BOB, SON OF BATTLE

CONTENTS

PART I.   THE COMING OF THE TAILLESS TYKE

Chapter I.   THE GRAY DOG

Chapter II.   A SON OF HAGAR

Chapter III.   RED WULL

Chapter IV.   FIRST BLOOD

PART II.   THE LITTLE MAN

Chapter V.   A MAN'S SON

Chapter VI.   A LICKING OR A LIE

Chapter VII.   THE WHITE WINTER

Chapter VIII.   M'ADAM AND HIS COAT

PART III.   THE SHEPHERDS' TROPHY

Chapter IX.   RIVALS

Chapter X.   RED WULL WINS

Chapter XI.   OOR BOB

Chapter XII.   HOW RED WULL HELD THE BRIDGE

Chapter XIII.   THE FACE IN THE FRAME

PART IV.   THE BLACK KILLER

Chapter XIV.   A MAD MAN

Chapter XV.   DEATH ON THE MARCHES

Chapter XVI.   THE BLACK KILLER

Chapter XVII.   A MAD DOG

Chapter XVIII.   HOW THE KILLER WAS SINGED

Chapter XIX.   LAD AND LASS

Chapter XX.   THE SNAPPING OF THE STRING

Chapter XXI.   HORROR OF DARKNESS

PART V.   OWD BOB O' KENMUIR

Chapter XXII.   A MAN AND A MAID

Chapter XXIII.   TH' OWD UN

Chapter XXIV.   A SHOT IN THE NIGHT

Chapter XXV.   THE SHEPHERDS' TROPHY

PART VI.   THE BLACK KILLER

Chapter XXVI.   RED-HANDED

Chapter XXVII.   FOR THE DEFENCE

Chapter XXVIII.     THE DEVIL'S BOWL

Chapter XXIX.   THE DEVIL'S BOWL

Chapter XXX.   THE TAILLESS TYKE AT BAY

POSTSCRIPT.     

THE sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse lying, long and low in the shadow of the Muir Pike; on the ruins of peel-tower and barmkyn, relics of the time of raids, it looked; on ranges of whitewashed outbuildings; on a goodly array of dark-thatched ricks.

In the stack-yard, behind the lengthy range of stables, two men were thatching. One lay sprawling on the crest of the rick, the other stood perched on a ladder at a lower level.

The latter, small, old, with shrewd nut-brown countenance, was Tammas Thornton, who had served the Moores of Kenmuir for more than half a century. The other, on top of the stack, wrapped apparently in gloomy meditation, was Sam'l Todd. A solid Dales—man, he, with huge hands and hairy arms; about his face an uncomely aureole of stiff, red hair; and on his features, deep-seated, an expression of resolute melancholy.

“Ay, the Gray Dogs, bless 'em!” the old man was saying. “Yo' canna beat 'em not nohow. Known 'em ony time this sixty year, I have, and niver knew a bad un yet. Not as I say, mind ye, as any on 'em cooms up to Rex son o' Rally. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! We's never won Cup since his day.”

“Nor niver shall agin, yo' may depend,” said the other gloomily.

Tammas clucked irritably.

“G'long, Sam'! Todd!” he cried, “Yo' niver happy onless yo' making' yo'self miser'ble. I niver see sich a chap. Niver win agin? Why, oor young Bob he'll mak' a right un, I tell yo', and I should know. Not as what he'll touch Rex son o' Rally, mark ye! I'm niver saying' so, Sam'l Todd. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! I could tell yo' a tale or two o' Rex. I mind me hoo—”

The big man interposed hurriedly.

“I've heard it afore, Tammas, I welly 'ave,” he said.

Tammas paused and looked angrily up.

“Yo've heard it afore, have yo', Sam'l Todd?” he asked sharply. “And what have yo' heard afore?”

“Yo' stories, owd lad—yo' stories o' Rex son o' Rally.”

“Which on' em

“All on 'em, Tammas, all on 'em—mony a time. I'm fair sick on 'em, Tammas, I welly am,” he pleaded.

The old man gasped. He brought down his mallet with a vicious smack.

“I'll niver tell yo' a tale agin, Sam'l Todd, not if yo' was to go on yo' bended knees for't. Nay; it bain't no manner o' use talkin'. Niver agin, says I.”

“I niver askt yo',” declared honest Sam'l.

“Nor it wouldna ha' bin no manner o' use if yo' had,” said the other viciously. “I'll niver tell yo' a tale agin if I was to live to be a hunderd.”

“Yo'll not live to be a hunderd, Tammas Thornton, nor near it,” said Sam'l brutally.

“I'll live as long as some, I warrant,” the old man replied with spirit. “I'll live to see Cup back i' Kenmuir, as I said afore.”

“If yo' do,” the other declared with emphasis, “Sam'l Todd niver spake a true word. Nay, nay, lad; yo're owd, yo're wambly, your time's near run or I'm the more mistook.”

“For mussy's sake hold yo' tongue, Sam'l Todd! It's clack-clack all day—” The old man broke off suddenly, and buckled to his work with suspicious vigor. “Mak' a show yo' bin workin', lad,” he whispered. “Here's Master and oor Bob.”

As he spoke, a tall gaitered man with weather-beaten face, strong, lean, austere, and the blue-gray eyes of the hill-country, came striding into the yard. And trotting soberly at his heels, with the gravest, saddest eyes ever you saw, a sheep-dog puppy.

A rare dark gray he was, his long coat, dashed here and there with lighter touches, like a stormy sea moonlit. Upon his chest an escutcheon of purest white, and the dome of his head showered, as it were, with a sprinkling of snow. Perfectly compact, utterly lithe, inimitably graceful with his airy-fairy action; a gentleman every inch, you could not help but stare at him—Owd Bob o' Kenmuir.

At the foot of the ladder the two stopped. And the young dog, placing his forepaws on a lower rung, looked up, slowly waving his silvery brush.

“A proper Gray Dog!” mused Tammas, gazing down into the dark face beneath him. “Small, yet big; light to get about on backs o' his sheep, yet not too light. Wi' a coat hard a-top to keep oot Daleland weather, soft as sealskin beneath. And wi' them sorrerful eyes on him as niver goes but wi' a good un. Amaist he minds me o' Rex son o' Rally.”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” groaned Sam'l. But the old man heard him not.

“Did 'Enry Farewether tell yo' hoo he acted this mornin', Master?” he inquired, addressing the man at the foot of the ladder.

“Nay,” said the other, his stern eyes lighting.

“Why, 'twas this way, it seems,” Tammas continued. “Young bull gets 'isseif loose, somegate and marches oot into yard, o'erturns milkpail, and prods owd pigs i' ribs. And as he stands lookin' about un, thinking' what he shall be up to next, oor Bob sees un 'An' what yo' doin' here, Mr. Bull?' he seems to say, cockin' his ears and trottin' up gay-like. Wi' that bull bloats fit to bust 'isseif, lashes wi's tail, waggles his head, and gets agate o' chargin' 'im. But Bob leaps oot o' way, quick as lightnin' yet cool as butter, and when he's done his foolin drives un back agin.”

“Who seed all this?” interposed Sam'l, sceptically.

“'Enry Farewether from the loft. So there, Fat'ead!” Tammas replied, and continued his tale. “So they goes on; bull chargin' and Bob drivin' un back and back, hoppin' in and oot agin, quiet as a cowcumber, yet determined. At last Mr. Bull sees it's no manner o' use that gate, so he turns, rares up, and tries to jump wall. Nary a bit. Young dog jumps in on un and nips him by tail. Wi' that, bull tumbles down in a hurry, turns wi' a kind o' groan, and marches back into stall, Bob after un. And then, dang me!”—the old man beat the ladder as he loosed off this last titbit,—“if he doesna sit' isseif i' door like a sentrynel till 'Enry Farewether coom up. Hoo's that for a tyke not yet a year?”

Even Sam'l Todd was moved by the tale.

“Well done, oor Bob!” he cried.

“Good, lad!” said the Master, laying a hand on the dark head at his knee.

“Yo' may well say that,” cried Tammas in a kind of ecstasy. “A proper Gray Dog, I tell yo'. Wi' the brains of a man and the way of a woman. Ah, yo' canna beat 'em nohow, the Gray Dogs o' Kenmuir!”

The patter of cheery feet rang out on the plank-bridge over the stream below them. Tammas glanced round.

“Here's David,” he said. “Late this mornin' he be.”

A fair-haired boy came spurring up the slope, his face all aglow with the speed of his running. Straightway the young dog dashed off to meet him with a fiery speed his sober gait belied. The two raced back together into the yard.

“Poor lad!” said Sam'l gloomily, regarding the newcomer.

“Poor heart!” muttered Tammas. While the Master's face softened visibly. Yet there looked little to pity in this jolly, rocking lad with the tousle of light hair and fresh, rosy countenance.

“G'mornin', Mister Moore! Morn'n, Tammas! Morn'n, Sam'l!” he panted as he passed; and ran on through the hay-carpeted yard, round the corner of the stable, and into the house.

In the kitchen, a long room with red-tiled floor and latticed windows, a woman, white-aproned and frail-faced, was bustling about her morning business. To her skirts clung a sturdy, bare-legged boy; while at the oak table in the centre of the room a girl with brown eyes and straggling hair was seated before a basin of bread and milk.

“So yo've coom at last, David!” the woman cried, as the boy entered; and, bending, greeted him with a tender, motherly salutation, which he returned as affectionately. “I welly thowt yo'd forgot us this mornin'. Noo sit you' doon beside oor Maggie.” And soon he, too, was engaged in a task twin to the girl's.

The two children munched away in silence, the little bare-legged boy watching them, the while, critically. Irritated by this prolonged stare, David at length turned on him.

“Weel, little Andrew,” he said, speaking in that paternal fashion in which one small boy loves to address another. “Weel, ma little lad, yo'm coomin' along gradely.” He leant back in his chair the better to criticise his subject. But Andrew, like all the Moores, slow of speech, preserved a stolid silence, sucking a chubby thumb, and regarding his patron a thought cynically.

David resented the expression on the boy's countenance, and half rose to his feet.

“Yo' put another face on yo', Andrew Moore,” he cried threateningly, “or I'll put it for yo'.”

Maggie, however, interposed opportunely.

“Did yo' feyther beat yo' last night?” she inquired in a low voice; and there was a shade of anxiety in the soft brown eyes.

“Nay,” the boy answered; “he was a-goin' to, but he never did. Drunk,” he added in explanation.

“What was he goin' to beat yo' for, David?” asked Mrs. Moore.

“What for? Why, for the fun o't—to see me squiggle,” the boy replied, and laughed bitterly.

“Yo' shouldna speak so o' your dad, David,” reproved the other as severely as was in her nature.

“Dad! a fine dad! I'd dad him an I'd the chance,” the boy muttered beneath his breath. Then, to turn the conversation:

“Us should be startin', Maggie,” he said, and going to the door. “Bob! Owd Bob, lad! Ar't coomin' along?” he called.

The gray dog came springing up like an antelope, and the three started off for school together.

Mrs. Moore stood in the doorway, holding Andrew by the hand, and watched the departing trio.

“'Tis a pretty pair, Master, surely,” she said softly to her husband, who came up at the moment.

“Ay, he'll be a fine lad if his fether'll let him,” the tall man answered.

“Tis a shame Mr. M'Adam should lead him such a life,” the woman continued indignantly. She laid a hand on her husband's arm, and looked up at him coaxingly.

“Could yo' not say summat to un, Master, think 'ee? Happen he'd 'tend to you,” she pleaded. For Mrs. Moore imagined that there could be no one but would gladly heed what James Moore, Master of Kenmuir, might say to him. “He's not a bad un at bottom, I do believe,” she continued. “He never took on so till his missus died. Eh, but he was main fond o' her.”

Her husband shook his head “Nay, mother,” he said “'Twould nob' but mak' it worse for t' lad. M'Adam'd listen to no one, let alone me.” And, indeed, he was right; for the tenant of the Grange made no secret of his animosity for his straight-going, straight-speaking neighbor.

Owd Bob, in the mean time, had escorted the children to the larch-copse bordering on the lane which leads to the village. Now he crept stealthily back to the yard, and established himself behind the water-butt.

How he played and how he laughed; how he teased old Whitecap till that gray gander all but expired of apoplexy and impotence; how he ran the roan bull-calf, and aroused the bitter wrath of a portly sow, mother of many, is of no account.

At last, in the midst of his merry mischief-making, a stern voice arrested him.

“Bob, lad, I see 'tis time we larned you yo' letters.”

So the business of life began for that dog of whom the simple farmer-folk of the Daleland still love to talk,—Bob, son of Battle, last of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

It is a lonely country, that about the Wastrel-dale.

Parson Leggy Hornbut will tell you that his is the smallest church in the biggest parish north of the Derwent, and that his cure numbers more square miles than parishioners. Of fells and ghylls it consists, of becks and lakes; with here a scattered hamlet and there a solitary hill sheep-farm. It is a country in which sheep are paramount; and every other Dalesman is engaged in that profession which is as old as Abel. And the talk of the men of the land is of wethers and gimmers, of tup-hoggs, ewe tegs in wool, and other things which are but fearsome names to you and me; and always of the doings or misdoings, the intelligence or stupidity, of their adjutants, the sheep-dogs.

Of all the Daleland, the country from the Black Water to Grammoch Pike is the wildest. Above the tiny stone-built village of Wastrel-dale the Muir Pike nods its massive head. Westward, the desolate Mere Marches, from which the Sylvesters' great estate derives its name, reach away in mile on mile of sheep infested, wind-swept moorland. On the far side of the Marches is that twin dale where flows the gentle Silver Lea. And it is there in the paddocks at the back of the Dalesman's Daughter, that, in the late summer months, the famous sheep-dog Trials of the North are held. There that the battle for the Dale Cup, the world-known Shepherds' Trophy, is fought out.

Past the little inn leads the turnpike road to the market-centre of the district—Grammoch-town. At the bottom of the paddocks at the back of the inn winds the Silver Lea. Just there a plank bridge crosses the stream, and, beyond, the Murk Muir Pass crawls up the sheer side of the Scaur on to the Mere Marches.

At the head of the Pass, before it debouches on to those lonely sheep-walks which divide the two dales, is that hollow, shuddering with gloomy possibilities, aptly called the Devil's Bowl. In its centre the Lone Tarn, weirdly suggestive pool, lifts its still face to the sky. It was beside that black, frozen water, across whose cold surface the storm was swirling in white snow-wraiths, that, many, many years ago (not in this century), old Andrew Moore came upon the mother of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

In the North, every one who has heard of the Muir Pike—and who has not?—has heard of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir, every one who has heard of the Shepherd's Trophy—and who has not?—knows their fame. In that country of good dogs and jealous masters the pride of place has long been held unchallenged. Whatever line may claim to follow the Gray Dogs always lead the van. And there is a saying in the land: “Faithfu' as the Moores and their tykes.”

On the top dresser to the right of the fireplace in the kitchen of Kenmuir lies the family Bible. At the end you will find a loose sheet—the pedigree of the Gray Dogs; at the beginning, pasted on the inside, an almost similar sheet, long since yellow with age—the family register of the Moores of Kenmuir.

Running your eye down the loose leaf, once, twice, and again it will be caught by a small red cross beneath a name, and under the cross the one word “Cup.” Lastly, opposite the name of Rex son of Rally, are two of those proud, tell-tale marks. The cup referred to is the renowned Dale Cup—Champion Challenge Dale Cup, open to the world. Had Rex won it but once again the Shepherds' Trophy, which many men have lived to win, and died still striving after, would have come to rest forever in the little gray house below the Pike.

It was not to be, however. Comparing the two sheets, you read beneath the dog's name a date and a pathetic legend; and on the other sheet, written in his son's boyish hand, beneath the name of Andrew Moore the same date and the same legend.

From that day James Moore, then but a boy, was master of Kenmuir.

So past Grip and Rex and Rally, and a hundred others, until at the foot of the page you come to that last name—Bob, son of Battle.

From the very first the young dog took to his work in a manner to amaze even James Moore. For a while he watched his mother, Meg, at her business, and with that seemed to have mastered the essentials of sheep tactics.

Rarely had such fiery élan been seen on the sides of the Pike; and with it the young dog combined a strange sobriety, an admirable patience, that justified, indeed, the epithet. “Owd.” Silent he worked, and resolute; and even in those days had that famous trick of coaxing the sheep to do his wishes;—blending, in short, as Tammas put it, the brains of a man with the way of a woman.

Parson Leggy, who was reckoned the best judge of a sheep or sheep-dog 'twixt Tyne and Tweed, summed him up in the one word “Genius.” And James Moore himself, cautious man, was more than pleased.

In the village, the Dalesmen, who took a personal pride in the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir, began to nod sage heads when “oor” Bob was mentioned. Jim Mason, the postman, whose word went as far with the villagers as Parson Leggy's with the gentry, reckoned he'd never seen a young un as so took his fancy.

That winter it grew quite the recognized thing, when they had gathered of a night round the fire in the Sylvester Arms, with Tammas in the centre, old Jonas Maddox on his right, Rob Saunderson of the Holt on the left, and the others radiating away toward the sides, for some one to begin with:

“Well, and what o' oor Bob, Mr. Thornton?”

To which Tammas would always make reply:

“Oh, yo' ask Sam'l there. He'll tell yo' better'n me, “—and would forthwith plunge, himself, into a yarn.

And the way in which, as the story proceeded, Tupper of Swinsthwaite winked at Ned Hoppin of Fellsgarth, and Long Kirby, the smith, poked Jem Burton, the publican, in the ribs, and Sexton Ross said, “Ma word, lad!” spoke more eloquently than many words.

One man only never joined in the chorus of admiration. Sitting always alone in the background, little M'Adam would listen with an incredulous grin on his sallow face.

“Oh, ma certes! The devil's in the dog! It's no cannie ava!” he would continually exclaim, as Tammas told his tale.

In the Daleland you rarely see a stranger's face. Wandering in the wild country about the twin dales at the time of this story, you might have met Parson Leggy, striding along with a couple of varmint terriers at his heels, and young Cyril Gilbraith, whom he was teaching to tie flies and fear God, beside him; or Jim Mason, postman by profession, poacher by predilection, honest man and sportsman by nature, hurrying along with the mail-bags on his shoulder, a rabbit in his pocket, and the faithful Betsy a yard behind. Besides these you might have hit upon a quiet shepherd and a wise-faced dog; Squire Sylvester, going his rounds upon a sturdy cob; or, had you been lucky, sweet Lady Eleanour bent upon some errand of mercy to one of the many tenants.

It was while the Squire's lady was driving through the village on a visit* to Tammas's slobbering grandson—it was shortly after Billy Thornton's advent into the world—that little M'Adam, standing in the door of the Sylvester Arms, with a twig in his mouth and a sneer fading from his lips, made his ever-memorable remark:

“Sall!” he said, speaking in low, earnest voice; “'tis a muckle wumman.”

     Note:* It was this visit which figured in the Grammoch-town
     Argus (local and radical) under the heading of “Alleged
     Wholesale Corruption by Tory Agents.” And that is why, on
     the following market day, Herbert Trotter, journalist,
     erstwhile gentleman, and Secretary of the Dale Trials, found
     himself trying to swim in the public horse-trough.

“What? What be sayin', mon?” cried old Jonas, startled out of his usual apathy.

