Yet Joanna’s fear proved after all to be but the ghost of a bygone subjection. Being faced with its object it passed so wholly that it only served to mark the distance she had travelled. For without doubt she emerged unshaken from the stately embrace, the condescending greeting and the critical old stare.

Two days later the morning gave promise of sunshine – even of heat – after a spell of rain, and Aunt Georgina decided that she would pay a call upon one of her more distant neighbours, a retired sheriff, whose house lay a few miles from Perth on the further side. As she had not visited there before, a map was produced and laid open on the breakfast table. And that her younger eyes might be made use of, Joanna was seated before it.

It was only then that there came to her as a perfect astonishment, what she must long before have known, had her childish geography not been of the haziest and never amended – Westermuir lay within twenty miles of Duntarvie!

Incredible as it may seem, she had never thought of Duntarvie as having a place upon the map. Deeply shaken she traced the district with her forefinger. Duntarvie. And close to it upon the printed mapy – Drumsharrie, the farm where Alec Peddie had lived. Before her eyes were the names of villages, streams and hills, which till now had seemed names in a tale.

The cob had gone lame, and Lady Westermuir did not consider the small pony equal to her weight upon the steeper hills; but the fine day was not to be missed, so she would go by train. If her niece really wanted to re-visit Duntarvie, why not do so that day? They could travel together as far as Perth.

So it was. At Perth Joanna saw her aunt drive off in a hired carriage, and herself returning to the booking-office, she took her ticket to the village from which Duntarvie was but three miles distant.