watched them climbing up the wooded side of the glen, Dr. Heriot and Polly first, hand-in-hand, and Olive following more slowly with Richard and Hugh Marsden; and then she went and sat by her brother, and they had one of their long quiet talks, till he proposed strolling in the direction of the Fox Tower, and left her to enjoy a solitary half-hour.
The little fire was burning now. Etta, in her picturesque red petticoat and blue serge dress, was gathering sticks in the thicket; the beck flowed like a silver thread over the smooth gray stones; the sunset clouds streaked the sky with amber and violet; the old cotton-mill stood out gray and silent.
Mildred, who felt strangely restless, had strolled to the mill, and was trying to detach a delicate spray of ivy frond that was strongly rooted in the wall, when a footstep behind her made her start, and in another moment a shadow drew from a projecting angle of the mill itself.