M'Adam turned sharply on the old man.

“I said the wumman wears a muckle hat!” he snapped.

Blotted out as it was, the observation still remains—a tribute of honest admiration. Doubtless the Recording Angel did not pass it by. That one statement anent the gentle lady of the manor is the only personal remark ever credited to little M'Adam not born of malice and all uncharitableness. And that is why it is ever memorable.

The little Scotsman with the sardonic face had been the tenant of the Grange these many years; yet he had never grown acclimatized to the land of the Southron. With his shrivelled body and weakly legs he looked among the sturdy, straight-limbed sons of the hill-country like some brown, wrinkled leaf holding its place midst a galaxy of green. And as he differed from them physically, so he did morally.

He neither understood them nor attempted to. The North-country character was an unsolved mystery to him, and that after ten years' study. “One-half o' what ye say they doot, and they let ye see it; t'ither half they disbelieve, and they tell ye so,” he once said. And that explained his attitude toward them, and consequently theirs toward him.

He stood entirely alone; a son of Hagar, mocking. His sharp, ill tongue was rarely still, and always bitter. There was hardly a man in the land, from Langholm How to the market-cross in Grammoch-town, but had at one time known its sting, endured it in silence—for they are slow of speech, these men of the fells and meres—and was nursing his resentment till a day should bring that chance which always comes. And when at the Sylvester Arms, on one of those rare occasions when M'Adam was not present, Tammas summed up the little man in that historic phrase of his, “When he's drunk he's wi'lent, and when he bain't he's wicious,” there was an applause to gratify the blasé heart of even Tammas Thornton.

Yet it had not been till his wife's death that the little man had allowed loose rein to his ill-nature. With her firmly gentle hand no longer on the tiller of his life, it burst into fresh being. And alone in the world with David, the whole venom of his vicious temperament was ever directed against the boy's head. It was as though he saw in his fair-haired son the unconscious cause of his ever-living sorrow. All the more strange this, seeing that, during her life, the boy had been to poor Flora M'Adam as her heart's core. And the lad was growing up the very antithesis of his father. Big and hearty, with never an ache or ill in the whole of his sturdy young body; of frank, open countenance; while even his speech was slow and burring like any Dale-bred boy's. And the fact of it all, and that the lad was palpably more Englishman than Scot—ay, and gloried in it—exasperated the little man, a patriot before everything, to blows. While, on top of it, David evinced an amazing pertness fit to have tried a better man than Adam M'Adam.

On the death of his wife, kindly Elizabeth Moore had, more than once, offered such help to the lonely little man as a woman only can give in a house that knows no mistress. On the last of these occasions, after crossing the Stony Bottom, which divides the two farms, and toiling up the hill to the Grange, she had met M'Adam in the door.

“Yo' maun let me put yo' bit things straight for yo', mister,” she had said shyly; for she feared the little man.

“Thank ye, Mrs. Moore,” he had answered with the sour smile the Dalesmen knew so well, “but ye maun think I'm a waefu' cripple.” And there he had stood, grinning sardonically, opposing his small bulk in the very centre of the door.

Mrs. Moore had turned down the hill, abashed and hurt at the reception of her offer; and her husband, proud to a fault, had forbidden her to repeat it. Nevertheless her motherly heart went out in a great tenderness for the little orphan David. She knew well the desolateness of his life; his father's aversion from him, and its inevitable consequences.

It became an institution for the boy to call every morning at Kenmuir, and trot off to the village school with Maggie Moore. And soon the lad came to look on Kenmuir as his true home, and James and Elizabeth Moore as his real parents. His greatest happiness was to be away from the Grange. And the ferret-eyed little man there noted the fact, bitterly resented it, and vented his ill-humor accordingly.

It was this, as he deemed it, uncalled-for trespassing on his authority which was the chief cause of his animosity against James Moore. The Master of Kenmuir it was at whom he was aiming when he remarked one day at the Arms: “Masel', I aye prefaire the good man who does no go to church, to the bad man who does. But then, as ye say, Mr. Burton, I'm peculiar.”

The little man's treatment of David, exaggerated as it was by eager credulity, became at length such a scandal to the Dale that Parson Leggy determined to bring him to task on the matter.

Now M'Adam was the parson's pet antipathy. The bluff old minister, with his brusque manner and big heart, would have no truck with the man who never went to church, was perpetually in liquor, and never spoke good of his neighbors. Yet he entered upon the interview fully resolved not to be betrayed into an unworthy expression of feeling; rather to appeal to the little man's better nature.

The conversation had not been in progress two minutes, however, before he knew that, where he had meant to be calmly persuasive, he was fast become hotly abusive.

“You, Mr. Hornbut, wi' James Moore to help ye, look after the lad's soul, I'll see to his body,” the little man was saying.

The parson's thick gray eyebrows lowered threateningly over his eyes.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk like that. Which d'you think the more important, soul or body? Oughtn't you, his father, to be the very first to care for the boy's soul? If not, who should? Answer me, sir.”

The little man stood smirking and sucking his eternal twig, entirely unmoved by the other's heat.

“Ye're right, Mr. Hornbut, as ye aye are. But my argiment is this: that I get at his soul best through his leetle carcase.”

The honest parson brought down his stick with an angry thud.

“M'Adam, you're a brute—a brute!” he shouted. At which outburst the little man was seized with a spasm of silent merriment.

“A fond dad first, a brute afterward, aiblins—he! he! Ah, Mr. Hornbut! ye 'ford me vast diversion, ye do indeed, 'my loved, my honored, much-respected friend.”

“If you paid as much heed to your boy's welfare as you do to the bad poetry of that profligate ploughman—”

An angry gleam shot into the other's eyes. “D'ye ken what blasphemy is, Mr. Hornbut?” he asked, shouldering a pace forward.

For the first time in the dispute the parson thought he was about to score a point, and was calm accordingly.

“I should do; I fancy I've a specimen of the breed before me now. And d'you know what impertinence is?”

“I should do; I fancy I've—I awd say it's what gentlemen aften are unless their mammies whipped 'em as lads.”

For a moment the parson looked as if about to seize his opponent and shake him.

“M'Adam,” he roared, “I'll not stand your insolences!”

The little man turned, scuttled indoors, and came running back with a chair.

“Permit me!” he said blandly, holding it before him like a haircutter for a customer.

The parson turned away. At the gap in the hedge he paused.

“I'll only say one thing more,” he called slowly. “When your wife, whom I think we all loved, lay dying in that room above you, she said to you in my presence—”

It was M'Adam's turn to be angry. He made a step forward with burning face.

“Aince and for a', Mr. Hornbut,” he cried passionately, “onderstand I'll not ha' you and yer likes lay yer tongues on ma wife's memory whenever it suits ye. You can say what ye like aboot me—lies, sneers, snash—and I'll say naethin'. I dinna ask ye to respect me; I think ye might do sae muckle by her, puir lass. She never harmed ye. Gin ye canna let her bide in peace where she lies doon yonder”—he waved in the direction of the churchyard—“ye'll no come on ma land. Though she is dead she's mine.”

Standing in front of his house, with flushed face and big eyes, the little man looked almost noble in his indignation. And the parson, striding away down the hill, was uneasily conscious that with him was not the victory.

THE winter came and went; the lambing season was over, and spring already shyly kissing the land. And the back of the year's work broken, and her master well started on a fresh season, M'Adam's old collie, Cuttie Sark, lay down one evening and passed quietly away.

The little black-and-tan lady, Parson Leggy used to say, had been the only thing on earth M'Adam cared for. Certainly the two had been wondrously devoted; and for many a market-day the Dalesmen missed the shrill, chuckling cry which heralded the pair's approach: “Weel done, Cuttie Sark!”

The little man felt his loss acutely, and, according to his wont, vented his ill-feeling on David and the Dalesmen. In return, Tammas, whose forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back, “A wenomous one!” and “A wiralent wiper!” to the applause of tinkling pewters.

A shepherd without his dog is like a ship without a rudder, and M'Adam felt his loss practically as well as otherwise. Especially did he experience this on a day when he had to take a batch of draft-ewes over to Grammoch-town. To help him Jem Burton had lent the services of his herring-gutted, herring-hearted, greyhound lurcher, Monkey. But before they had well topped Braithwaite Brow, which leads from the village on to the marches, M'Adam was standing in the track with a rock in his hand, a smile on his face, and the tenderest blandishments in his voice as he coaxed the dog to him. But Master Monkey knew too much for that. However, after gamboling a while longer in the middle of the flock, a boulder, better aimed than its predecessors, smote him on the hinder parts and sent him back to the Sylvester Arms, with a sore tail and a subdued heart.

For the rest, M'Adam would never have won over the sheep-infested marches alone with his convoy had it not been for the help of old Saunderson and Shep, who caught him on the way and aided him.

It was in a very wrathful mood that on his way home he turned into the Dalesman's Daughter in Silverdale.

The only occupants of the tap-room, as he entered, were Teddy Bolstock, the publican, Jim Mason, with the faithful Betsy beneath his chair and the post-bags flung into the corner, and one long-limbed, drover-like man—a stranger.

“And he coom up to Mr. Moore,” Teddy was saying, “and says he, 'I'll gie ye twal' pun for yon gray dog o' yourn.' 'Ah,' says Moore, 'yo' may gie me twal' hunner'd and yet you'll not get ma Bob.'—Eh, Jim?”

“And he did thot,” corroborated Jim. “'Twal' hunner'd,' says he.”

“James Moore and his dog agin” snapped M'Adam. “There's ithers in the warld for bye them twa.”

“Ay, but none like 'em,” quoth loyal Jim.

“Na, thanks be. Gin there were there'd be no room for Adam M'Adam in this 'melancholy vale.'”

There was silence a moment, and then—:

“You're wantin' a tyke, bain't you, Mr. M'Adam?” Jim asked.

The little man hopped round all in a hurry.

“What!” he cried in well-affected eagerness, scanning the yellow mongrel beneath the chair. “Betsy for sale! Guid life! Where's ma check-book?” Whereat Jim, most easily snubbed of men, collapsed.

M'Adam took off his dripping coat and crossed the room to hang it on a chair-back. The stranger drover followed the meagre, shirt-clad figure with shifty eyes; then he buried his face in his mug.

M'Adam reached out a hand for the chair; and as he did so, a bomb in yellow leapt out from beneath it, and, growling horribly, attacked his ankles.

“Curse ye!” cried M'Adam, starting back.

“Ye devil, let me alone!” Then turning fiercely on the drover, “Yours, mister?” he asked. The man nodded. “Then call him aff, can't ye? D—n ye!” At which Teddy Bolstock withdrew, sniggering; and Jim Mason slung the post-bags on to his shoulder and plunged out into the rain, the faithful Betsy following, disconsolate.

The cause of the squall, having beaten off the attacking force, had withdrawn again beneath its chair. M'Adam stooped down, still cursing, his wet coat on his arm, and beheld a tiny yellow puppy, crouching defiant in the dark, and glaring out with fiery light eyes. Seeing itself remarked, it bared its little teeth, raised its little bristles, and growled a hideous menace.

A sense of humor is many a man's salvation, and was M'Adam's one redeeming feature. The laughableness of the thing—this ferocious atomy defying him—struck home to the little man. Delighted at such a display of vice in so tender a plant, he fell to chuckling.

“Ye leetle devil!” he laughed. “He! he! ye leetle devil!” and flipped together finger and thumb in vain endeavor to coax the puppy to him.

But it growled, and glared more terribly.

“Stop it, ye little snake, or I'll flatten you!” cried the big drover, and shuffled his feet threateningly. Whereat the puppy, gurgling like hot water in a kettle, made a feint as though to advance and wipe them out, these two bad men.

M'Adam laughed again, and smote his leg.

“Keep a ceevil tongue and yer distance,” says he, “or I'll e'en ha' to mak' ye. Though he is but as big as a man's thumb, a dog's a dog for a' that—he! he! the leetle devil.” And he fell to flipping finger and thumb afresh.

“Ye're maybe wantin' a dog?” inquired the stranger. “Yer friend said as much.”

“Ma friend lied; it's his way,” M'Adam replied.

“I'm willin' to part wi' him,” the other pursued.

The little man yawned. “Weel, I'll tak' him to oblige ye,” he said indifferently.

The drover rose to his feet.

“It's givin' 'im ye, fair givin' im ye, mind! But I'll do it!”—he smacked a great fist into a hollow palm. “Ye may have the dog for a pun'—I'll only ask you a pun',” and he walked away to the window.

M'Adam drew back, the better to scan his would-be benefactor; his lower jaw dropped, and he eyed the stranger with a drolly sarcastic air.

“A poun', man! A pouxi'—for yon noble dorg!” he pointed a crooked forefinger at the little creature, whose scowling mask peered from beneath the chair. “Man, I couldna do it. Na, na; ma conscience wadna permit me. 'Twad be fair robbin' ye. Ah, ye Englishmen!” he spoke half to himself, and sadly, as if deploring the unhappy accident of his nationality; “it's yer grand, open-hairted generosity that grips a puir Scotsman by the throat. A poun'! and for yon!” He wagged his head mournfully, cocking it sideways the better to scan his subject.

“Take him or leave him,” ordered the drover truculently, still gazing out of the window.

“Wi' yer permission I'll leave him,” M'Adam answered meekly.

“I'm short o' the ready,” the big man pursued, “or I wouldna part with him. Could I bide me time there's many'd be glad to give me a tenner for one o' that bree—” he caught himself up hastily—“for a dog sic as that.”

“And yet ye offer him me for a poun'! Noble indeed!”

Nevertheless the little man had pricked his ears at the other's slip and quick correction. Again he approached the puppy, dangling his coat before him to protect his ankles; and again that wee wild beast sprang out, seized the coat in its small jaw, and worried it savagely.

M'Adam stooped quickly and picked up his tiny assailant; and the puppy, suspended by its neck, gurgled and slobbered; then, wriggling desperately round, made its teeth meet in its adversary's shirt. At which M'Adam shook it gently and laughed. Then he set to examining it.

Apparently some six weeks old; a tawny coat, fiery eyes, a square head with small, cropped ears, and a comparatively immense jaw; the whole giving promise of great strength, if little beauty. And this effect was enhanced by the manner of its docking. For the miserable relic of a tail, yet raw, looked little more than a red button adhering to its wearer's stern.

M'Adam's inspection was as minute as it was apparently absorbing; he omitted nothing from the square muzzle to the lozenge-like scut. And every now and then he threw a quick glance at the man at the window, who was watching the careful scrutiny a thought uneasily.

“Ye've cut him short,” he said at length, swinging round on the drover.

“Ay; strengthens their backs,” the big man answered with averted gaze.

M'Adam's chin went up in the air; his mouth partly opened and his eyelids partly closed as he eyed his informant.

“Oh, ay,” he said.

“Gie him back to me,” ordered the drover surlily. He took the puppy and set it on the floor; whereupon it immediately resumed its former fortified position. “Ye're no buyer; I knoo that all along by that face on ye,” he said in insulting tones.

“Ye wad ha' bought him yerseif', nae doot?” M'Adam inquired blandly.

“In course; if you says so.”

“Or airblins ye bred him?”

“'Appen I did.”

“Ye'll no be from these parts?”

“Will I no?” answered the other.

A smile of genuine pleasure stole over M'Adam's face. He laid his hand on the other's arm.

“Man,” he said gently, “ye mind me o' hame.” Then almost in the same breath: “Ye said ye found him?”

It was the stranger's turn to laugh.

“Ha! ha! Ye teekle me, little mon. Found 'im? Nay; I was give 'im by a friend. But there's nowt amiss wi' his breedin', ye may believe me.”

The great fellow advanced to the chair under which the puppy lay. It leapt out like a lion, and fastened on his huge boot.

“A rare bred un, look 'ee! a rare game un. Ma word, he's a big-hearted un! Look at the back on him; see the jaws to him; mark the pluck of him!” He shook his booted foot fiercely, tossing his leg to and fro like a tree in a wind. But the little creature, now raised ceilingward, now dashed to the ground, held on with incomparable doggedness, till its small jaw was all bloody and muzzle wrinkled with the effort.

“Ay, ay, that'll do,” M'Adam interposed, irritably.

The drover ceased his efforts.

“Now, I'll mak' ye a last offer.” He thrust his head down to a level with the other's, shooting out his neck. “It's throwin' him at ye, mind. 'Tain't buyin' him ye'll be—don't go for to deceive yourself. Ye may have him for fifteen shillin'. Why do I do it, ye ask? Why, 'cos I think ye'll be kind to him,” as the puppy retreated to its chair, leaving a spotted track of red along its route.

“Ay, ye wadna be happy gin ye thocht he'd no a comfortable hame, conseederate man?” M'Adam answered, eyeing the dark track on the floor. Then he put on his coat.

“Na, na, he's no for me. Weel, I'll no detain ye. Good-nicht to ye, mister!” and he made for the door.

“A gran' worker he'll be,” called the drover after him.

“Ay; muckle wark he'll mak' amang the sheep wi' sic a jaw and sic a temper. Weel, I maun be steppin'. Good-nicht to ye.”

“Ye'll niver have sich anither chanst.”

“Nor niver wush to. Na, na; he'll never mak' a sheep-dog”; and the little man turned up the collar of his coat.

“Will he not?” cried the other scornfully. “There niver yet was one o' that line—” he stopped abruptly.

The little man spun round.

“Iss?” he said, as innocent as any child; “ye were sayin'?”

The other turned to the window and watched the rain falling monotonously.

“Ye'll be wantin' wet,” he said adroitly.

“Ay, we could do wi' a drappin'. And he'll never mak' a sheep-dog.” He shoved his cap down on his head. “Weel, good-nicht to ye!” and he stepped out into the rain.

It was long after dark when the bargain was finally struck.

Adam M'Adam's Red Wull became that little man's property for the following realizable assets: ninepence in cash—three coppers and a doubtful sixpence; a plug of suspicious tobacco in a well-worn pouch; and an old watch.

“It's clean givin' 'im ye,” said the stranger bitterly, at the end of the deal.

“It's mair the charity than aught else mak's me sae leeberal,” the other answered gently. “I wad not like to see ye pinched.”

“Thank ye kindly,” the big man replied with some acerbity, and plunged out into the darkness and rain. Nor was that long-limbed drover-man ever again seen in the countryside. And the puppy's previous history—whether he was honestly come by or no, whether he was, indeed, of the famous Red McCulloch* strain, ever remained a mystery in the Daleland.

     *N. B.—You may know a Red McCulloch anywhere by the ring of
     white upon his tail some two inches from the root.

AFTER that first encounter in the Dalesman's Daughter, Red Wull, for so M'Adam called him, resigned himself complacently to his lot; recognizing, perhaps, his destiny.

Thenceforward the sour little man and the vicious puppy grew, as it were, together. The two were never apart. Where M'Adam was, there was sure to be his tiny attendant, bristling defiance as he kept ludicrous guard over his master.

The little man and his dog were inseparable. M'Adam never left him even at the Grange.

“I couldna trust ma Wullie at hame alone wi' the dear lad,” was his
explanation. “I ken weel I'd come back to find a wee corpse on the
floor, and David singin':

     'My heart is sair, I daur na tell,
     My heart is sair for somebody.'

Ay, and he'd be sair elsewhere by the time I'd done wi' him—he! he!”

