Synopsis: From the back cover of the Ace mmpb: "As sheriff of Edinburgh, budding author Walter Scott witnesses a grisly discovery. Bones, bodies, and parts of bodies are found on the banks of the half-frozen loch. At first, Scott assumes that the horror is the work of grave robbers. Then living women begin to go missing. The town takes little notice - for the missing women are gypsies, with no settled kin. But a young gypsy named Midge Margaret makes the vanishings the talk of the town, telling of a black coach traveling the snow-shrouded forest. When it appears, women disappear. Scott is haunted by the mystery, and when Midge asks for help, he accepts. The solution, he will find is perilously close at hand. For there is a method to the madness of the killings - a method forged by the blackest of magic..."