His only thought was that whoever had escaped him before should not escape him again, and he broke open the window shutters by main strength.
The light poured in upon a set of empty rooms, faded and dusty.

A glance showed him an open door at the back of the farthest room, and rushing through this, he opened the windows in that part of the house which had evidently been lately inhabited.

He next came into the hall by which he had entered, and out again at the front door, with no doubt that he was chasing some one, but he did not gain in the pursuit.

He went down the path to the road, looking up and down it; he came back, in and out among the bushes, searching the cemetery and river bank, vexed beyond measure all the time to perceive how easy it would be for any one to go one way while he was searching in another, for the garden was large.
He had good reason to feel that he was the victim of most annoying circumstances, and he naturally could not at once perceive how it behoved him to act in relation to this new scene in the almost forgotten drama.

Cameron was dead; the old preacher was dead; whether they were one and the same or not, who was this person who now for the second time suddenly started up in mysterious fashion after the death?
Alec assumed that it could be no one but Cameron's daughter, but when he tried to think how it might be possible that she should be in the deserted house, upon the track of the old preacher, as it were, his mind failed even to conjecture.
The explanation was comparatively simple, if he had known it, but he did not know it.