The sneer at David's expense was as characteristic as it was unjust. For though the puppy and the boy were already sworn enemies, yet the lad would have scorned to harm so small a foe. And many a tale did David tell at Kenmuir of Red Wull's viciousness, of his hatred of him (David), and his devotion to his master; how, whether immersed in the pig-bucket or chasing the fleeting rabbit, he would desist at once, and bundle, panting, up at his master's call; how he routed the tomcat and drove him from the kitchen; and how he clambered on to David's bed and pinned him murderously by the nose.

Of late the relations between M'Adam and James Moore had been unusually strained. Though they were neighbors, communications between the two were of the rarest; and it was for the first time for many a long day that, on an afternoon shortly after Red Wull had come into his possession, M'Adam entered the yard of Kenmuir, bent on girding at the master for an alleged trespass at the Stony Bottom.

“Wi' yer permission, Mr. Moore,” said the little man, “I'll wheestle ma dog,” and, turning, he whistled a shrill, peculiar note like the cry of a disturbed peewit.

Straightway there came scurrying desperately up, ears back, head down, tongue out, as if the world depended on his speed, a little tawny beetle of a thing, who placed his forepaws against his master's ankles and looked up into his face; then, catching sight of the strangers, hurriedly he took up his position between them and M'Adam, assuming his natural attitude of grisly defiance. Such a laughable spectacle he made, that martial mite, standing at bay with bristles up and teeth bared, that even James Moore smiled.

“Ma word! Ha' yo' brought his muzzle, man?” cried old Tammas, the humorist; and, turning, climbed all in a heat on to an upturned bucket that stood by. Whereat the puppy, emboldened by his foe's retreat, advanced savagely to the attack, buzzing round the slippery pail like a wasp on a windowpane, in a vain attempt to reach the old man.

Tammas stood on the top, hitching his trousers and looking down on his assailant, the picture of mortal fear.

“'Elp! Oh, 'elp!” he bawled. “Send for the sogers! Fetch the p'lice! For lawk-amussy's sake call him off, man!” Even Sam'l Todd, watching the scene from the cart-shed, was tickled and burst into a loud guffaw, heartily backed by 'Enry and oor Job. While M'Adam remarked: “Ye're fitter for a stage than a stable-bucket, Mr. Thornton.”

“How didst come by him?” asked Tammas, nodding at the puppy.

“Found him,” the little man replied, sucking his twig. “Found him in ma stockin' on ma birthday. A present from ma leetle David for his auld dad, I doot.”

“So do I,” said Tammas, and was seized with sudden spasm of seemingly causeless merriment. For looking up as M'Adam was speaking, he had caught a glimpse of a boy's fair head, peering cautiously round the cow-shed, and, behind, the flutter of short petticoats. They disappeared as silently as they had come; and two small figures, just returned from school, glided away and sought shelter in the friendly darkness of a coal-hole.

“Coom awa', Maggie, coom awa'! 'Tis th' owd un, 'isself,” whispered a disrespectful voice.

M'Adam looked round suspiciously.

“What's that?” he asked sharply.

At the moment, however, Mrs. Moore put her head out of the kitchen window.

“Coom thy ways in, Mister M'Adam, and tak' a soop o' tea,” she called hospitably.

“Thank ye kindly, Mrs. Moore, I will,” he answered, politely for him. And this one good thing must be allowed of Adam M'Adam: that, if there was only one woman of whom he was ever known to speak well, there was also only one, in the whole course of his life, against whom he ever insinuated evil—and that was years afterward, when men said his brain was sapped. Flouts and jeers he had for every man, but a woman, good or bad, was sacred to him. For the sex that had given him his mother and his wife he had that sentiment of tender reverence which, if a man still preserve, he cannot be altogether bad. As he turned into the house he looked back at Red Wull.

“Ay, we may leave him,” he said. “That is, gin ye're no afraid, Mr. Thornton?”

Of what happened while the men were within doors, it is enough to tell two things. First, that Owd Bob was no bully. Second, this: In the code of sheep-dog honor there is written a word in stark black letters; and opposite it another word, writ large in the color of blood. The first is “Sheep-murder”; the second, “Death.” It is the one crime only to be wiped away in blood; and to accuse of the crime is to offer the one unpardonable insult. Every sheep-dog knows it, and every shepherd.

That afternoon, as the men still talked, the quiet echoes of the farm rung with a furious animal cry, twice repeated: “Shot for sheep-murder”—“Shot for sheep-murder”; followed by a hollow stillness.

The two men finished their colloquy. The matter was concluded peacefully, mainly owing to the pacifying influence of Mrs. Moore. Together the three went out into the yard; Mrs. Moore seizing the opportunity to shyly speak on David's behalf.

“He's such a good little lad, I do think,” she was saying.

“Ye should ken, Mrs. Moore,” the little man answered, a thought bitterly; “ye see enough of him.”

“Yo' mun be main proud of un, mester,” the woman continued, heedless of the sneer: “an' 'im growin' such a gradely lad.”

M'Adam shrugged his shoulders.

“I barely ken the lad,” he said. “By sight I know him, of course, but barely to speak to. He's but seldom at hame.”

“An' hoo proud his mother'd be if she could see him,” the woman continued, well aware of his one tender place. “Eh, but she was fond o' him, so she was.”

An angry flush stole over the little man's face. Well he understood the implied rebuke; and it hurt him like a knife.

“Ay, ay, Mrs. Moore,” he began. Then breaking off, and looking about him—“Where's ma Wullie?” he cried excitedly. “James Moore!” whipping round on the Master, “ma Wullie's gone—gone, I say!”

Elizabeth Moore turned away indignantly. “I do declar' he tak's more fash after yon little yaller beastie than iver he does after his own flesh,” she muttered.

“Wullie, ma we doggie! Wullie, where are ye? James Moore, he's gone—ma Wullie's gone!” cried the little man, running about the yard, searching everywhere.

“Cannot 'a' gotten far,” said the Master, reassuringly, looking about him.

“Niver no tellin',” said Sam'l, appearing on the scene, pig-bucket in hand. “I misdoot yo'll iver see your dog agin, mister.” He turned sorrowfully to M'Adam.

That little man, all dishevelled, and with the perspiration standing on his face, came hurrying out of the cow-shed and danced up to the Master.

“It's robbed I am—robbed, I tell ye!” he cried recklessly. “Ma wee Wull's bin stolen while I was ben your hoose, James Moore!”

“Yo' munna say that, ma mon. No robbin' at Kenmuir,” the Master answered sternly.

“Then where is he? It's for you to say.”

“I've ma own idee, I 'aye,” Sam'l announced opportunely, pig-bucket uplifted.

M'Adam turned on him.

“What, man? What is it?”

“I misdoot yo'll iver see your dog agin, mister,” Sam'l repeated, as if he was supplying the key to the mystery.

“Noo, Sam'l, if yo' know owt tell it,” ordered his master.

Sam'l grunted sulkily.

“Wheer's oor Bob, then?” he asked.

At that M'Adam turned on the Master.

“'Tis that, nae doot. It's yer gray dog, James Moore, yer —— dog. I might ha' kent it,”—and he loosed off a volley of foul words.

“Sweerin' will no find him,” said the Master coldly. “Noo, Sam'l.”

The big man shifted his feet, and looked mournfully at M'Adam.

“'Twas 'appen 'aif an hour agone, when I sees oor Bob goin' oot o' yard wi' little yaller tyke in his mouth. In a minnit I looks agin—and theer! little yaller 'un was gone, and oor Bob a-sittin' a-lickin' his chops. Gone foriver, I do reck'n. Ah, yo' may well take on, Tammas Thornton!” For the old man was rolling about the yard, bent double with merriment.

M'Adam turned on the Master with the resignation of despair.

“Man, Moore,” he cried piteously, “it's yer gray dog has murdered ma wee Wull! Ye have it from yer ain man.”

“Nonsense,” said the Master encouragingly. “'Tis but yon girt oof.”

Sam'l tossed his head and snorted.

“Coom, then, and i'll show yo',” he said, and led the way out of the yard. And there below them on the slope to the stream, sitting like Justice at the Courts of Law, was Owd Bob.

Straightway Sam'l whose humor was something of the calibre of old Ross's, the sexton, burst into horse-merriment. “Why's he sittin' so still, think 'ee? Ho! Ho! See un lickin' his chops—ha! ha!”—and he roared afresh. While from afar you could hear the distant rumbling of 'Enry and oor Job.

At the sight, M'Adam burst into a storm of passionate invective, and would have rushed on the dog had not James Moore forcibly restrained him.

“Bob, lad,” called the Master, “coom here!”

But even as he spoke, the gray dog cocked his ears, listened a moment, and then shot down the slope. At the same moment Tammas hallooed: “Theer he be! yon's yaller un coomin' oot o' drain! La, Sam'l!” And there, indeed, on the slope below them, a little angry, smutty-faced figure was crawling out of a rabbit-burrow.

“Ye murderin' devil, wad ye duar touch ma Wullie?” yelled M'Adam, and, breaking away, pursued hotly down the hill; for the gray dog had picked up the puppy, like a lancer a tent-peg, and was sweeping on, his captive in his mouth, toward the stream.

Behind, hurried James Moore and Sam'l, wondering what the issue of the comedy would be. After them toddled old Tammas, chuckling. While over the yard-wall was now a little cluster of heads: 'Enry, oor Job, Maggie and David, and Vi'let Thornton, the dairy-maid.

Straight on to the plank-bridge galloped Owd Bob. In the middle he halted, leant over, and dropped his prisoner; who fell with a cool plop into the running water beneath.

Another moment and M'Adam had reached the bank of the stream. In he plunged, splashing and cursing, and seized the struggling puppy; then waded back, the waters surging about his waist, and Red Wull, limp as a wet rag, in his hand. The little man's hair was dripping, for his cap was gone; his clothes clung to him, exposing the miserableness of his figure; and his eyes blazed like hot ashes in his wet face.

He sprang on to the bank, and, beside himself with passion, rushed at Owd Bob.

“Curse ye for a ——”

“Stan' back, or yo'll have him at your throat!” shouted the Master, thundering up. “Stan' back, I say, yo' fule!” And, as the little man still came madly on, he reached forth his hand and hurled him back; at the same moment, bending, he buried the other hand deep in Owd Bob's shaggy neck. It was but just in time; for if ever the fierce desire of battle gleamed in gray eyes, it did in the young dog's as M'Adam came down on him.

The little man staggered, tottered, and fell heavily. At the shock, the blood gushed from his nose, and, mixing with the water on his face, ran down in vague red streams, dripping off his chin; while Red Wull, jerked from his grasp, was thrown afar, and lay motionless.

“Curse ye!” M'Adam screamed, his face dead-white save for the running red about his jaw. “Curse ye for a cowardly Englishman!” and, struggling to his feet, he made at the Master.

But Sam'l interposed his great bulk between the two.

“Easy, little mon,” he said leisurely, regarding the small fury before him with mournful interest. “Eh, but thee do be a little spit-cat, surely!”

James Moore stood, breathing deep, his hand still buried in Owd Bob's coat.

“If yo'd touched him,” he explained, “I couldna ha' stopped him. He'd ha' mauled yo' afore iver I could ha' had him off. They're bad to hold, the Gray Dogs, when they're roosed.”

“Ay, ma word, that they are!” corroborated Tammas, speaking from the experience of sixty years. “Once on, yo' canna get 'em off.”

The little man turned away.

“Ye're all agin me,” he said, and his voice shook. A pitiful figure he made, standing there with the water dripping from him. A red stream was running slowly from his chin; his head was bare, and face working.

James Moore stood eyeing him with some pity and some contempt. Behind was Tammas, enjoying the scene. While Sam'l regarded them all with an impassive melancholy.

M'Adam turned and bent over Red Wull, who still lay like a dead thing. As his master handled him, the button-tail quivered feebly; he opened his eyes, looked about him, snarled faintly, and glared with devilish hate at the gray dog and the group with him.

The little man picked him up, stroking him tenderly. Then he turned away and on to the bridge. Half-way across he stopped. It rattled feverishly beneath him, for he still trembled like a palsied man.

“Man, Moore!” he called, striving to quell the agitation in his voice—“I wad shoot yon dog.”

Across the bridge he turned again. “Man, Moore!” he called and paused. “Ye'll not forget this day.” And with that the blood flared up a dull crimson into his white face.

THE storm, long threatened, having once burst, M'Adam allowed loose rein to his bitter animosity against James Moore.

The two often met. For the little man frequently returned home from the village by the footpath across Kenmuir. It was out of his way, but he preferred it in order to annoy his enemy and keep a watch upon his doings.

He haunted Kenmuir like its evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent merriment. Again, poor old Staggy, daring still in his dotage, took a fall while scrambling on the steep banks of the Stony Bottom. There he lay for hours, unnoticed and kicking, until James Moore and Owd Bob came upon him at length, nearly exhausted. But M'Adam was before them. Standing on the far bank with Red Wull by his side, he called across the gulf with apparent concern: “He's bin so sin' yesternight.” Often James Moore, with all his great strength of character, could barely control himself.

There were two attempts to patch up the feud. Jim Mason, who went about the world seeking to do good, tried in his shy way to set things right. But M'Adam and his Red Wull between them soon shut him and Betsy up.

“You mind yer letters and yer wires, Mr. Poacher-Postman. Ay, I saw 'em baith: th' ain doon by the Haughs, t'ither in the Bottom. And there's Wullie, the humorsome chiel, havin' a rare game wi' Betsy.” There, indeed, lay the faithful Betsy, suppliant on her back, paws up, throat exposed, while Red Wull, now a great-grown puppy, stood over her, his habitually evil expression intensified into a fiendish grin, as with wrinkled muzzle and savage wheeze he waited for a movement as a pretext to pin: “Wullie, let the leddy be—ye've had yer dinner.”

Parson Leggy was the other would-be mediator; for he hated to see the two principal parishioners of his tiny cure at enmity. First he tackled James Moore on the subject; but that laconic person cut him short with, “I've nowt agin the little mon,” and would say no more. And, indeed, the quarrel was none of his making.

Of the parson's interview with M'Adam, it is enough to say here that, in the end, the angry old minister would of a surety have assaulted his mocking adversary had not Cyril Gilbraith forcibly withheld him.

And after that the vendetta must take its course unchecked.

David was now the only link between the two farms. Despite his father's angry commands, the boy clung to his intimacy with the Moores with a doggedness that no thrashing could overcome. Not a minute of the day when out of school, holidays and Sundays included, but was passed at Kenmuir. It was not till late at night that he would sneak back to the Grange, and creep quietly up to his tiny bare room in the roof—not supperless, indeed, motherly Mrs. Moore had seen to that. And there he would lie awake and listen with a fierce contempt as his father, hours later, lurched into the kitchen below, lilting liquorishly:

     “We are na fou, we're nae that fou,
     But just a drappie in our e'e;
     The cock may craw, the day may daw',
     And ay we'll taste the barley bree!”
 

And in the morning the boy would slip quietly out of the house while his father still slept; only Red Wull would thrust out his savage head as the lad passed, and snarl hungrily.

Sometimes father and son would go thus for weeks without sight of one another. And that was David's aim—to escape attention. It was only his cunning at this game of evasion that saved him a thrashing.

The little man seemed devoid of all natural affection for his son. He lavished the whole fondness of which his small nature appeared capable on the Tailless Tyke, for so the Dalesmen called Red Wull. And the dog he treated with a careful tenderness that made David smile bitterly.

The little man and his dog were as alike morally as physically they were contrasted. Each owed a grudge against the world and was determined to pay it. Each was an Ishmael among his kind.

You saw them thus, standing apart, leper-like, in the turmoil of life; and it came quite as a revelation to happen upon them in some quiet spot of nights, playing together, each wrapped in the game, innocent, tender, forgetful of the hostile world.

The two were never separated except only when M'Adam came home by the path across Kenmuir. After that first misadventure he never allowed his friend to accompany him on the journey through the enemy's country; for well he knew that sheep-dogs have long memories.

To the stile in the lane, then, Red Wull would follow him. There he would stand, his great head poked through the bars, watching his master out of sight; and then would turn and trot, self-reliant and defiant, sturdy and surly, down the very centre of the road through the village—no playing, no enticing away, and woe to that man or dog who tried to stay him in his course! And so on, past Mother Ross's shop, past the Sylvester Arms, to the right by Kirby's smithy, over the Wastrel by the Haughs, to await his master at the edge of the Stony Bottom.

The little man, when thus crossing Kenmuir, often met Owd Bob, who had the free run of the farm. On these occasions he passed discreetly by; for, though he was no coward, yet it is bad, single-handed, to attack a Gray Dog of Kenmuir; while the dog trotted soberly on his way, only a steely glint in the big gray eyes betraying his knowledge of the presence of his foe. As surely, however, as the little man, in his desire to spy out the nakedness of the land, strayed off the public path, so surely a gray figure, seeming to spring from out the blue, would come fiercely, silently driving down on him; and he would turn and run for his life, amid the uproarious jeers of any of the farm-hands who were witness to the encounter.

On these occasions David vied with Tammas in facetiousness at his father's expense.

“Good on yo', little un!” he roared from behind a wall, on one such occurrence.

“Bain't he a runner, neither?” yelled Tammas, not to be outdone.

“See un skip it—ho! ho! Look to his knees a-wamblin'! from the undutiful son in ecstasy. An' I'd knees like yon, I'd wear petticoats.” As he spoke, a swinging box on the ear nearly knocked the young reprobate down.

“D'yo' think God gave you a dad for you to jeer at? Y'ought to be ashamed o' yo'self. Serve yo' right if he does thrash yo' when yo' get home.” And David, turning round, found James Moore close behind him, his heavy eyebrows lowering over his eyes.

Luckily, M'Adam had not distinguished his son's voice among the others. But David feared he had; for on the following morning the little man said to him:

“David, ye'll come hame immediately after school to-day.”

“Will I?” said David pertly.

''Ye will.

“Why?”

“Because I tell ye to, ma lad”; and that was all the reason he would give. Had he told the simple fact that he wanted help to drench a “husking” ewe, things might have gone differently. As it was, David turned away defiantly down the hill.

The afternoon wore on. Schooltime was long over; still there was no David.

The little man waited at the door of the Grange, fuming, hopping from one leg to the other, talking to Red Wull, who lay at his feet, his head on his paws, like a tiger waiting for his prey.

At length he could restrain himself no longer; and started running down the hill, his heart burning with indignation.

“Wait till we lay hands on ye, ma lad,” he muttered as he ran. “We'll warm ye, we'll teach ye.”

At the edge of the Stony Bottom he, as always, left Red Wull. Crossing it himself, and rounding Langholm How, he espied James Moore, David, and Owd Bob walking away from him and in the direction of Kenmuir. The gray dog and David were playing together, wrestling, racing, and rolling. The boy had never a thought for his father.

The little man ran up behind them, unseen and unheard, his feet softly pattering on the grass. His hand had fallen on David's shoulder before the boy had guessed his approach.

“Did I bid ye come hame after school, David?” he asked, concealing his heat beneath a suspicious suavity.

“Maybe. Did I say I would come?”

The pertness of tone and words, alike, fanned his father's resentment into a blaze. In a burst of passion he lunged forward at the boy with his stick. But as he smote, a gray whirlwind struck him fair on the chest, and he fell like a snapped stake, and lay, half stunned, with a dark muzzle an inch from his throat.

