ADVENTURE XXXII.
MAID GREATHEART AND HER PILGRIMS.
It was grey day when the children fared forth from the city. Vara's chief anxiety was lest they should not be able to escape out of the town before the light came, so that some officious neighbour might be able to direct her enemy upon their track. It was not long before they emerged out of the side-alleys on a broad paved street which led towards the south.
Vara paused and asked a policeman if this was the way to Liberton.
"And what are you going to do at Liberton so early in the morning?" said the policeman. He asked because he was a Lothian man, who always puts a second question before he can bring himself to answer the first.
"We are gaun to see our faither," said Vara, speaking the truth.
"Weel," said the policeman, "that is the road to Liberton. But if I was you I would wait till the milk-cairts were drivin' hame. Then I could get ye a lift to Liberton fine."
He was a kind-hearted "poliss," and in fact the same officer who had looked over the screen by the watch-shelter behind which Tyke was spinning his yarns to Cleg Kelly.
So that—thus strange is the working of events when they take the reins into their own hands—at the very moment when Cleg Kelly was sleeplessly turning over in his mind the problem of the life-fate of Vara and the children by the dying fire at the Grange crossing, Vara herself with the baby on her arm was trudging down the pavement opposite. As she passed she looked across, and only the timbered edge of the shelter prevented her from seeing Cleg Kelly.