As for the purpose, Eben McClure was in no greater difficulty. What but a pretty woman to run away with, did any of the king's sons care for? There was but one such girl in the countryside. She had made the Duke hold wool for her—many hanks, it was said in the regiment—and he had fallen in love with her on the spot.
But that girl, whether taking alarm or to increase her value, had gone into hiding, and apparently no one knew where. It was certain that her kin at one time or another had dipped their fingers pretty deeply in the traffic. There were caves and hiding-places, which it would be death to search except with a company of sappers. And more than that, he would have to stay behind alone and face the back-stroke. He could not always ride out with the helmets of the dragoons making a hedge about him.
Now McClure was a clever man, and he had been with the soldiers that day when Whitefoot, questing for Jean, had entered the kitchen of the farm of Glenanmays. He had wondered at the persistency with which the dog had followed the girl. At first he had waited to see her give him something to eat from the debris of the meal which was being prepared for the soldiers.
But after Whitefoot had twice sniffed at the alms tossed him without touching the gift, still continuing to follow Jean, now tugging at her apron-string and now licking her hand, McClure, a man of the country, began to suspect that the dog was a messenger from one of the lost Garland boys whom they had missed so narrowly the other day in the heather of the Wild of Blairmore.
So upon Jean's departure he stepped quietly to the door and noted that she took the way down the valley towards the shore. He had not thought much about it at the time, for at the moment all chasings of smugglers and expeditions in aid of the manning of the fleet were absolutely at a standstill. The Duke's arrival on the Britomart by way of Stranryan had mobilized all the forces of order, as escorts of safety or guards of honour. So there would be no more raids till His Royal Highness was safe across the Water of Nith.
There remained to McClure the alternative of following Jean on his own responsibility, but the Stonykirker had far too great a respect for his skin to search a valley bristling like a thousand hedgehogs with all manner of thorn and gorse bushes, waved over with broom and darkened with undergrowth, any single clump of which might conceal half-a-dozen rifles, each with the eye of a sharpshooter behind it—a mere spark in the sheltering dusk, but quite enough to frighten most men in his position.
So, though strongly suspected, Jean sped on her way unopposed. McClure put the incident away in the pigeon-holes of his memory. It might be useful some day. He thought deeply upon the affair which now delayed Royalty and, incidentally, was stopping his business. If he could put the son of the King under a great obligation—he might at one stroke make his fortune and save his life. He had had enough of Galloway, and a permanent change of air was what he longed for—to a far land, under other skies, and among a people of a strange tongue, who had never heard of press-gangs and Solway smugglers.