“Git back, Bob!” shouted James Moore, hurrying up. “Git back, I tell yo'!” He bent over the prostrate figure, propping it up anxiously.

“Are yo' hurt, M'Adam? Eh, but I am sorry. He thought yo' were going for to strike the lad.”

David had now run up, and he, too, bent over his father with a very scared face.

“Are yo' hurt, feyther?” he asked, his voice trembling.

The little man rose unsteadily to his feet and shook off his supporters. His face was twitching, and he stood, all dust-begrimed, looking at his son.

“Ye're content, aiblins, noo ye've seen yer father's gray head bowed in the dust,” he said.

“'Twas an accident,” pleaded James Moore. “But I am sorry. He thought yo' were goin' to beat the lad.”

“So I was—so I will.”

“If ony's beat it should be ma Bob here tho' he nob'but thought he was doin' right. An' yo' were aff the path.”

The little man looked at his enemy, a sneer on his face.

“Ye canna thrash him for doin' what ye bid him. Set yer dog on me, if ye will, but dinna beat him when he does yer biddin'!”

“I did not set him on yo', as you know,” the Master replied warmly.

M'Adam shrugged his shoulders.

“I'll no argie wi' ye, James Moore,” he said. “I'll leave you and what ye call yer conscience to settle that. My business is not wi' you.—David!” turning to his son.

A stranger might well have mistaken the identity of the boy's father. For he stood now, holding the Master's arm; while a few paces above them was the little man, pale but determined, the expression on his face betraying his consciousness of the irony of the situation.

“Will ye come hame wi' me and have it noo, or stop wi' him and wait till ye get it?” he asked the boy.

“M'Adam, I'd like yo' to—”

“None o' that, James Moore.—David, what d'ye say?”

David looked up into his protector's face.

“Yo'd best go wi' your feyther, lad,” said the Master at last, thickly. The boy hesitated, and clung tighter to the shielding arm; then he walked slowly over to his father.

A bitter smile spread over the little man's face as he marked this new test of the boy's obedience to the other.

“To obey his frien' he foregoes the pleasure o' disobeyin' his father,” he muttered. “Noble!” Then he turned homeward, and the boy followed in his footsteps.

James Moore and the gray dog stood looking after them.

“I know yo'll not pay off yer spite agin me on the lad's head, M'Adam,” he called, almost appealingly.

“I'll do ma duty, thank ye, James Moore, wi'oot respect o' persons,” the little man cried back, never turning.

Father and son walked away, one behind the other, like a man and his dog, and there was no word said between them. Across the Stony Bottom, Red Wull, scowling with bared teeth at David, joined them. Together the three went up the bill to the Grange.

In the kitchen M'Adam turned.

“Noo, I'm gaein' to gie ye the gran'est thrashin' ye iver dreamed of. Tak' aff yer coat!”

The boy obeyed, and stood up in his thin shirt, his face white and set as a statue's. Red Wull seated himself on his haunches close by, his ears pricked, licking his lips, all attention.

The little man suppled the great ash-plant in his hands and raised it. But the expression on the boy's face arrested his arm.

“Say ye're sorry and I'll let yer aff easy.”

“I'll not.”

“One mair chance—yer last! Say yer 'shamed o' yerself'!”

“I'm not.”

The little man brandished his cruel, white weapon, and Red Wull shifted a little to obtain a better view.

“Git on wi' it,” ordered David angrily.

The little man raised the stick again and—threw it into the farthest corner of the room.

It fell with a rattle on the floor, and M'Adam turned away.

“Ye're the pitifulest son iver a man had,” he cried brokenly. “Gin a man's son dinna haud to him, wha can he expect to?—no one. Ye're ondootiful, ye're disrespectfu', ye're maist ilka thing ye shouldna be; there's but ae thing I thocht ye were not—a coward. And as to that, ye've no the pluck to say ye're sorry when, God knows, ye might be. I canna thrash ye this day. But ye shall gae nae mair to school. I send ye there to learn. Ye'll not learn—ye've learnt naethin' except disobedience to me—ye shall stop at hame and work.”

His father's rare emotion, his broken voice and working face, moved David as all the stripes and jeers had failed to do. His conscience smote him. For the first time in his life it dimly dawned on him that, perhaps, his father, too, had some ground for complaint; that, perhaps, he was not a good son.

He half turned.

“Feyther—”

“Git oot o' ma sight!” M'Adam cried.

And the boy turned and went.

THENCEFORWARD David buckled down to work at home, and in one point only father and son resembled—industry. A drunkard M'Adam was, but a drone, no.

The boy worked at the Grange with tireless, indomitable energy; yet he could never satisfy his father.

The little man would stand, a sneer on his face and his thin lips contemptuously curled, and flout the lad's brave labors.

“Is he no a gran' worker, Wullie? 'Tis a pleasure to watch him, his hands in his pockets, his eyes turned heavenward!” as the boy snatched a hard-earned moment's rest. “You and I, Wullie, we'll brak' oorsel's slavin' for him while he looks on and laffs.”

And so on, the whole day through, week in, week out; till he sickened with weariness of it all.

In his darkest hours David thought sometimes to run away. He was miserably alone on the cold bosom of the world. The very fact that he was the son of his father isolated him in the Daleland. Naturally of a reserved disposition, he had no single friend outside Kenmuir. And it was only the thought of his friends there that withheld him. He could not bring himself to part from them; they were all he had in the world.

So he worked on at the Grange, miserably, doggedly, taking blows and abuse alike in burning silence. But every evening, when work was ended, he stepped off to his other home beyond the Stony Bottom. And on Sundays and holidays—for of these latter he took, unasking, what he knew to be his due—all day long, from cock-crowing to the going down of the sun, he would pass at Kenmuir. In this one matter the boy was invincibly stubborn. Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of the habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent doggedness, and still held on his way.

Once past the Stony Bottom, he threw his troubles behind him with a courage that did him honor. Of all the people at Kenmuir two only ever dreamed the whole depth of his unhappiness, and that not through David. James Moore suspected something of it all, for he knew more of M'Adam than did the others. While Owd Bob knew it as did no one else. He could tell it from the touch of the boy's hand on his head; and the story was writ large upon his face for a dog to read. And he would follow the lad about with a compassion in his sad gray eyes greater than words.

David might well compare his gray friend at Kenmuir with that other at the Grange.

The Tailless Tyke had now grown into an immense dog, heavy of muscle and huge of bone. A great bull head; undershot jaw, square and lengthy and terrible; vicious, yellow-gleaming eyes; cropped ears; and an expression incomparably savage. His coat was a tawny, lion-like yellow, short, harsh, dense; and his back, running up from shoulder to loins, ended abruptly in the knob-like tail. He looked like the devil of a dogs' hell. And his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge was never ignored, and he was greedy of insults. Already he had nigh killed Rob Saunderson's collie, Shep; Jem Burton's Monkey fled incontinently at the sound of his approach; while he had even fought a round with that redoubtable trio, the Vexer, Venus, and Van Tromp.

Nor, in the matter of war, did he confine himself to his own kind. His huge strength and indomitable courage made him the match of almost anything that moved. Long Kirby once threatened him with a broomstick; the smith never did it again. While in the Border Ram he attacked Big Bell, the Squire's underkeeper, with such murderous fury that it took all the men in the room to pull him off.

More than once had he and Owd Bob essayed to wipe out mutual memories, Red Wull, in this case only, the aggressor. As yet, however, while they fenced a moment for that deadly throat-grip, the value of which each knew so well, James Moore had always seized the chance to intervene.

“That's right, hide him ahint yer petticoats,” sneered M'Adam on one of these occasions.

“Hide? It'll not be him I'll hide, I warn you, M'Adam,” the Master answered grimly, as he stood, twirling his good oak stick between the would-be duellists. Whereat there was a loud laugh at the little man's expense.

It seemed as if there were to be other points of rivalry between the two than memories. For, in the matter of his own business—the handling of sheep—Red Wull bid fair to be second only throughout the Daleland to the Gray Dog of Kenmuir. And M'Adam was patient and painstaking in the training of his Wullie in a manner to astonish David. It would have been touching, had it not been so unnatural in view of his treatment of his own blood, to watch the tender carefulness with which the little man moulded the dog beneath his hands. After a promising display he would stand, rubbing his palms together, as near content as ever he was.

“Weel done, Wullie! Weel done. Bide a wee and we'll show 'em a thing or
two, you and I, Wullie.

     “'The warld's wrack we share o't,
     The warstle and the care o't.'

For it's you and I alane, lad.” And the dog would trot up to him, place his great forepaws on his shoulders, and stand thus with his great head overtopping his master's, his ears back, and stump tail vibrating.

You saw them at their best when thus together, displaying each his one soft side to the other.

From the very first David and Red Wull were open enemies: under the circumstances, indeed, nothing else was possible. Sometimes the great dog would follow on the lad's heels with surly, greedy eyes, never leaving him from sunrise to sundown, till David could hardly hold his hands.

So matters went on for a never-ending year. Then there came a climax.

One evening, on a day throughout which Red Wull had dogged him thus hungrily, David, his work finished, went to pick up his coat, which he had left hard by. On it lay Red Wull.

“Git off ma coat!” the boy ordered angrily, marching up. But the great dog never stirred: he lifted a lip to show a fence of white, even teeth, and seemed to sink lower in the ground; his head on his paws, his eyes in his forehead.

“Come and take it!” he seemed to say.

Now what, between master and dog, David had endured almost more than he could bear that day.

“Yo' won't, won't yo', girt brute!” he shouted, and bending, snatched a corner of the coat and attempted to jerk it away. At that, Red Wull rose, shivering, to his feet, and with a low gurgle sprang at the boy.

David, quick as a flash, dodged, bent, and picked up an ugly stake, lying at his feet. Swinging round, all in a moment, he dealt his antagonist a mighty buffet on the side of the head. Dazed with the blow, the great dog fell; then, recovering himself, with a terrible, deep roar he sprang again. Then it must have gone hard with the boy, fine-grown, muscular young giant though he was. For Red Wull was now in the first bloom of that great strength which earned him afterward an undying notoriety in the land.

As it chanced, however, M'Adam had watched the scene from the kitchen. And now he came hurrying out of the house, shrieking commands and curses at the combatants. As Red Wull sprang, he interposed between the two, head back and eyes flashing. His small person received the full shock of the charge. He staggered, but recovered, and in an imperative voice ordered the dog to heel.

Then he turned on David, seized the stake from his hand, and began furiously belaboring the boy.

“I'll teach ye to strike—a puir—dumb—harmless—creetur, ye—cruel—cruel—-lad!” he cried. “Hoo daur ye strike—ma——Wullie? yer—father's——Wullie? Adam—M 'Adam's—Red Wull?” He was panting from his exertions, and his eyes were blazing. “I pit up as best I can wi' all manner o' disrespect to masel'; but when it comes to takin' ma puir Wullie, I canna thole it. Ha' ye no heart?” he asked, unconscious of the irony of the question.

“As much as some, I reck'n,” David muttered.

“Eh, what's that? What d'ye say?”

“Ye may thrash me till ye're blind; and it's nob'but yer duty; but if only one daurs so much as to look at yer Wullie ye're mad,” the boy answered bitterly. And with that he turned away defiantly and openly in the direction of Kenmuir.

M'Adam made a step forward, and then stopped.

“I'll see ye agin, ma lad, this evenin',” he cried with cruel significance.

“I doot but yo'll be too drunk to see owt—except, 'appen, your bottle,” the boy shouted back; and swaggered down the hill.

At Kenmuir that night the marked and particular kindness of Elizabeth Moore was too much for the overstrung lad. Overcome by the contrast of her sweet motherliness, he burst into a storm of invective against his father, his home, his life—everything.

“Don't 'ee, Davie, don't 'ee, dearie!” cried Mrs. Moore, much distressed. And taking him to her she talked to the great, sobbing boy as though he were a child. At length he lifted his face and looked up; and, seeing the white, wan countenance of his dear comforter, was struck with tender remorse that he had given way and pained her, who looked so frail and thin herself.

He mastered himself with an effort; and, for the rest of the evening, was his usual cheery self. He teased Maggie into tears; chaffed stolid little Andrew; and bantered Sam'l Todd until that generally impassive man threatened to bash his snout for him.

Yet it was with a great swallowing at his throat that, later, he turned down the slope for home.

James Moore and Parson Leggy accompanied him to the bridge over the Wastrel, and stood a while watching as he disappeared into the summer night.

“Yon's a good lad,” said the Master half to himself.

“Yes,” the parson replied; “I always thought there was good in the boy, if only his father'd give him a chance. And look at the way Owd Bob there follows him. There's not another soul outside Kenmuir he'd do that for.”

“Ay, sir,” said the Master. “Bob knows a mon when he sees one.”

“He does,” acquiesced the other. “And by the by, James, the talk in the village is that you've settled not to run him for the Cup. Is, that so?”

The Master nodded.

“It is, sir. They're all mad I should, but I mun cross 'em. They say he's reached his prime—and so he has o' his body, but not o' his brain. And a sheep-dog—unlike other dogs—is not at his best till his brain is at its best—and that takes a while developin', same as in a mon, I reck'n.”

“Well, well,” said the parson, pulling out a favorite phrase, “waiting's winning—waiting's winning.”

David slipped up into his room and into bed unseen, he hoped. Alone with the darkness, he allowed himself the rare relief of tears; and at length fell asleep. He awoke to find his father standing at his bedside. The little man held a feeble dip-candle in his hand, which lit his sallow face in crude black and white. In the doorway, dimly outlined, was the great figure of Red Wull.

“Whaur ha' ye been the day?” the little man asked. Then, looking down on the white stained face beneath him, he added hurriedly: “If ye like to lie, I'll believe ye.”

David was out of bed and standing up in his night-shirt. He looked at his father contemptuously.

“I ha' bin at Kenmuir. I'll not lie for yo' or your likes,” he said proudly.

The little man shrugged his shoulders.

“'Tell a lee and stick to it,' is my rule, and a good one, too, in honest England. I for one 'll no think ony the worse o' ye if yer memory plays yer false.”

“D'yo' think I care a kick what yo' think o' me?” the boy asked brutally. “Nay; there's 'nough liars in this fam'ly wi'oot me.”

The candle trembled and was still again.

“A lickin' or a lie—tak' yer choice!”

The boy looked scornfully down on his father. Standing on his naked feet, he already towered half a head above the other and was twice the man.

“D'yo' think I'm fear'd o' a thrashin' fra yo'? Goo' gracious me!” he sneered. “Why, I'd as lief let owd Grammer Maddox lick me, for all I care.”

A reference to his physical insufficiencies fired the little man as surely as a lighted match powder.

“Ye maun be cauld, standin' there so. Rin ye doon and fetch oor little frien'”—a reference to a certain strap hanging in the kitchen. “I'll see if I can warm ye.”

David turned and stumbled down the unlit, narrow stairs. The hard, cold boards struck like death against his naked feet. At his heels followed Red Wull, his hot breath fanning the boy's bare legs.

So into the kitchen and back up the stairs, and Red Wull always following.

“I'll no despair yet o' teachin' ye the fifth commandment, though I kill masel' in doin' it!” cried the little man, seizing the strap from the boy's numb grasp.

When it was over, M'Adam turned, breathless, away. At the threshold of the room he stopped and looked round: a little, dim-lit, devilish figure, framed in the door; while from the blackness behind, Red Wull's eyes gleamed yellow.

Glancing back, the little man caught such an expression on David's face that for once he was fairly afraid. He banged the door and hobbled actively down the stairs.

M'ADAM—in his sober moments at least—never touched David again; instead, he devoted himself to the more congenial exercise of the whiplash of his tongue. And he was wise; for David, who was already nigh a head the taller of the two, and comely and strong in proportion, could, if he would, have taken his father in the hollow of his hand and crumpled him like a dry leaf. Moreover, with his tongue, at least, the little man enjoyed the noble pleasure of making the boy wince. And so the war was carried on none the less vindictively.

Meanwhile another summer was passing away, and every day brought fresh proofs of the prowess of Owd Bob. Tammas, whose stock of yarns anent Rex son of Rally had after forty years' hard wear begun to pall on the loyal ears of even old Jonas, found no lack of new material now. In the Dalesman's Daughter in Silverdale and in the Border Ram at Grammoch-town, each succeeding market day brought some fresh tale. Men told how the gray dog had outdone Gypsy Jack, the sheep-sneak; how he had cut out a Kenmuir shearling from the very centre of Londesley's pack; and a thousand like stories.

The Gray Dogs of Kenmuir have always been equally heroes and favorites in the Daleland. And the confidence of the Dalesmen in Owd Bob was now invincible. Sometimes on market days he would execute some unaccountable maneuvre, and... strange shepherd would ask: “What's the gray dog at?” To which the nearest Dalesman would reply: “Nay, I canno tell ye! But he's reet enough. Yon's Owd Bob o' Kenmuir.”

Whereon the stranger would prick his ears and watch with close attention.

“Yon's Owd Bob o' Kenmuir, is he?” he would say; for already among the faculty the name was becoming known. And never in such a case did the young dog fail to justify the faith of his supporters.

It came, therefore, as a keen disappointment to every Dalesman, from Herbert Trotter, Secretary of the Trials, to little Billy Thornton, when the Master persisted in his decision not to run the dog for the Cup in the approaching Dale Trials; and that though parson, squire, and even Lady Eleanour essayed to shake his purpose. It was nigh fifty years since Rex son o' Rally had won back the Trophy for the land that gave it birth; it was time, they thought, for a Daleland dog, a Gray Dog of Kenmuir—the terms are practically synonymous—to bring it home again. And Tammas, that polished phrase-maker, was only expressing the feelings of every Dalesman in the room when, one night at the Arms, he declared of Owd Bob that “to ha' run was to ha' won.” At which M'Adam sniggered audibly and winked at Red Wull. “To ha' run was to ha' one—lickin'; to rin next year'll be to—”

“Win next year.” Tammas interposed dogmatically. “Onless”—with shivering sarcasm—“you and yer Wullie are thinkin' o' winnin'.”

The little man rose from his solitary seat at the back of the room and pattered across. “Wullie and I are thinkin' o' t,” he whispered loudly in the old man's ear. “And mair: what Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull think o' doin', that, ye may remairk, Mr. Thornton, they do. Next year we rin, and next year—we win. Come, Wullie, we'll leave 'em to chew that”; and he marched out of the room amid the jeers of the assembled topers.

When quiet was restored, it was Jim Mason who declared: “One thing certain, win or no, they'll not be far off.”

Meanwhile the summer ended abruptly. Hard on the heels of a sweltering autumn the winter came down. In that year the Daleland assumed very early its white cloak. The Silver Mere was soon ice-veiled; the Wastrel rolled sullenly down below Kenmuir, its creeks and quiet places tented with jagged sheets of ice; while the Scaur and Muir Pike raised hoary heads against the frosty blue. It was the season still remembered in the North as the White Winter—the worst, they say, since the famous 1808.

For days together Jim Mason was stuck with his bags in the Dalesman's Daughter, and there was no communication between the two Dales. On the Mere Marches the snow massed deep and impassable in thick, billowy drifts. In the Devil's Bowl men said it lay piled some score feet deep. And sheep, seeking shelter in the ghylls and protected spots, were buried and lost in their hundreds.

