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peace in the Borders. Elizabeth would not thank any deputy march warden for stirring up more unrest, and Hugh must know that hanging the most notorious reiver on either side of the line would likely result in mayhem.
    Leaving the children to stow away their treats, Janet went outside, took a shepherd’s crook from the byre to use as a walking stick, and followed the twisting burn up into the nearby hills, keeping watch for their mother. Snow crunched underfoot, and she slipped more than once, but she was as competent afoot as she was on a horse. Half an hour later, she saw Jock’s Meggie, as the children’s mother was known, following a straggling herd of sheep down the little valley. Meggie’s swollen belly preceded her, and her gait looked awkward and ungainly.
    Janet hurried to meet her, forcing a path between the slow-moving sheep with the crook. “Meggie,” she scolded as soon as she was within earshot, “you should not have come off away up here all alone like this. What if the babe should come? What would you do?”
    “Sit me down and have it out, I expect,” Jock’s Meggie said with a smile. “I could not let the bairns fetch them, Mistress Janet, not with reivers about. They say they got away with every cow, horse, and sheep at Haggbeck in the night; but Sir Hugh, bless him, set a trap and caught that dreadful Rabbie Redcloak at last.”
    “So Andrew told me.”
    “They say that devilish Scot’s killed more than a hundred good Englishmen, mistress, and likely my Jock amongst them. It’ll be a boon to us all an Sir Hugh hangs him high.”
    Taking the lead and wielding her crook expertly to encourage stragglers and wanderers to keep with the flock, Janet said, “So you also heard that Sir Hugh means to hang the reiver, did you?”
    “Aye, ’twas Small-Neck Tailor told me, and he had it straight from one o’ Sir Hugh’s men-at-arms. Said he’ll hang him within the sennight, did Small-Neck.”
    “Indeed.” Janet’s thoughts raced. She could not let Hugh do something so egregious, because once men of property flouted the laws of the Borders, they might as well have none. Already, many called the Borderers lawless and unruly—worse things, too. It was Hugh’s duty to improve the situation, not to make it worse. It was fine that he had caught the villain, but she would have to make him see reason before he hanged him. She would have to persuade him to take his captive to Carlisle Castle to await the next Truce Day, when he could file a proper bill of complaint against him. Once Hugh got his judgment, then he could hang the reiver.
    An hour later, having helped Meggie pen her sheep, Janet mounted the gray gelding and started for home, her agile mind sifting ways to deal with her brother. By the time she reached Brackengill she had considered and rejected a number of plans and knew only what she had known from the start, that first she must manage to bring up the subject without pitching him into one of his infamous tantrums.
    Riding through the gateway into the bailey, she looked around for signs of anything unusual and saw none. Men-at-arms were everywhere, but that was as it should be. Five were casting dice in a corner. A pair of others wrestled in the center amidst a small group of onlookers. As she rode past them, a lad ran out of the stable to help her dismount and to take her horse.
    Still alert for the slightest indication that the castle held a notorious prisoner, she strolled to the well near the kitchen entrance and dipped water from the bucket on the stand. Drinking from the dipper, she continued her examination, and decided that if Hugh was holding such a prisoner on the premises, he certainly had done all he could to conceal the fact.
    Tucking her whip under her arm and pulling off her gloves, she went inside through the main entrance and up the spiral stone stairway to the great hall. Stepping over the threshold, she sniffed automatically. In the same instant that she decided the