It was something which moved with the wind like a wounded bird,
fluttering from the roadside to a puddle and then back to the rushes.
She advanced to it, missed it, and caught it.

It was an old dingy green felt hat, and she recognized it as Dickson's.

Mrs. Morran's brain, after a second of confusion, worked fast and clearly.
She examined the road and saw that a little way on the gravel had
been violently agitated. She detected several prints of hobnailed boots.
There were prints, too, on a patch of peat on the south side behind
a tall bank of sods. "That's where they were hidin'," she concluded.
Then she explored on the other side in a thicket of hazels and wild
raspberries, and presently her perseverance was rewarded. The scrub was
all crushed and pressed as if several persons had been forcing a passage.
In a hollow was a gleam of something white. She moved towards it
with a quaking heart, and was relieved to find that it was only a
new and expensive bicycle with the front wheel badly buckled.

Mrs. Morran delayed no longer. If she had walked well on her out journey,
she beat all records on the return. Sometimes she would run till her
breath failed; then she would slow down till anxiety once more quickened
her pace. To her joy, on the Dalquharter side of the Garple bridge she
observed the figure of a Die-Hard. Breathless, flushed, with her bonnet
awry and her umbrella held like a scimitar, she seized on the boy.

"Awfu' doin's! They've grippit Maister McCunn up the Mains road just
afore the second milestone and forenent the auld bucht. I fund his hat,
and a bicycle's lyin' broken in the wud. Haste ye, man, and get the
rest and awa' and seek him. It'll be the tinklers frae the Dean.
I'd gang misel' but my legs are ower auld. Ah, laddie, dinna stop