That is the time to test the hearts of shepherds and sheep-dogs, when the wind runs ice-cold across the waste of white, and the low woods on the upland walks shiver black through a veil of snow, and sheep must be found and folded or lost: a trial of head as well as heart, of resource as well as resolution.

In that winter more than one man and many a dog lost his life in the quiet performance of his duty, gliding to death over the slippery snow-shelves, or overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of the warm, suffocating white: “smoored,” as they call it. Many a deed was done, many a death died, recorded only in that Book which holds the names of those—men or animals, souls or no souls—who tried.

They found old Wrottesley, the squire's head shepherd, lying one morning at Gill's foot, like a statue in its white bed, the snow gently blowing about the venerable face, calm and beautiful in death. And stretched upon his bosom, her master's hands blue, and stiff, still clasped about her neck, his old dog Jess. She had huddled there, as a last hope, to keep the dear, dead master warm, her great heart riven, hoping where there was no hope.

That night she followed him to herd sheep in a better land. Death from exposure, Dingley, the vet., gave it; but as little M'Adam, his eyes dimmer than their wont, declared huskily; “We ken better, Wullie.”

Cyril Gilbraith, a young man not overburdened with emotions, told with a sob in his voice how, at the terrible Rowan Rock, Jim Mason had stood, impotent, dumb, big-eyed, watching Betsy—Betsy, the friend and partner of the last ten years—slipping over the ice-cold surface, silently appealing to the hand that had never failed her before—sliding to Eternity.

In the Daleland that winter the endurance of many a shepherd and his dog was strained past breaking-point. From the frozen Black Water to the white-peaked Grammoch Pike two men only, each always with his shaggy adjutant, never owned defeat; never turned back; never failed in a thing attempted.

In the following spring, Mr. Tinkerton, the squire's agent, declared that James Moore and Adam M'Adam—Owd Bob, rather, and Red Wull—had lost between them fewer sheep than any single farmer on the whole March Mere Estate—a proud record.

Of the two, many a tale was told that winter. They were invincible, incomparable; worthy antagonists.

It was Owd Bob who, when he could not drive the band of Black Faces over the narrow Razorback which led to safety, induced them to follow him across that ten-inch death-track, one by one, like children behind their mistress. It was Red Wull who was seen coming down the precipitous Saddler's How, shouldering up that grand old gentleman, King o' the Dale, whose leg was broken.

The gray dog it was who found Cyril Gilbraith by the White Stones, with a cigarette and a sprained ankle, on the night the whole village was out with lanterns searching for the well-loved young scapegrace. It was the Tailless Tyke and his master who one bitter evening came upon little Mrs. Burton, lying in a huddle beneath the lea of the fast-whitening Druid's Pillar with her latest baby on her breast. It was little M'Adam who took off his coat and wrapped the child in it; little M'Adam who unwound his plaid, threw it like a breastband across the dog's great chest, and tied the ends round the weary woman's waist. Red Wull it was who dragged her back to the Sylvester Arms and life, straining like a giant through the snow, while his master staggered behind with the babe in his arms. When they reached the inn it was M'Adam who, with a smile on his face, told the landlord what he thought of him for sending his wife across the Marches on such a day and on his errand. To which: “I'd a cauld,” pleaded honest Jem.

For days together David could not cross the Stony Bottom to Kenmuir. His enforced confinement to the Grange led, however, to no more frequent collisions than usual with his father. For M'Adam and Red Wull were out, at all hours, in all weathers, night and day, toiling at their work of salvation.

At last, one afternoon, David managed to cross the Bottom at a point where a fallen thorn-tree gave him a bridge over the soft snow. He stayed but a little while at Kenmuir, yet when he started for home it was snowing again.

By the time he had crossed the ice-draped bridge over the Wastrel, a blizzard was raging. The wind roared past him, smiting him so that he could barely stand; and the snow leaped at him so that he could not see. But he held on doggedly; slipping, sliding, tripping, down and up again, with one arm shielding his face. On, on, into the white darkness, blindly on sobbing, stumbling, dazed.

At length, nigh dead, he reached the brink of the Stony Bottom. He looked up and he looked down, but nowhere in that blinding mist could he see the fallen thorn-tree. He took a step forward into the white morass, and 'sank up to his thigh. He struggled feebly to free himself, and sank deeper. The snow wreathed, twisting, round him like a white flame, and he collapsed, softly crying, on that soft bed.

“I canna—I canna!” he moaned.

Little Mrs. Moore, her face whiter and frailer than ever, stood at the window, looking out into the storm.

“I canna rest for thinkin' o' th' lad,” she said. Then, turning, she saw her husband, his fur cap down over his ears, buttoning his pilot-coat about his throat, while Owd Bob stood at his feet, waiting.

“Ye're no goin', James?” she asked, anxiously.

“But I am, lass,” he answered; and she knew him too well to say more.

So those two went quietly out to save life or lose it, nor counted the cost.

Down a wind-shattered slope—over a spar of ice—up an eternal hill—a forlorn hope.

In a whirlwind chaos of snow, the tempest storming at them, the white earth lashing them, they fought a good fight. In front, Owd Bob, the snow clogging his shaggy coat, his hair cutting like lashes of steel across eyes, his head lowered as he followed the finger of God; and close behind, James Moore, his back stern against the storm, stalwart still, yet swaying like a tree before the wind.

So they battled through to the brink of the Stony Bottom—only to arrive too late.

For, just as the Master peering about him, had caught sight of a shapeless lump lying motionless in front, there loomed across the snow-choked gulf through the white riot of the storm a gigantic figure forging, doggedly forward, his great head down to meet the hurricane. And close behind, buffeted and bruised, stiff and staggering, a little dauntless figure holding stubbornly on, clutching with one hand at the gale; and a shrill voice, whirled away on the trumpet tones of the wind, crying:

     'Noo, Wullie, wi' me!
     Scots wha' hae wi' Wallace bled!
     Scots wham Bruce has often led!
     Welcome to ——!'

“Here he is, Wullie!”

     '—or to victorie!”
 

The brave little voice died away. The quest; was over; the lost sheep found. And the last James Moore saw of them was the same small, gallant form, half carrying, half dragging the rescued boy out of the Valley of the Shadow and away.

David was none the worse for his adventure, for on reaching home M'Adam produced a familiar bottle.

“Here's something to warm yer inside, and”—making a feint at the strap on the walls—' “here's something to do the same by yer ——. But, Wullie, oot again!”

And out they went—unreckoned heroes.

It was but a week later, in the very heart of the bitter time, that there came a day when, from gray dawn to grayer eve, neither James Moore nor Owd Bob stirred out into the wintry white. And the Master's face was hard and set as it always was in time of trouble.

Outside, the wind screamed down the Dale; while the snow fell relentlessly; softly fingering the windows, blocking the doors, and piling deep against the walls. Inside the house there was a strange quiet; no sound save for hushed voices, and upstairs the shuffling of muffled feet.

Below, all day long, Owd Bob patrolled the passage like some silent, gray spectre.

Once there came a low knocking at the door; and David, his face and hair and cap smothered in the all-pervading white, came in with an eddy of snow. He patted Owd Bob, and moved on tiptoe into the kitchen. To him came Maggie softly, shoes in hand, with white, frightened face. The two whispered anxiously awhile like brother and sister as they were; then the boy crept quietly away; only a little pool of water on the floor and wet, treacherous foot-dabs toward the door testifying to the visitor.

Toward evening the wind died down, but the mourning flakes still fell.

With the darkening of night Owd Bob retreated to the porch and lay down on his blanket. The light from the lamp at the head of the stairs shone through the crack of open door on his dark head and the eyes that never slept.

The hours passed, and the gray knight still kept his vigil. Alone in the darkness—alone, it almost seemed, in the house—he watched. His head lay motionless along his paws, but the steady gray eyes never flinched or drooped.

Time tramped on on leaden foot, and still he waited; and ever the pain of hovering anxiety was stamped deeper in the gray eyes.

At length it grew past bearing; the hollow stillness of the house overcame him. He rose, pushed open the door, and softly pattered across the passage.

At the foot of the stairs he halted, his forepaws on the first step, his grave face and pleading eyes uplifted, as though he were praying. The dim light fell on the raised head; and the white escutcheon on his breast shone out like the snow on Salmon.

At length, with a sound like a sob, he dropped to the ground, and stood listening, his tail dropping and head raised. Then he turned and began softly pacing up and down, like some velvet-footed sentinel at the gate of death.

Up and down, up and down, softly as the falling snow, for a weary, weary while.

Again he stopped and stood, listening intently, at the foot of the stairs; and his gray coat quivered as though there were a draught.

Of a sudden, the deathly stillness of the house was broken. Upstairs, feet were running hurriedly. There was a cry, and again silence.

A life was coming in; a life was going out.

The minutes passed; hours passed; and, at the sunless dawn, a life passed.

And all through that night of age-long agony the gray figure stood, still as a statue, at the foot of the stairs. Only, when, with the first chill breath of the morning, a dry, quick-quenched sob of a strong man sorrowing for the helpmeet of a score of years, and a tiny cry of a new-born child wailing because its mother was not, came down to his ears, the Gray Watchman dropped his head upon his bosom, and, with a little whimpering note, crept back to his blanket.

A little later the door above opened, and James Moore tramped down the stairs. He looked taller and gaunter than his wont, but there was no trace of emotion on his face.

At the foot of the stairs Owd Bob stole out to meet him. He came crouching up, head and tail down, in a manner no man ever saw before or since. At his master's feet he stopped.

Then, for one short moment, James Moore's whole face quivered.

“Well, lad,” he said, quite low, and his voice broke; “she's awa'!”

That was all; for they were an undemonstrative couple.

Then they turned and went out together into the bleak morning.

To David M'Adam the loss of gentle Elizabeth Moore was as real a grief as to her children. Yet he manfully smothered his own aching heart and devoted himself to comforting the mourners at Kenmuir.

In the days succeeding Mrs. Moore's death the boy recklessly neglected his duties at the Grange. But little M'Adam forbore to rebuke him. At times, indeed, he essayed to be passively kind. David, however, was too deeply sunk in his great sorrow to note the change.

The day of the funeral came. The earth was throwing off its ice-fetters; and the Dale was lost in a mourning mist.

In the afternoon M'Adam was standing at the window of the kitchen, contemplating the infinite weariness of the scene, when the door of the house opened and shut noiselessly. Red Wull raised himself on to the sill and growled, and David hurried past the window making for Kenmuir. M'Adam watched the passing figure indifferently; then with an angry oath sprang to the window.

“Bring me back that coat, ye thief!” he cried, tapping fiercely on the pane. “Tak' it aff at onst, ye muckle gowk, or I'll come and tear it aff ye. D'ye see him, Wullie? the great coof has ma coat—me black coat, new last Michaelmas, and it rainin' 'nough to melt it.”

He threw the window up with a bang and leaned out.

“Bring it back, I tell ye, ondootiful, or I'll summons ye. Though ye've no respect for me, ye might have for ma claithes. Ye're too big for yer ain boots, let alane ma coat. D'ye think I had it cut for a elephant? It's burst-in', I tell ye. Tak' it aff! Fetch it here, or I'll e'en send Wullie to bring it!”

David paid no heed except to begin running heavily down the hill. The coat was stretched in wrinkled agony across his back; his big, red wrists protruded like shank-bones from the sleeves; and the little tails flapped wearily in vain attempts to reach the wearer's legs.

M'Adam, bubbling over with indignation, scrambled half through the open window. Then, tickled at the amazing impudence of the thing, he paused, smiled, dropped to the ground again, and watched the uncouth, retreating figure with chuckling amusement.

“Did ye ever see the like o' that, Wullie?” he muttered. “Ma puir coat—puir wee coatie! it gars me greet to see her in her pain. A man's coat, Wullie, is aften unco sma' for his son's back; and David there is strainin' and stretchin' her nigh to brakin', for a' the world as he does ma forbearance. And what's he care aboot the one or t'ither?—not a finger-flip.”

As he stood watching the disappearing figure there began the slow tolling of the minute-bell in the little Dale church. Now near, now far, now loud, now low, its dull chant rang out through the mist like the slow-dropping tears of a mourning world.

M'Adam listened, almost reverently, as the bell tolled on, the only sound in the quiet Dale. Outside, a drizzling rain was falling; the snow dribbled down the hill in muddy tricklets; and trees and roofs and windows dripped.

And still the bell tolled on, calling up relentlessly sad memories of the long ago.

It was on just such another dreary day, in just such another December, and not so many years gone by, that the light had gone forever out of his life.

The whole picture rose as instant to his eyes as if it had been but yesterday. That insistent bell brought the scene surging back to him: the dismal day; the drizzle; the few mourners; little David decked out in black, his fair hair contrasting with his gloomy clothes, his face swollen with weeping; the Dale hushed, it seemed in death, save for the tolling of the bell; and his love had left him and gone to the happy land the hymn-books talk of.

Red Wull, who had been watching him uneasily, now came up and shoved his muzzle into his master's hand. The cold touch brought the little man back to earth. He shook himself, turned wearily away from the window, and went to the door of the house.

He stood there looking out; and all round him was the eternal drip, drip of the thaw. The wind lulled, and again the minute-bell tolled out clear and inexorable, resolute to recall what was and what had been.

With a choking gasp the little man turned into the house, and ran up the stairs and into his room. He dropped on his knees beside the great chest in the corner, and unlocked the bottom drawer, the key turning noisily in its socket.

In the drawer he searched with feverish fingers, and produced at length a little paper packet wrapped about with a stained yellow ribbon. It was the ribbon she had used to weave on Sundays into her soft hair.

Inside the packet was a cheap, heart-shaped frame, and in it a photograph.

Up there it was too dark to see. The little man ran down the stairs, Red Wull jostling him as he went, and hurried to the window in the kitchen.

It was a sweet, laughing face that looked up at him from the frame, demure yet arch, shy yet roguish—a face to look at and a face to love.

As he looked a wintry smile, wholly tender, half tearful, stole over the little man's face.

“Lassie,” he whispered, and his voice was infinitely soft, “it's lang sin' I've daured look at ye. But it's no that ye're forgotten, dearie.”

Then he covered his eyes with his hand as though he were blinded.

“Dinna look at me sae, lass!” he cried, and fell on his knees, kissing the picture, hugging it to him and sobbing passionately.

Red Wull came up and pushed his face compassionately into his master's; but the little man shoved him roughly away, and the dog retreated into a corner, abashed and reproachful.

Memories swarmed back on the little man.

It was more than a decade ago now, and yet he dared barely think of that last evening when she had lain so white and still in the little room above.

“Pit the bairn on the bed, Adam man,” she had said in low tones. “I'll be gaein' in a wee while noo. It's the lang good-by to you—and him.”

He had done her bidding and lifted David up. The tiny boy lay still a moment, looking at this white-faced mother whom he hardly recognized.

“Minnie!” he called piteously. Then, thrusting a small, dirty hand into his pocket, he pulled out a grubby sweet.

“Minnie, ha' a sweetie—ain o' Davie's sweeties!” and he held it out anxiously in his warm plump palm, thinking it a certain cure for any ill.

“Eat it for mither,” she said, smiling tenderly; and then: “Davie, ma heart, I'm leavin' ye.”

The boy ceased sucking the sweet, and looked at her, the corners of his mouth drooping pitifully.

“Ye're no gaein' awa', mither?” he asked, his face all working. “Ye'll no leave yen wee laddie?”

“Ay, laddie, awa'—reet awa'. HE's callin' me.” She tried to smile; but her mother's heart was near to bursting.

“Ye'll tak' yen wee Davie wi' ye mither!” the child pleaded, crawling up toward her face.

The great tears rolled, unrestrained, down her wan cheeks, and M'Adam, at the head of the bed, was sobbing openly.

“Eh, ma bairn, ma bairn, I'm sair to leave ye!” she cried brokenly. “Lift him for me, Adam.”

He placed the child in her arms; but she was too weak to hold him. So he laid him upon his mother's pillows; and the boy wreathed his soft arms about her neck and sobbed tempestuously.

And the two lay thus together.

Just before she died, Flora turned her head and whispered:

“Adam, ma man, ye'll ha' to be mither and father baith to the lad noo”; and she looked at him with tender confidence in her dying eyes.

“I wull! afore God as I stan' here I wull!” he declared passionately. Then she died, and there was a look of ineffable peace upon her face.

“Mither and father baith!”

The little man rose to his feet and flung the photograph from him. Red Wull pounced upon it; but M'Adam leapt at him as he mouthed it.

“Git awa', ye devil!” he screamed; and, picking it up, stroked it lovingly with trembling fingers.

“Maither and father baith!”

How had he fulfilled his love's last wish? How!

“Oh God! “—and he fell upon his knees at the table-side, hugging the picture, sobbing and praying.

Red Wull cowered in the far corner of the room, and then crept whining up to where his master knelt. But M'Adam heeded him not, and the great dog slunk away again.

There the little man knelt in the gloom of the winter's afternoon, a miserable penitent. His gray-flecked head was bowed upon his arms; his hands clutched the picture; and he prayed aloud in gasping, halting tones.

“Gie me grace, O God! 'Father and mither baith,' ye said, Flora—and I ha'na done it. But 'tis no too late—say it's no, lass. Tell me there's time yet, and say ye forgie me. I've tried to bear wi' him mony and mony a time. But he's vexed me, and set himself agin me, and stiffened my back, and ye ken hoo I was aye quick to tak' offence. But I'll mak' it up to him—mak' it up to him, and mair. I'll humble masel' afore him, and that'll be bitter enough. And I'll be father and mither baith to him. But there's bin none to help me; and it's bin sair wi'oot ye. And—. but, eh, lassie, I'm wearyin' for ye!”

It was a dreary little procession that wound in the drizzle from Kenmuir to the little Dale Church. At the head stalked James Moore, and close behind David in his meagre coat. While last of all, as if to guide the stragglers in the weary road, come Owd Bob.

There was a full congregation in the tiny church now. In the squire's pew were Cyril Gilbraith, Muriel Sylvester, and, most conspicuous, Lady Eleanour. Her slender figure was simply draped in gray, with gray fur about the neck and gray fur edging sleeves and jacket; her veil was lifted, and you could see the soft hair about her temples, like waves breaking on white cliffs, and her eyes big with tender sympathy as she glanced toward the pew upon her right.

For there were the mourners from Kenmuir: the Master, tall, grim, and gaunt; and beside him Maggie, striving to be calm, and little Andrew, the miniature of his father.

Alone, in the pew behind, David M'Adam in his father's coat.

The back of the church was packed with farmers from the whole March Mere Estate; friends from Silverdale and Grammoch-town; and nearly every soul in Wastrel-dale, come to show their sympathy for the living and reverence for the dead.

At last the end came in the wet dreariness of the little churchyard, and slowly the mourners departed, until at length were left only the parson, the Master, and Owd Bob.

The parson was speaking in rough, short accents, digging nervously at the wet ground. The other, tall and gaunt, his face drawn and half-averted, stood listening. By his side was Owd Bob, scanning his master's countenance, a wistful compassion deep in the sad gray eyes; while close by, one of the parson's terriers was nosing inquisitively in the wet grass.

Of a sudden, James Moore, his face still turned away, stretched out a hand. The parson, broke off abruptly and grasped it. Then the two men strode away in opposite directions, the terrier hopping on three legs and shaking the rain off his hard coat.

