In the enforced leisure provided for him by the stoppage of compulsory recruitments, Eben McClure added to his knowledge. He left the men and women in the drama which was unrolling itself about Glenanmays to take care of themselves. He might not have had any the least interest in them. He gave his whole thought to Whitefoot, Stair's lean, shaggy collie.
By observation he obtained a good working knowledge of the whereabouts of Whitefoot's master—not sufficient, certainly, to act upon if it had been a case of capture. But all the same, near enough to enable him to keep well out of Stair Garland's way, which at the moment was what he most desired.
He rather despised the heather-craft of the other brothers, Fergus and Agnew Garland, and he gave never a thought to Godfrey McCulloch or the Free Trade band, which, he knew, was busy running in small cargoes as quickly as possible during the blessed time of relief from military and naval supervision.
But Stair Garland was another matter. Instinctively the spy knew his danger. This was not a man to hesitate about pulling a trigger, and his life, in the hollow of Stair Garland's hand, would weigh no heavier than a puff of dandelion smoke which a gust of wind carries along with it. So from his first acquaintance with him the spy had given Stair a wide berth.
As the result of many observations and much reflection, McClure decided that the lurking-place of this dangerous second son of the house of Glenanmays was on the hill called Knock Minto, a rocky, irregular mass, shaped like the knuckles of a clenched fist.
The summit overlooked the wide Bay of Luce, and the spy had remarked thin columns of smoke rising up into the twilight, and lights which glittered a moment and then were shut off in the short, pearl-grey nights of later June, when the heavens are filled with quite useless stars, and the darkness never altogether falls upon the earth.
Cargoes were being run on the east side—of that he was assured. But after all that was no business of his. Eben found it more in his way to watch Whitefoot. He had attempted, in the farm kitchen of Glenanmays, to make friends with the collie, but a swift upward curl of the lip and baring of the teeth, accompanied by a deep, snorting growl, warned him that Whitefoot would have none of him.
Nevertheless, the dog went and came freely, and as the spy made no further advances, Whitefoot soon ceased to regard him at all. And ever more curiously Eben McClure kept his eyes on the outgoings and incomings of Whitefoot.
And so it was that one still afternoon he found himself hidden under the dense greenish-black umbrella of a yew tree, lying prone on the ivied wall of the orchard of Ladykirk and listening to the talk of Patsy and Miss Aline, who were sitting beneath in a creeper-covered "tonelle," work-baskets by their sides, and as peaceful as if Ladykirk had been Eden on the eve of the coming of the serpent.
"Well," said Miss Aline, a little pleasantly tremulous with a sense of living among wild adventure, "have you had any news to-day? I saw your four-footed friend waiting for you at the corner of the shrubbery!"