“I will go with you,” said Ferrier. “We can part below Balnillo, and I, too, will go back to Brechin by the river. I must know every step before I attempt to bring them in the dark. There must be no delays when the time comes.”
James drew a long sigh of relief. He had never doubted his companion’s zeal, but his heart had been on fire with the project he carried in it, and Ferrier’s complete acceptance of it was balm to his spirit. He was a man who spared himself nothing, mentally or physically.
He folded the roll of paper and gave it to Ferrier.
“Keep it,” said he. “Now we must go to the harbour.”
[CHAPTER VI
IN DARKNESS AND IN LIGHT]
WHEN the men had disappeared into the house, Archie remained under his stairhead considering. He had been told in his instructions to discover two things—whether Logie was in touch with Ferrier, and whether ‘The Happy Land’ was frequented by the pair. Though Ferrier was in command of the small Jacobite force in Brechin, it was suspected that he spent an unknown quantity of his time in Montrose.
To the first of these questions he had already mastered the answer; it only remained for him to be absolutely certain that the house in front of him was ‘The Happy Land.’ He could not swear that he was in the New Wynd, though he was morally certain of it, but there were marks upon the house which would be proof of its identity. There would be a little hole, covered by an inside sliding panel, in the door of ‘The Happy Land,’ through which its inmates could see anyone who ascended the stair without being seen themselves, and there would be the remains of an ancient ‘risp,’ or tirling-pin, at one side of it.
Archie ran lightly across the street, crept up the staircase, and passed his palm over the wood. Yes, there was the hole, two inches deep in the solid door. He put in his finger and felt the panel in the farther side. Then he searched along the wall till his hand came in contact with the jagged edge of the ancient risp. There was no ring on it, for it had long been disused, but it hung there still—a useless and maimed veteran, put out of action.