David's steps sounded outside. M'Adam rose from his knees. The door of the house opened, and the boy's feet shuffled in the passage.

“David!” the little man called in a tremulous voice.

He stood in the half-light, one hand on the table, the other clasping the picture. His eyes were bleared, his thin hair all tossed, and he was shaking.

“David,” he called again; “I've somethin' I wush to say to ye!”

The boy burst into the room. His face was stained with tears and rain; and the new black coat was wet and slimy all down the front, and on the elbows were green-brown, muddy blots. For, on his way home, he had flung himself down in the Stony Bottom just as he was, heedless of the wet earth and his father's coat, and, lying on his face thinking of that second mother lost to him, had wept his heart out in a storm of passionate grief.

Now he stood defiantly, his hand upon the door.

“What d'yo' want?”

The little man looked from him to the picture in his hand.

“Help me, Flora—he'll no,” he prayed. Then raising his eyes, he began: “I'd like to say—I've bin thinkin'—I think I should tell ye—it's no an easy thing for a man to say—”

He broke off short. The self-imposed task was almost more than he could accomplish.

He looked appealingly at David. But there was no glimmer of understanding in that white, set countenance.

“O God, it's maist mair than I can do!” the little man muttered; and the perspiration stood upon his forehead. Again he began: “David, after I saw ye this afternoon steppin' doon the hill—” Again he paused. His glance rested unconsciously upon the coat. David mistook the look; mistook the dimness in his father's eyes; mistook the tremor in his voice.

“Here 'tis! tak' yo' coat!” he cried passionately; and, tearing it off, flung it down at his father's feet. “Tak' it—and—-and—curse yo'.”

He banged out of the room and ran upstairs; and, locking himself in, threw himself on to his bed and sobbed.

Red Wull made a movement to fly at the retreating figure; then turned to his master, his stump-tail vibrating with pleasure. But little M'Adam was looking at the wet coat now lying in a wet bundle at his feet.

“Curse ye,” he repeated softly. “Curse ye—ye heard him. Wullie?”

A bitter smile crept across his face. He looked again at the picture now lying crushed in his hand.

“Ye canna say I didna try; ye canna ask me to agin,” he muttered, and slipped it into his pocket. “Niver agin, Wullie; not if the Queen were to ask it.”

Then he went out into the gloom and drizzle, still smiling the same bitter smile.

That night, when it came to closing-time at the Sylvester Arms, Jem Burton found a little gray-haired figure lying on the floor in the tap-room. At the little man's head lay a great dog.

“Yo' beast!” said the righteous publican, regarding the figure of his best customer with fine scorn. Then catching sight of a photograph in the little man's hand:

“Oh, yo're that sort, are yo', foxy?” he leered. “Gie us a look at 'er,” and he tried to disengage the picture from the other's grasp. But at the attempt the great dog rose, bared his teeth, and assumed such a diabolical expression that the big landlord retreated hurriedly behind the bar.

“Two on ye!” he shouted viciously, rattling his heels; “beasts baith!”

M'ADAM never forgave his son. After the scene on the evening of the funeral there could be no alternative but war for all time. The little man had attempted to humble himself, and been rejected; and the bitterness of defeat, when he had deserved victory, rankled like a poisoned barb in his bosom.

Yet the heat of his indignation was directed not against David, but against the Master of Kenmuir. To the influence and agency of James Moore he attributed his discomfiture, and bore himself accordingly. In public or in private, in tap-room or market, he never wearied of abusing his enemy.

“Feel the loss o' his wife, d'ye say?” he would cry. “Ay, as muckle as I feel the loss o' my hair. James Moore can feel naethin', I tell ye, except, aiblins, a mischance to his meeserable dog.”

When the two met, as they often must, it was always M'Adam's endeavor to betray his enemy into an unworthy expression of feeling. But James Moore, sorely tried as he often was, never gave way. He met the little man's sneers with a quelling silence, looking down on his asp-tongued antagonist with such a contempt flashing from his blue-gray eyes as hurt his adversary more than words.

Only once was he spurred into reply. It was in the tap-room of the Dalesman's Daughter on the occasion of the big spring fair in Grammoch-town, when there was a goodly gathering of farmers and their dogs in the room.

M'Adam was standing at the fireplace with Red Wull at his side.

“It's a noble pairt ye play, James Moore,” he cried loudly across the room, “settin' son against father, and dividin' hoose against hoose. It's worthy o' ye we' yer churchgoin', and yer psalm-singin', and yer godliness.”

The Master looked up from the far end of the room.

“Happen yo're not aware, M'Adam,” he said sternly, “that, an' it had not bin for me, David'd ha' left you years agone—and 'twould nob'but ha' served yo' right, I'm thinkin'.”

The little man was beaten on his own ground, so he changed front.

“Dinna shout so, man—I have ears to hear, Forbye ye irritate Wullie.”

The Tailless Tyke, indeed, had advanced from the fireplace, and now stood, huge and hideous, in the very centre of the room. There was distant thunder in his throat, a threat upon his face, a challenge in every wrinkle. And the Gray Dog stole gladly out from behind his master to take up the gage of battle.

Straightway there was silence; tongues ceased to wag, tankards to clink. Every man and every dog was quietly gathering about those two central figures. Not one of them all but had his score to wipe off against the Tailless Tyke; not one of them but was burning to join in, the battle once begun. And the two gladiators stood looking past one another, muzzle to muzzle, each with a tiny flash of teeth glinting between his lips.

But the fight was not to be; for the twentieth time the Master intervened.

“Bob, lad, coom in!” he called, and, bending, grasped his favorite by the neck.

M'Adam laughed softly.

“Wullie, Wullie, to me!” he cried. “The look o' you's enough for that gentleman.”

“If they get fightin' it'll no be Bob here I'll hit, I warn yo', M'Adam,” said the Master grimly.

“Gin ye sae muckle as touched Wullie d'ye ken what I'd do, James Moore?” asked the little man very smoothly.

“Yes—sweer,” the other replied, and strode out of the room amid a roar of derisive laughter at M'Adam's expense.

Owd Bob had now attained wellnigh the perfection of his art. Parson Leggy declared roundly that his like had not been seen since the days of Rex son of Rally. Among the Dalesmen he was a heroic favorite, his prowess and gentle ways winning him friends on every hand. But the point that told most heavily for him was that in all things he was the very antithesis of Red Wull.

Barely a man in the country-side but owed that ferocious savage a grudge; not a man of them all who dared pay it. Once Long Kirby, full of beer and valor, tried to settle his account. Coming on M'Adam and Red Wull as he was driving into Grammoch-town, he leant over and with his thong dealt the dog a terrible sword-like slash that raised an angry ridge of red from hip to shoulder; and was twenty yards down the road before the little man's shrill curse reached his ear, drowned in a hideous bellow.

He stood up and lashed the colt, who, quick on his legs for a young un, soon settled to his gallop. But, glancing over his shoulder, he saw a hounding form behind, catching him as though he were walking. His face turned sickly white; he screamed; he flogged; he looked back. Right beneath the tail-board was the red devil in the dust; while racing a furlong behind on the turnpike road was the mad figure of M'Adam.

The smith struck back and flogged forward. It was of no avail. With a tiger-like bound the murderous brute leapt on the flying trap. At the shock of the great body the colt was thrown violently on his side; Kirby was tossed over the hedge; and Red Wull pinned beneath the debris.

M'Adam had time to rush up and save a tragedy.

“I've a mind to knife ye, Kirby,” he panted, as he bandaged the smith's broken head.

After that you may be sure the Dalesmen preferred to swallow insults rather than to risk their lives; and their impotence only served to fan their hatred to white heat.

The working methods of the antagonists were as contrasted as their appearances. In a word, the one compelled where the other coaxed.

His enemies said the Tailless Tyke was rough; not even Tammas denied he was ready. His brain was as big as his body, and he used them both to some purpose. “As quick as a cat, with the heart of a lion and the temper of Nick's self,” was Parson Leggy's description.

What determination could effect, that could Red Wall; but achievement by inaction—supremest of all strategies—was not for him. In matters of the subtlest handling, where to act anything except indifference was to lose, with sheep restless, fearful forebodings hymned to them by the wind, panic hovering unseen above them, when an ill-considered movement spelt catastrophe—then was Owd Bob o' Kenmuir incomparable.

Men still tell how, when the squire's new thrashing-machine ran amuck in Grammoch-town, and for some minutes the market square was a turbulent sea of blaspheming men, yelping dogs, and stampeding sheep, only one flock stood calm as a mill-pond by the bull-ring, watching the riot with almost indifference. And in front, sitting between them and the storm, was a quiet gray dog, his mouth stretched in a capacious yawn: to yawn was to win, and he won.

When the worst of the uproar was over, many a glance of triumph was shot first at that one still pack, and then at M'Adam, as he waded through the disorder of huddling sheep.

“And wheer's your Wullie noo?” asked Tapper scornfully.

“Weel,” the little man answered with a quiet smile, “at this minute he's killin' your Rasper doon by the pump.” Which was indeed the case; for big blue Rasper had interfered with the great dog in the performance of his duty, and suffered accordingly.

Spring passed into summer; and the excitement as to the event of the approaching Trials, when at length the rivals would be pitted against one another, reached such a height as old Jonas Maddox, the octogenarian, could hardly recall.

Down in the Sylvester Arms there was almost nightly a conflict between M'Adam and Tammas Thornton, spokesman of the Dales men. Many a long-drawn bout of words had the two anent the respective merits and Cup chances of red and gray. In these duels Tammas was usually worsted. His temper would get the better of his discretion; and the cynical debater would be lost in the hot-tongued partisan.

During these encounters the others would, as a rule, maintain a rigid silence. Only when their champion was being beaten, and it was time for strength of voice to vanquish strength of argument, they joined in right lustily and roared the little man down, for all the world like the gentlemen who rule the Empire at Westminster.

Tammas was an easy subject for M'Adam to draw, but David was an easier. Insults directed at himself the boy bore with a stolidity born of long use. But a poisonous dart shot against his friends at Kenmuir never failed to achieve its object. And the little man evinced an amazing talent for the concoction of deft lies respecting James Moore.

“I'm hearin',” said he, one evening, sitting in the kitchen, sucking his twig; “I'm hearin' James Moore is gaein' to git married agin.”

“Yo're hearin' lies—or mair-like tellin' 'em,” David answered shortly. For he treated his father now with contemptuous indifference.

“Seven months sin' his wife died,” the little man continued meditatively. “Weel, I'm on'y 'stonished he's waited sae lang. Ain buried, anither come on—that's James Moore.”

David burst angrily out of the room.

“Gaein' to ask him if it's true?” called his father after him. “Gude luck to ye—and him.”

David had now a new interest at Kenmuir. In Maggie he found an endless source of study. On the death of her mother the girl had taken up the reins of government at Kenmuir; and gallantly she played her part, whether in tenderly mothering the baby, wee Anne, or in the sterner matters of household work. She did her duty, young though she was, with a surprising, old-fashioned womanliness that won many a smile of approval from her father, and caused David's eyes to open with astonishment.

And he soon discovered that Maggie, mistress of Kenmuir, was another person from his erstwhile playfellow and servant.

The happy days when might ruled right were gone, never to be recalled. David often regretted them, especially when in a conflict of tongues, Maggie, with her quick answers and teasing eyes, was driving him sulky and vanquished from the field. The two were perpetually squabbling now. In the good old days, he remembered bitterly, squabbles between them were unknown. He had never permitted them; any attempt at independent thought or action was as sternly quelled as in the Middle Ages. She must follow where he led on—“Ma word!”

Now she was mistress where he had been master; hers was to command, his to obey. In consequence they were perpetually at war. And yet he would sit for hours in the kitchen and watch her, as she went about her business, with solemn, interested eyes, half of admiration, half of amusement. In the end Maggie always turned on him with a little laugh touched with irritation.

“Han't yo' got nothin' better'n that to do, nor lookin' at me?” she asked one Saturday about a month before Cup Day.

“No, I han't,” the pert fellow rejoined.

“Then I wish yo' had. It mak's me fair jumpety yo' watchin' me so like ony cat a mouse.”

“Niver yo' fash yo'sel' account o' me, ma wench,” he answered calmly.

“Yo' wench, indeed!” she cried, tossing her head.

“Ay, or will be,” he muttered.

“What's that?” she cried, springing round, a flush of color on her face.

“Nowt, my dear. Yo'll know so soon as I want yo' to, yo' may be sure, and no sooner.”

The girl resumed her baking, half angry, half suspicious.

“I dunno' what yo' mean, Mr. M'Adam,” she said.

“Don't yo', Mrs. M'A——”

The rest was lost in the crash of a falling plate; whereat David laughed quietly, and asked if he should help pick up the bits.

On the same evening at the Sylvester Arms an announcement was made that knocked the breath out of its hearers.

In the debate that night on the fast-approaching Dale Trials and the relative abilities of red and gray, M'Adam on the one side, and Tammas, backed by Long Kirby and the rest, on the other, had cudgelled each other with more than usual vigor. The controversy rose to fever-heat; abuse succeeded argument; and the little man again and again was hooted into silence.

“It's easy laffin',” he cried at last, “but ye'll laff t'ither side o' yer ugly faces on Cup Day.”

“Will us, indeed? Us'll see,” came the derisive chorus.

“We'll whip ye till ye're deaf, dumb, and blind, Wullie and I.”

''Yo'll not!''

“We will!”

The voices were rising like the east wind in March.

“Yo'll not, and for a very good reason too,” asseverated Tammas loudly.

“Gie us yer reason, ye muckle liar,” cried the little man, turning on him.

“Becos——” began Jim Mason and stopped to rub his nose.

“Yo' 'old yo' noise, Jim,” recommended Rob Saunderson.

“Becos——” it was Tammas this time who paused.

“Git on wi' it, ye stammerin' stirk!” cried M'Adam. “Why?”

“Becos—Owd Bob'll not rin.”

Tammas sat back in his chair.

“What!” screamed the little man, thrusting forward.

“What's that!” yelled Long Kirby, leaping to his feet.

“Mon, say it agin!” shouted Rob.

“What's owd addled eggs tellin'?” cried Liz Burton.

“Dang his 'ead for him!” shouts Tupper.

“Fill his eye!” says Ned Hoppin.

They jostled round the old man's chair: M'Adam in front; Jem Burton and Long Kirby leaning over his shoulder; Liz behind her father; Saunderson and Tupper tackling him on either side; while the rest peered and elbowed in the rear.

The announcement had fallen like a thunderbolt among them.

Tammas looked slowly up at the little mob of eager faces above him. Pride at the sensation caused by his news struggled in his countenance with genuine sorrow for the matter of it.

“Ay, yo' may well 'earken all on yo'. Tis enough to mak' the deadies listen. I says agin: We's'll no rin oor Bob fot' Cup. And yo' may guess why. Bain't every mon, Mr. M'Adam, as'd pit aside his chanst o' the Cup, and that 'maist a gift for him”—M'Adam's tongue was in his cheek—“and it a certainty,” the old man continued warmly, “oot o' respect for his wife's memory.”

The news was received in utter silence. The shock of the surprise, coupled with the bitterness of the disappointment, froze the slow tongues of his listeners.

Only one small voice broke the stillness.

“Oh, the feelin' man! He should git a reduction o' rent for sic a display o' proper speerit. I'll mind Mr. Hornbut to let auld Sylvester ken o't.”

Which he did, and would have got a thrashing for his pains had not Cyril Gilbraith thrown him out of the parsonage before the angry cleric could lay hands upon him.

TAMMAS had but told the melancholy truth. Owd Bob was not to run for the cup. And this self-denying ordinance speaks more for James Moore's love of his lost wife than many a lordly cenotaph.

To the people of the Daleland, from the Black Water to the market-cross in Grammoch-town, the news came with the shock of a sudden blow. They had set their hearts on the Gray Dog's success; and had felt serenely confident of his victory. But the sting of the matter lay in this: that now the Tailless Tyke might well win.

M'Adam, on the other hand, was plunged into a fervor of delight at the news. For to win the Shepherds' Trophy was the goal of his ambition. David was now less than nothing to the lonely little man, Red Wull everything to him. And to have that name handed down to posterity, gallantly holding its place among those of the most famous sheep-dogs of all time, was his heart's desire.

As Cup Day drew near, the little man, his fine-drawn temperament strung to the highest pitch of nervousness, was tossed on a sea of apprehension. His hopes and fears ebbed and flowed on the tide of the moment. His moods were as uncertain as the winds in March; and there was no dependence on his humor for a unit of time. At one minute he paced up and down the kitchen, his face already flushed with the glow of victory, chanting:

“Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled!”

At the next he was down at the table, his head buried in his hands, his whole figure shaking, as he cried in choking voice: “Eh, Wullie, Wullie, they're all agin us.”

David found that life with his father now was life with an unamiable hornet. Careless as he affected to be of his father's vagaries, he was tried almost to madness, and fled away at every moment to Kenmuir; for, as he told Maggie, “I'd sooner put up wi' your h'airs and h'imperences, miss, than wi' him, the wemon that he be!”

At length the great day came. Fears, hopes, doubts, dismays, all dispersed in the presence of the reality.

Cup Day is always a general holiday in the Daleland, and every soul crowds over to Silverdale. Shops were shut; special trains ran in to Grammoch-town; and the road from the little town was dazed with char-a-bancs, brakes, wagonettes, carriages, carts, foot-passengers, wending toward the Dalesman's Daughter.

And soon the paddock below that little inn was humming with the crowd of sportsmen and spectators come to see the battle for the Shepherd's Trophy.

There, very noticeable with its red body and yellow wheels, was the great Kenmuir wagon. Many an eye was directed on the handsome young pair who stood in it, conspicuous and unconscious, above the crowd: Maggie, looking in her simple print frock as sweet and fresh as any mountain flower; while David's fair face was all gloomy and his brows knit.

In front of the wagon was a black cluster of Dalesmen, discussing M'Adam's chances. In the centre was Tammas holding forth. Had you passed close to the group you might have heard: “A man, d'yo say, Mr. Maddox? A h'ape, I call him”; or: “A dog? more like an 'og, I tell yo'.” Round the old orator were Jonas, 'Enry, and oor Job, Jem Burton, Rob Saunderson, Tupper, Jim Mason, Hoppin, and others; while on the outskirts stood Sam'l Todd prophesying rain and M'Adam's victory. Close at hand Bessie Bolstock, who was reputed to have designs on David, was giggling spitefully at the pair in the Kenmuir wagon, and singing:

“Let a lad aloan, lass, Let a lad a-be.”

While her father, Teddy, dodged in and out among the crowd with tray and glasses: for Cup Day was the great day of the year for him.

Past the group of Dalesmen and on all sides was a mass of bobbing heads—Scots, Northerners, Yorkshiremen, Taffies. To right and left a long array of carriages and carts, ranging from the squire's quiet landau and Viscount Birdsaye's gorgeous barouche to Liz Burton's three-legged moke-cart with little Mrs. Burton, the twins, young Jake (who should have walked), and Monkey (ditto) packed away inside. Beyond the Silver Lea the gaunt Scaur raised its craggy peak, and the Pass, trending along its side, shone white in the sunshine.

