So with circumspection she crossed the pebbly bed of the Mays Water and climbed up into a crater-like amphitheatre from the edge of which a flat block of stone jutted out. It was told in the "persecuting" lore of the parish that the great "Peden the Prophet" had often used it as a pulpit, his congregation being seated round the semi-circle and the Mays Water birling and singing handily below in case of children to be baptized.
Patsy stood on the stone, all trodden smooth by the restless feet of the hill lambs which in spring came from the most distant parts of the moor to gambol there. She could look both up and down the water, but for a while she saw nothing of Stair.
But the five minutes were not up, when, from a thick tuft of broom, she heard the call of the whin-chat, like a tiny hammer ringing on hard stone. The sound came from up the water and Patsy moved towards it, stepping deftly from stone to stone in the bed of the stream.
"Stair," she said softly, "where are you, Stair?" A full swathe of broom moved itself aside, and she could see Stair Garland lying in a rocky niche which he had prepared long before, in case of such a very probable emergency as the officers of the excise coming after him.
The barrel of his long gun looked over his shoulder.
"Go on, Patsy," he said, "walk on up the burn as if you had seen nothing and I shall be with you in a moment."
She had reached a little knoll, crowned with alder bushes, when she found him entering from the opposite side. Sitting down, she told him of the Duke's coming to Abbey Burnfoot, and of the two gentlemen who were with him, Captain Laurence and Lord Wargrove.
"Ah," said Stair, "so it is for that we have a full squadron of dragoons camped in our barns at Glenanmays, the stable emptied of our own horses to make room for those of the dragoons, and the whole house turned upside down. I thought it was too big a force to be sent after the three of us."
"Fergus and Agnew are still away, then?" queried Patsy, sure that they were.
Stair grinned.