Chapter 7: The White Lady’s Toll

The fierce Lanarkshire weather, which had shone bright for the spring triumphs of the Gala Day and the glory of the oats box, turned soft and changeable as the weeks rolled into early summer. By mid-June, the moors were a patchwork of deep green and blooming heather, and the winds that rattled the windowpanes of Pentland Road still carried the sharp, sulfurous tang of the coke ovens — warm one hour, cool and damp the next.

It was into one such misty, cooling twilight that Patrick Maguire and Davie Stevenson found themselves summoned to Bedlay House.

The air inside the great parlor smelled of damp flagstones, expensive beeswax, and the sharp, aristocratic tang of the laird’s imported tobacco. It was a rugged, imposing Scottish Baronial fortress, its heavy stone turrets and narrow slits of windows looming dark against a bruised purple sky.