At the back of the carriages were booths, cocoanut-shies, Aunt Sallies, shows, bookmakers' stools, and all the panoply of such a meeting. Here Master Launcelot Bilks and Jacky Sylvester were fighting; Cyril Gilbraith was offering to take on the boxing man; Long Kirby was snapping up the odds against Red Wull; and Liz Burton and young Ned Hoppin were being photographed together, while Melia Ross in the background was pretending she didn't care.

On the far bank of the stream was a little bevy of men and dogs, observed of all.

The Juvenile Stakes had been run and won; Londesley's Lassie had carried off the Locals; and the fight for the Shepherds' Trophy was about to begin.

“Yo're not lookin' at me noo,” whispered Maggie to the silent boy by her side.

“Nay; nor niver don't wush to agin.” David answered roughly. His gaze was directed over the array of heads in front to where, beyond the Silver Lea, a group of shepherds and their dogs was clustered. While standing apart from the rest, in characteristic isolation, was the bent figure of his father, and beside him the Tailless Tyke.

“Doest'o not want yo' feyther to win?” asked Maggie softly, following his gaze.

“I'm prayin' he'll be beat,” the boy answered moodily.

“Eh, Davie, hoo can ye?” cried the girl, shocked.

“It's easy to say, 'Eh, David,'” he snapped. “But if yo' lived along o' them two “—he nodded toward the stream—“'appen yo'd understand a bit.... 'Eh, David,' indeed! I never did!”

“I know it, lad,” she said tenderly; and he was appeased.

“He'd give his right hand for his bless'd Wullie to win; I'd give me right arm to see him beat.... And oor Bob there all the while,”—he nodded to the far left of the line, where stood James Moore and Owd Bob, with Parson Leggy and the Squire.

When at length Red Wull came out to run his course, he worked with the savage dash that always characterized him. His method was his own; but the work was admirably done.

“Keeps right on the back of his sheep,” said the parson, watching intently. “Strange thing they don't break!” But they didn't. There was no waiting, no coaxing; it was drive and devilry all through. He brought his sheep along at a terrific rate, never missing a turn, never faltering, never running out. And the crowd applauded, for the crowd loves a dashing display. While little M'Adam, hopping agilely about, his face ablaze with excitement, handled dog and sheep with a masterly precision that compelled the admiration even of his enemies.

“M'Adam wins!” roared a bookmaker. “Twelve to one agin the field!”

“He wins, dang him!” said David, low.

“Wull wins!” said the parson, shutting his lips.

“And deserves too!” said James Moore.

“Wull wins!” softly cried the crowd.

“We don't!” said Sam'l gloomily.

And in the end Red Wull did Win; and there were none save Tammas, the bigot, and Long Kirby, who had lost a good deal of his wife's money and a little of his own, to challenge the justice of the verdict.

The win had but a chilling reception. At first there was faint cheering; but it sounded like the echo of an echo, and soon died of inanition. To get up an ovation, there must be money at the back, or a few roaring fanatics to lead the dance. Here there was neither; ugly stories, disparaging remarks, on every hand. And the hundreds who did not know took their tone, as always, from those who said they did.

M'Adam could but remark the absence of enthusiasm as he pushed up through the throng toward the committee tent. No single voice hailed him victor; no friendly hand smote its congratulations. Broad backs were turned; contemptuous glances levelled; spiteful remarks shot. Only the foreign element looked curiously at the little bent figure with the glowing face, and shrank back at the size and savage aspect of the great dog at his heels.

But what cared he? His Wullie was acknowledged champion, the best sheep-dog of the year; and the little man was happy. They could turn their backs on him; but they could not alter that; and he could afford to be indifferent. “They dinna like it, lad—he! he! But they'll e'en ha' to thole it. Ye've won it, Wullie—won it fair.”

He elbowed through the press, making for the rope-guarded inclosure in front of the committee tent, round which the people were now packing. In the door of the tent stood the secretary, various stewards, and members of the committee. In front, alone in the roped-off space, was Lady Eleanour, fragile, dainty, graceful, waiting with a smile upon her face to receive the winner. And on a table beside her, naked and dignified, the Shepherd's Trophy.

There it stood, kingly and impressive; its fair white sides inscribed with many names; cradled in three shepherds' crooks; and on the top, as if to guard the Cup's contents, an exquisitely carved collie's head. The Shepherds' Trophy, the goal of his life's race, and many another man's.

He climbed over the rope, followed by Red Wull, and took off his hat with almost courtly deference to the fair lady before him.

As he walked up to the table on which the Cup stood, a shrill voice, easily recognizable, broke the silence.

“You'd like it better if 'twas full and yo' could swim in it, you and yer Wullie,” it called. Whereat the crowd giggled, and Lady Eleanour looked indignant.

The little man turned.

“I'll mind drink yer health, Mr. Thornton, never fear, though I ken ye'd prefaire to drink yer ain,” he said. At which the crowd giggled afresh; and a gray head at the back, which had hoped itself unrecognized, disappeared suddenly.

The little man stood there in the stillness, sourly smiling, his face still wet from his exertions; while the Tailless Tyke at his side fronted defiantly the serried ring of onlookers, a white fence of teeth faintly visible between his lips.

Lady Eleanour looked uneasy. Usually the lucky winner was unable to hear her little speech, as she gave the Cup away, so deafening was the applause. Now there was utter silence. She glanced up at the crowd, but there was no response to her unspoken appeal in that forest of hostile faces. And her gentle heart bled for the forlorn little man before her. To make it up she smiled on him so sweetly as to more than compensate him.

“I'm sure you deserve your success, Mr. M'Adam,” she said. “You and Red Wull there worked splendidly—everybody says so.”

“I've heard naethin' o't,” the little man answered dryly. At which some one in the crowd sniggered.

“And we all know what a grand dog he is; though”—with a reproving smile as she glanced at Red Wull's square, truncated stern—“he's not very polite.”

“His heart is good, your Leddyship, if his manners are not,” M'Adam answered, smiling.

“Liar!” came a loud voice in the silence. Lady Eleanour looked up, hot with indignation, and half rose from her seat. But M'Adam merely smiled.

“Wullie, turn and mak' yer bow to the leddy,” he said. “They'll no hurt us noo we're up; it's when we're doon they'll flock like corbies to the carrion.”

At that Red Wull walked up to Lady Eleanour, faintly wagging his tail; and she put her hand on his huge bull head and said, “Dear old Ugly!” at which the crowd cheered in earnest.

After that, for some moments, the only sound was the gentle ripple of the good lady's voice and the little man's caustic replies.

“Why, last winter the country was full of Red Wull's doings and yours. It was always M'Adam and his Red Wull have done this and that and the other. I declare I got quite tired of you both, I heard such a lot about you.”

The little man, cap in hand, smiled, blushed and looked genuinely pleased.

“And when it wasn't you it was Mr. Moore and Owd Bob.”

“Owd Bob, bless him!” called a stentorian voice. “There cheers for oor Bob!”

“'Ip! 'ip! 'ooray!” It was taken up gallantly, and cast from mouth to mouth; and strangers, though they did not understand, caught the contagion and cheered too; and the uproar continued for some minutes.

When it was ended Lady Eleanour was standing up, a faint flush on her cheeks and her eyes flashing dangerously, like a queen at bay.

“Yes,” she cried, and her clear voice thrilled through the air like a trumpet. “Yes; and now three cheers for Mr. M'Adam and his Red Wull! Hip! hip—”

“Hooray!” A little knowt of stalwarts at the back—James Moore, Parson Leggy, Jim Mason, and you may be sure in heart, at least, Owd Bob—responded to the call right lustily. The crowd joined in; and, once off, cheered and cheered again.

“Three cheers more for Mr. M'Adam!”

But the little man waved to them.

“Dinna be bigger heepocrites than ye can help,” he said. “Ye've done enough for one day, and thank ye for it.”

Then Lady Eleanour handed him the Cup.

“Mr. M'Adam, I present you with the Champion Challenge Dale Cup, open to all comers. Keep it, guard it, love it as your own, and win it again if you can. Twice more and it's yours, you know, and it will stop forever beneath the shadow of the Pike. And the right place for it, say I—the Dale Cup for Dalesmen.”

The little man took the Cup tenderly.

“It shall no leave the Estate or ma hoose, yer Leddyship, gin Wullie and I can help it,” he said emphatically.

Lady Eleanour retreated into the tent, and the crowd swarmed over the ropes and round the little man, who held the Cup beneath his arm.

Long Kirby laid irreverent hands upon it.

“Dinna finger it!” ordered M'Adam.

“Shall!''

“Shan't! Wullie, keep him aff.” Which the great dog proceeded to do amid the laughter of the onlookers.

Among the last, James Moore was borne past the little man. At sight of him, M'Adam's face assumed an expression of intense concern.

“Man, Moore!” he cried, peering forward as though in alarm; “man, Moore, ye're green—positeevely verdant. Are ye in pain?” Then, catching sight of Owd Bob, he started back in affected horror.

“And, ma certes! so's yer dog! Yer dog as was gray is green. Oh, guid life! “—and he made as though about to fall fainting to the ground.

Then, in bantering tones: “Ah, but ye shouldna covet ——”

“He'll ha' no need to covet it long, I can tell yo',” interposed Tammas's shrill accents.

“And why for no?”

“Becos next year he'll win it fra yo'. Oor Bob'll win it, little mon. Why? thot's why.”

The retort was greeted with a yell of applause from the sprinkling of Dalesmen in the crowd.

But M'Adam swaggered away into the tent, his head up, the Cup beneath his arm, and Red Wull guarding his rear.

“First of a' ye'll ha' to beat Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull!” he cried back proudly.

M'ADAM'S pride in the great Cup that now graced his kitchen was supreme. It stood alone in the very centre of the mantelpiece, just below the old bell-mouthed blunderbuss that hung upon the wall. The only ornament in the bare room, it shone out in its silvery chastity like the moon in a gloomy sky.

For once the little man was content. Since his mother's death David had never known such peace. It was not that his father became actively kind; rather that he forgot to be actively unkind.

“Not as I care a brazen button one way or t'ither,” the boy informed Maggie.

“Then yo' should,” that proper little person replied.

M'Adam was, indeed, a changed being. He forgot to curse James Moore; he forgot to sneer at Owd Bob; he rarely visited the Sylvester Arms, to the detriment of Jem Burton's pocket and temper; and he was never drunk.

“Soaks 'isseif at home, instead,” suggested Tammas, the prejudiced. But the accusation was untrue.

“Too drunk to git so far,” said Long Kirby, kindly man.

“I reck'n the Cup is kind o' company to him,” said Jim Mason. “Happen it's lonesomeness as drives him here so much.” And happen you were right, charitable Jim.

“Best mak' maist on it while he has it, 'cos he'll not have it for long,” Tammas remarked amid applause.

Even Parson Leggy allowed—rather reluctantly, indeed, for he was but human—that the little man was changed wonderfully for the better.

“But I am afraid it may not last,” he said. “We shall see what happens when Owd Bob beats him for the Cup, as he certainly will. That'll be the critical moment.”

As things were, the little man spent all his spare moments with the Cup between his knees, burnishing it and crooning to Wullie:

     “I never saw a fairer,
     I never lo'ed a dearer,
     And neist my heart I'll wear her,
     For fear my jewel tine.”
 

“There, Wullie! look at her! is she no bonnie? She shines like a twinkle—twinkle in the sky.” And he would hold it out at arm's length, his head cocked sideways the better to scan its bright beauties.

The little man was very jealous for his treasure. David might not touch it; might not smoke in the kitchen lest the fumes should tarnish its glory; while if he approached too closely he was ordered abruptly away.

“As if I wanted to touch his nasty Cup!” he complained to Maggie. “I'd sooner ony day—”

“Hands aff, Mr. David, immediate!” she cried indignantly. “'Pertinence, indeed!” as she tossed her head clear of the big fingers that were fondling her pretty hair.

So it was that M'Adam, on coming quietly into the kitchen one day, was consumed with angry resentment to find David actually handling the object of his reverence; and the manner of his doing it added a thousandfold to the offence.

The boy was lolling indolently against the mantelpiece, his fair head shoved right into the Cup, his breath dimming its lustre, and his two hands, big and dirty, slowly revolving it before his eyes.

Bursting with indignation, the little man crept up behind the boy. David was reading through the long list of winners.

“Theer's the first on 'em,” he muttered, shooting out his tongue to indicate the locality: “'Andrew Moore's Rough, 178—.' And theer agin—' James Moore's Pinch, 179—.' And agin—'Beck, 182—.' Ah, and theer's 'im Tammas tells on! 'Rex, 183—,' and Rex, 183—.' Ay, but he was a rare un by all tell-in's! If he'd nob'but won but onst agin! Ah, and theer's none like the Gray Dogs—they all says that, and I say so masel'; none like the Gray Dogs o' Kenmuir, bless 'em! And we'll win agin too—” he broke off short; his eye had travelled down to the last name on the list.

“'M'Adam's Wull'!” he read with unspeakable contempt, and put his great thumb across the name as though to wipe it out. “'M'Adam's Wull'! Goo' gracious sakes! P-hg-h-r-r! “—and he made a motion as though to spit upon the ground.

But a little shoulder was into his side, two small fists were beating at his chest, and a shrill voice was yelling: “Devil! devil! stan' awa'!”—and he was tumbled precipitately away from the mantelpiece, and brought up abruptly against the side-wall.

The precious Cup swayed on its ebony stand, the boy's hands, rudely withdrawn, almost overthrowing it. But the little man's first impulse, cursing and screaming though he was, was to steady it.

“'M'Adam's Wull'! I wish he was here to teach ye, ye snod-faced, ox-limbed profleegit!” he cried, standing in front of the Cup, his eyes blazing.

“Ay, 'M'Adam's Wull'! And why not 'M'Adam's Wull'? Ha' ye ony objections to the name?”

“I didn't know yo' was theer,” said David, a thought sheepishly.

“Na; or ye'd not ha' said it.”

“I'd ha' thought it, though,” muttered the boy.

Luckily, however, his father did not hear. He stretched his hands up tenderly for the Cup, lifted it down, and began reverently to polish the dimmed sides with his handkerchief.

“Ye're thinkin', nae doot,” he cried, casting up a vicious glance at David, “that Wullie's no gude enough to ha' his name alangside o' they cursed Gray Dogs. Are ye no? Let's ha' the truth for aince—for a diversion.”

“Reck'n he's good enough if there's none better,” David replied dispassionately.

“And wha should there be better? Tell me that, ye muckle gowk.”

David smiled.

“Eh, but that'd be long tellin', he said.

“And what wad ye mean by that?” his father cried.

“Nay; I was but thinkin' that Mr. Moore's Bob'll look gradely writ under yon.” He pointed to the vacant space below Red Wull's name.

The little man put the Cup back on its pedestal with hurried hands. The handkerchief dropped unconsidered to the floor; he turned and sprang furiously at the boy, who stood against the wall, still smiling; and, seizing him by the collar of his coat, shook him to and fro with fiery energy.

“So ye're hopin', prayin', nae doot, that James Moore—curse him!—will win ma Cup awa' from me, yer ain dad. I wonder ye're no 'shamed to crass ma door! Ye live on me; ye suck ma blood, ye foul-mouthed leech. Wullie and me brak' oorsel's to keep ye in hoose and hame—and what's yer gratitude? Ye plot to rob us of oor rights.”

He dropped the boy's coat and stood back.

“No rights about it,” said David, still keeping his temper.

“If I win is it no ma right as muckle as ony Englishman's?”

Red Wull, who had heard the rising voices, came trotting in, scowled at David, and took his stand beside his master.

“Ah, if yo' win it,” said David, with significant emphasis on the conjunction.

“And wha's to beat us?”

David looked at his father in well-affected surprise.

“I tell yo' Owd Bob's rinin',” he answered.

“And what if he is?” the other cried.

“Why, even yo' should know so much,” the boy sneered.

The little man could not fail to understand.

“So that's it!” he said. Then, in a scream, with one finger pointing to the great dog: “And what o' him? What'll ma Wullie be doin' the while? Tell me that, and ha' a care! Mind ye, he stan's here hearkenin'!” And, indeed, the Tailless Tyke was bristling for battle.

David did not like the look of things; and edged away toward the door.

“What'll Wullie be doin', ye chicken-hearted brock?” his father cried.

“Im?” said the boy, now close on the door. “Im!” he said, with a slow contempt that made the red bristles quiver on the dog's neck. “Lookin' on, I should think—lookin' on. What else is he fit for? I tell yo' oor Bob—”

“—'Oor Bob'!” screamed the little man darting forward. “'Oor Bob'! Hark to him. I'll 'oor—' At him, Wullie! at him!”

But the Tailless Tyke needed no encouragement. With a harsh roar he sprang through the air, only to crash against the closing door!

The outer door banged, and in another second a mocking finger tapped on the windowpane.

“Better luck to the two on yo' next time!” laughed a scornful voice; and David ran down the hill toward Kenmuir.

FROM that hour the fire of M'Adam's jealousy blazed into a mighty flame. The winning of the Dale Cup had become a mania with him. He had won it once, and would again despite all the Moores, all the Gray Dogs, all the undutiful sons in existence; on that point he was resolved. The fact of his having tasted the joys of victory served to whet his desire. And now he felt he could never be happy till the Cup was his own—won outright.

At home David might barely enter the room There the trophy stood.

“I'll not ha' ye touch ma Cup, ye dirty-fingered, ill-begotten wastrel. Wullie and me won it—you'd naught to do wi' it. Go you to James Moore and James Moore's dog.”

“Ay, and shall I tak' Cup wi' me? or will ye bide till it's took from ye?”

So the two went on; and every day the tension approached nearer breaking-point.

In the Dale the little man met with no sympathy. The hearts of the Dalesmen were to a man with Owd Bob and his master.

Whereas once at the Sylvester Arms his shrill, ill tongue had been rarely still, now he maintained a sullen silence; Jem Burton, at least, had no cause of complaint. Crouched away in a corner, with Red Wull beside him, the little man would sit watching and listening as the Dalesmen talked of Owd Bob's doings, his staunchness, sagacity, and coming victory.

Sometimes he could restrain himself no longer. Then he would spring to his feet, and stand, a little swaying figure, and denounce them passionately in almost pathetic eloquence. These orations always concluded in set fashion.

“Ye're all agin us!” the little man would cry in quivering voice.

“We are that,” Tammas would answer complacently.

“Fair means or foul, ye're content sae lang as Wullie and me are beat. I wonder ye dinna poison him—a little arsenic, and the way's clear for your Bob.”

“'The way is clear enough wi'oot that,” from Tammas caustically.

Then a lengthy silence, only broken by that exceeding bitter cry: “Eh, Wullie, Wullie, they're all agin us!”

And always the rivals—red and gray—went about seeking their opportunity. But the Master, with his commanding presence and stern eyes, was ever ready for them. Toward the end, M'Adam, silent and sneering, would secretly urge on Red Wull to the attack; until, one day in Grammoch-town, James Moore turned on him, his blue eyes glittering. “D'yo' think, yo' little fule,” he cried in that hard voice of his, “that onst they got set we should iver git either of them off alive?” It seemed to strike the little man as a novel idea; for, from that moment, he was ever the first in his feverish endeavors to oppose his small form, buffer-like, between the would-be combatants.

Curse as M'Adam might, threaten as he might, when the time came Owd Bob won.

The styles of the rivals were well contrasted: the patience, the insinuating eloquence, combined with the splendid dash, of the one; and the fierce, driving fury of the other.

