About a quarter of a mile away there was a long grove of birch trees,
the projecting spur of a second growth of forest that covered the
distant rising ground. Towards this Trenholme strode, for it was the
only covert near in which a human being could travel unseen. It was more
by the impulse of energy, however, than by reasonable hope that he came
there, for by the time he had reached the edge of the trees, it was
beginning to grow dark, even in the open plain.

No one who has not seen birch trees in their undisturbed native haunts
can know how purely white, unmarred by stain or tear, their trunks can
be. Trenholme looked in among them. They grew thickly. White--white--it
seemed in the gathering gloom that each was whiter than the other; and
Trenholme, remembering that his only knowledge of the figure he sought
was that it was wrapped in white, recognised the uselessness, the
absurdity even, of hoping to find it here, of all places.

Then he went back to the road and started for Turrifs Settlement.




CHAPTER IX.


The settlement called "Turrifs" was not a village; it was only a
locality, in which there were a good many houses within the radius of a
few square miles.

When Alec Trenholme started off the third time to reproach the recreant