The issue was never in doubt. It may have been that the temper of the Tailless Tyke gave in the time of trial; it may have been that his sheep were wild, as M'Adam declared; certainly not, as the little man alleged in choking voice, that they had been chosen and purposely set aside to ruin his chance. Certain it is that his tactics scared them hopelessly: and he never had them in hand.

Act for Owd Bob, his dropping, his driving, his penning, aroused the loud-tongued admiration of crowd and competitors alike. He was patient yet persistent, quiet yet firm, and seemed to coax his charges in the right way in that inimitable manner of his own.

When, at length, the verdict was given, and it was known that, after an interval of half a century, the Shepherds' Trophy was won again by a Gray Dog of Kenmuir, there was such a scene as has been rarely witnessed on the slope behind the Dalesman's Daughter.

Great fists were slapped on mighty backs; great feet were stamped on the sun-dried banks of the Silver Lea; stalwart lungs were strained to their uttermost capacity; and roars of “Moore!” “Owd Bob o' Kenmuir!” “The Gray Dogs!” thundered up the hillside, and were flung, thundering, back.

Even James Moore was visibly moved as he worked his way through the cheering mob; and Owd Bob, trotting alongside him in quiet dignity, seemed to wave his silvery brush in acknowledgment.

Master Jacky Sylvester alternately turned cart-wheels and felled the Hon. Launcelot Bilks to the ground. Lady Eleanour, her cheeks flushed with pleasure, waved her parasol, and attempted to restrain her son's exuberance. Parson Leggy danced an unclerical jig, and shook hands with the squire till both those fine old gentlemen were purple in the face. Long Kirby selected a small man in the crowd, and bashed his hat down over his eyes. While Tammas, Rob Saunderson, Tupper, Hoppin, Londesley, and the rest joined hands and went raving round like so many giddy girls.

Of them all, however, none was so uproarious in the mad heat of his enthusiasm as David M'Adam. He stood in the Kenmuir wagon beside Maggie, a conspicuous figure above the crowd, as he roared in hoarse ecstasy:

“Weel done, oor Bob! Weel done, Mr. Moore! Yo've knocked him! Knock him agin! Owd Bob o' Kenmuir! Moore! Moore o' Kenmuir! Hip! Hip!” until the noisy young giant attracted such attention in his boisterous delight that Maggie had to lay a hand upon his arm to restrain his violence.

Alone, on the far bank of the stream, stood the vanquished pair.

The little man was trembling slightly; his face was still hot from his exertions; and as he listened to the ovation accorded to his conqueror, there was a piteous set grin upon his face. In front stood the defeated dog, his lips wrinkling and hackles rising, as he, too, saw and heard and understood.

“It's a gran' thing to ha' a dutiful son. Wullie,” the little man whispered, watching David's waving figure. “He's happy—and so are they a'—not sae much that James Moore has won, as that you and I are beat.”

Then, breaking down for a moment:

“Eh, Wullie, Wullie! They're all agin us. It's you and I alane, lad.”

Again, seeing the squire followed by Parson Leggy, Viscount Birdsaye, and others of the gentry, forcing their way through the press to shake hands with the victor, he continued:

“It's good to be in wi' the quality, Wullie. Niver mak' a friend of a man beneath ye in rank, nor an enemy of a man aboon ye: that's a soond principle, Wullie, if ye'd get on in honest England.”

He stood there, alone with his dog, watching the crowd on the far slope as it surged upward in the direction of the committee tent. Only when the black mass had packed itself in solid phalanges about that ring, inside which, just a year ago, he had stood in very different circumstances, and was at length still, a wintry smile played for a moment about his lips. He laughed a mirthless laugh.

     “Bide a wee, Wullie—he! he! Bide a wee.
     'The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
     Gang aft agley.'”
 

As he spoke, there came down to him, above the tumult, a faint cry of mingled surprise and anger. The cheering ceased abruptly. There was silence; then there burst on the stillness a hurricane of indignation.

The crowd surged forward, then turned. Every eye was directed across the stream. A hundred damning fingers pointed at the solitary figure there. There were hoarse yells of: “There he be Yon's him! What's he done wi' it? Thief! Throttle him!”

The mob came lumbering down the slope like one man, thundering their imprecations on a thousand throats. They looked dangerous, and their wrath was stimulated by the knot of angry Dalesmen who led the van. There was more than one white face among the women at the top of the slope as they watched the crowd blundering blindly down the hill. There were more men than Parson Leggy, the squire, James Moore, and the local constables in the thick of it all, striving frantically with voice and gesture, ay, and stick too, to stem the advance.

It was useless; on the dark wave rolled, irresistible.

On the far bank stood the little man, motionless, awaiting them with a grin upon his face. And a little farther in front was the Tailless Tyke, his back and neck like a new-shorn wheat-field, as he rumbled a vast challenge.

“Come on, gentlemen!” the little man cried. “Come on! I'll bide for ye, never fear. Ye're a thousand to one and a dog. It's the odds ye like, Englishmen a'.”

And the mob, with murder in its throat, accepted the invitation and came on.

At the moment, however, from the slope above, clear above the tramp of the multitude, a great voice bellowed: “Way! Way! Way for Mr. Trotter!” The advancing host checked and opened out; and the secretary of the meeting bundled through.

He was a small, fat man, fussy at any time, and perpetually perspiring. Now his face was crimson with rage and running; he gesticulated wildly; vague words bubbled forth, as his short legs twinkled down the slope.

The crowd paused to admire. Some one shouted a witticism, and the crowd laughed. For the moment the situation was saved.

The fat secretary hurried on down the slope, unheeding of any insult but the one. He bounced over the plank-bridge: and as he came closer, M'Adam saw that in each hand brandished a brick.

“Hoots, man! dinna throw!” he cried, making a feint as though to turn in sudden terror.

“What's this? What's this?” gasped the secretary, waving his arms.

“Bricks, 'twad seem,” the other answered, staying his flight.

The secretary puffed up like a pudding in a hurry.

“Where's the Cup? Champion, Challenge, etc.,” he jerked out. “Mind, sir, you're responsible! wholly responsible! Dents, damages, delays! What's it all mean, sir? These—these monstrous creations “—he brandished the bricks, and M'Adam started back—“wrapped, as I live, in straw, sir, in the Cup case, sir! the Cup case! No Cup! Infamous! Disgraceful! Insult me—meeting—committee—every one! What's it mean, sir?” He paused to pant, his body filling and emptying like a bladder.

M'Adam approached him with one eye on the crowd, which was heaving forward again, threatening still, but sullen and silent.

“I pit 'em there,” he whispered; and drew back to watch the effect of his disclosure.

The secretary gasped.

“You—you not only do this—amazing thing—these monstrosities”—he hurled the bricks furiously on the unoffending ground—“but you dare to tell me so!”

The little man smiled.

“'Do wrang and conceal it, do right and confess it,' that's Englishmen's motto, and mine, as a rule; but this time I had ma reasons.”

“Reasons, sir! No reasons can justify such an extraordinary breach of all the—the decencies. Reasons? the reasons of a maniac. Not to say more, sir. Fraudulent detention—fraudulent, I say, sir! What were your precious reasons?”

The mob with Tammas and Long Kirby at their head had now well nigh reached the plank-bridge. They still looked dangerous, and there were isolated cries of:

“Duck him!”

“Chuck him in!”

“An' the dog!”

“Wi' one o' they bricks about their necks!”

“There are my reasons!” said M'Adam, pointing to the forest of menacing faces. “Ye see I'm no beloved amang yonder gentlemen, and”—in a stage whisper in the other's ear—“I thocht maybe I'd be 'tacked on the road.”

Tammas foremost of the crowd, had now his foot upon the first plank.

“Ye robber! ye thief! Wait till we set hands on ye, you and yer gorilla!” he called.

M'Adam half turned.

“Wullie,” he said quietly, “keep the bridge.”

At the order the Tailless Tyke shot gladly forward, and the leaders on the bridge as hastily back. The dog galloped on to the rattling plank, took his post fair and square in the centre of the narrow way, and stood facing the hostile crew like Cerberus guarding the gates of hell: his bull-head was thrust forward, hackles up, teeth glinting, and a distant rumbling in his throat, as though daring them to come on.

“Yo' first, ole lad!” said Tammas, hopping agilely behind Long Kirby.

“Nay; the old uns lead!” cried the big smith, his face gray-white. He wrenched round, pinned the old man by the arms, and held him forcibly before him as a covering shield. There ensued an unseemly struggle betwixt the two valiants, Tammas bellowing and kicking in the throes of mortal fear.

“Jim Mason'll show us,” he suggested at last.

“Nay,” said honest Jim; “I'm fear'd.” He could say it with impunity; for the pluck of Postie Jim was a matter long past dispute.

Then Jem Burton'd go first?

Nay; Jem had a lovin' wife and dear little kids at 'ome.

Then Big Bell?

Big Bell'd see 'isseif further first.

A tall figure came forcing through the crowd, his face a little paler than its wont, and a formidable knob-kerry in his hand.

“I'm goin'!” said David.

“But yo're not,” answered burly Sam'l, gripping the boy from behind with arms like the roots of an oak. “Your time'll coom soon enough by the look on yo' wi' niver no hurry.”

And the sense of the Dalesmen was with the big man; for, as old Rob Saunderson said:

“I reck'n he'd liefer claw on to your throat, lad, nor ony o' oors.”

As there was no one forthcoming to claim the honor of the lead, Tammas came forward with cunning counsel.

“Tell yo' what, lads, we'd best let 'em as don't know nowt at all aboot him go first. And onst they're on, mind, we winna let 'em off; but keep a-shovin' and a-bovin 'on 'em forra'd. Then us'll foller.”

By this time there was a little naked space of green round the bridge-head, like a fairy circle, into which the uninitiated might not penetrate. Round this the mob hedged: the Dalesmen in front, striving knavishly back and bawling to those behind to leggo that shovin'; and these latter urging valorously forward, yelling jeers and contumely at the front rank. “Come on! 'O's afraid? Lerrus through to 'em, then, ye Royal Stan'-backs!”—for well they knew the impossibility of their demand.

And as they wedged and jostled thus, there stole out from their midst as gallant a champion as ever trod the grass. He trotted out into the ring, the observed of all, and paused to gaze at the gaunt figure on the bridge. The sun lit the sprinkling of snow on the dome of his head; one forepaw was off the ground; and he stood there, royally alert, scanning his antagonist.

“Th' Owd Un!” went up in a roar fit to split the air as the hero of the day was recognized. And the Dalesmen gave a pace forward spontaneously as the gray knight-errant stole across the green.

“Oor Bob'll fetch him!” they roared, their blood leaping to fever heat, and gripped their sticks, determined in stern reality to follow now.

The gray champion trotted up on to the bridge, and paused again, the long hair about his neck rising like a ruff, and a strange glint in his eyes; and the holder of the bridge never moved. Red and Gray stood thus, face to face: the one gay yet resolute, the other motionless, his great head slowly sinking between his forelegs, seemingly petrified.

There was no shouting now: it was time for deeds, not words. Only, above the stillness, came a sound from the bridge like the snore of a giant in his sleep, and blending, with it, a low, deep, purring thunder like some monster cat well pleased.

“Wullie,” came a solitary voice from the far side, “keep the bridge!”

One ear went back, one ear was still forward; the great head was low and lower between his forelegs and the glowing eyes rolled upward so that the watchers could see the murderous white.

Forward the gray dog stepped.

Then, for the second time that afternoon, a voice, stern and hard, came ringing down from the slope above over the heads of the many.

“Bob, lad, coom back!”

“He! he! I thocht that was comin',” sneered the small voice over the stream.

The gray dog heard, and checked.

“Bob, lad, coom in, I say!”

At that he swung round and marched slowly back, gallant as he had come, dignified still in his mortification.

And Red Wull threw back his head and bellowed a paean of victory—challenge, triumph, scorn, all blended in that bull-like, blood-chilling blare.

In the mean time, M'Adam and the secretary had concluded their business. It had been settled that the Cup was to be delivered over to James Moore not later than the following Saturday.

“Saturday, see! at the latest!” the secretary cried as he turned and trotted off.

“Mr. Trotter,” M'Adam called after him. “I'm sorry, but ye maun bide this side the Lea till I've reached the foot o' the Pass. Gin they gentlemen”—nodding toward the crowd—“should set hands on me, why—” and he shrugged his shoulders significantly. “Forbye, Wullie's keepin' the bridge.”

With that the little man strolled off leisurely; now dallying to pick a flower, now to wave a mocking hand at the furious mob, and so slowly on to the foot of the Muirk Muir Pass.

There he turned and whistled that shrill peculiar note.

“Wullie, Wullie, to me!” he called.

At that, with one last threat thrown at the' thousand souls he had held at bay for thirty minutes, the Tailless Tyke swung about and galloped after his lord.

ALL Friday M'Adam never left the kitchen. He sat opposite the Cup, in a coma, as it were; and Red Wull lay motionless at his feet.

Saturday came, and still the two never budged. Toward the evening the little man rose, all in a tremble, and took the Cup down from the mantelpiece; then he sat down again with it in his arms.

“Eh, Wullie, Wullie, is it a dream? Ha' they took her fra us? Eh, but it's you and I alane, lad.”

He hugged it to him, crying silently, and rocking to and fro like a mother with a dying child. And Red Wull sat up on his haunches, and weaved from side to side in sympathy.

As the dark was falling, David looked in.

At the sound of the opening door the little man swung round noiselessly, the Cup nursed in his arms, and glared, sullen and suspicious, at the boy; yet seemed not to recognize him. In the half-light David could see the tears coursing down the little wizened face.

“'Pon ma life, he's gaein' daft!” was his comment as he turned away to Kenmuir. And again the mourners were left alone.

“A few hours noo, Wullie,” the little man wailed, “and she'll be gane. We won her, Wullie, you and I, won her fair: she's lit the hoose for us; she's softened a' for us—and God kens we needed it; she was the ae thing we had to look to and love. And noo they're takin' her awa', and 'twill be night agin. We've cherished her, we've garnished her, we've loved her like oor ain; and noo she maun gang to strangers who know her not.”

He rose to his feet, and the great dog rose with him. His voice heightened to a scream, and he swayed with the Cup in his arms till it seemed he must fall.

“Did they win her fair, Wullie? Na; they plotted, they conspired, they worked ilka ain o' them agin us, and they beat us. Ay, and noo they're robbin' us—robbin' us! But they shallna ha' her. Oor's or naebody's, Wullie! We'll finish her sooner nor that.”

He banged the Cup down on the table and rushed madly out of the room, Red Wull at his heels. In a moment he came running back, brandishing a great axe about his head.

“Come on, Wullie!” he cried. “'Scots wha hae'! Noo's the day and noo's the hour! Come on!”

On the table before him, serene and beautiful, stood the target of his madness. The little man ran at it, swinging his murderous weapon like a flail.

“Oor's or naebody's Wullie! Come on! 'Lay the proud usurpers low'!” He aimed a mighty buffet; and the Shepherds' Trophy—the Shepherds' Trophy which had won through the hardships of a hundred years—was almost gone. It seemed to quiver as the blow fell. But the cruel steel missed, and the axe-head sank into the wood, clean and deep, like a spade in snow.

Red Wull had leapt on to the table, and in his cavernous voice was
grumbling a chorus to his master's yells. The little man danced up and
down, tugging and straining at the axe-handle.

     “You and I, Wullie!
     'Tyrants fall in every foe!
     Liberty's in every blow!'”
 

The axe-head was as immoveable as the Muir Pike.

     “'Let us do or die!'”
 

The shaft snapped, and the little man tottered back. Red Wull jumped down from the table, and, in doing so, brushed against the Cup. It toppled* over on to the floor, and rolled tinkling away in the dust. And the little man fled madly out of the house, still screaming his war-song.

     *N.B.—You may see the dent in the Cup's white sides to this
     day.

When, late that night, M'Adam returned home, the Cup was gone. Down on his hands and knees he traced out its path, plain to see, where it had rolled along the dusty floor. Beyond that there was no sign.

At first he was too much overcome to speak. Then he raved round the room like a derelict ship, Red Wull following uneasily behind. He cursed; he blasphemed; he screamed and beat the walls with feverish hands. A stranger, passing, might well have thought this was a private Bedlam. At last, exhausted, he sat down and cried.

“It's David, Wullie, ye may depend; David that's robbed his father's hoose. Oh, it's a grand thing to ha' a dutiful son!”—and he bowed his gray head in his hands.

David, indeed, it was. He had come back to the Grange during his father's absence, and, taking the Cup from its grimy bed, had marched it away to its rightful home. For that evening at Kenmuir, James Moore had said to him:

“David, your father's not sent the Cup. I shall come and fetch it to-morrow.” And David knew he meant it. Therefore, in order to save a collision between his father and his friend—a collision the issue of which he dared hardly contemplate, knowing, as he did, the unalterable determination of the one and the lunatic passion of the other—the boy had resolved to fetch the Cup himself, then and there, in the teeth, if needs be, of his father and the Tailless Tyke. And he had done it.

When he reached home that night he marched, contrary to his wont, straight into the kitchen.

There sat his father facing the door, awaiting him, his hands upon his knees. For once the little man was alone; and David, brave though he was, thanked heaven devoutly that Red Wull was elsewhere.

For a while father and son kept silence, watching one another like two fencers.

“'Twas you as took ma Cup?” asked the little man at last, leaning forward in his chair.

“'Twas me as took Mr. Moore's Cup,” the boy replied. “I thowt yo' mun ha' done wi' it—I found it all bashed upon the floor.”

“You took it—pit up to it, nae doot, by James Moore.”

David made a gesture of dissent.

“Ay, by James Moore,” his father continued. “He dursena come hissel' for his ill-gotten spoils, so he sent the son to rob the father. The coward!”—his whole frame shook with passion. “I'd ha' thocht James Moore'd ha' bin man enough to come himself for what he wanted. I see noo I did him a wrang—I misjudged him. I kent him a heepocrite; ain o' yer unco gudes; a man as looks one thing, says anither, and does a third; and noo I ken he's a coward. He's fear'd o' me, sic as I am, five foot twa in ma stockin's.” He rose from his chair and drew himself up to his full height.

“Mr. Moore had nowt to do wi' it,” David persisted.

“Ye're lyin'. James Moore pit ye to it.”

“I tell yo' he did not.”

“Ye'd ha' bin willin' enough wi'oot him, if ye'd thocht o't, I grant ye. But ye've no the wits. All there is o' ye has gane to mak' yer muckle body. Hooiver, that's no matter. I'll settle wi' James Moore anither time. I'll settle wi' you noo, David M'Adam.”

He paused, and looked the boy over from bead to foot.

“So, ye're not only an idler! a wastrel! a liar!”—he spat the words out. “Ye're—God help ye—a thief!”

“I'm no thief!” the boy returned hotly. “I did but give to a mon what ma feyther—shame on him!—wrongfully kept from him.”

“Wrangfully?” cried the little man, advancing with burning face.

“'Twas honorably done, keepin' what wasna your'n to keep! Holdin' back his rights from a man! Ay, if ony one's the thief, it's not me: it's you, I say, you!”—and he looked his father in the face with flashing eyes.

“I'm the thief, am I?” cried the other, incoherent with passion. “Though ye're three times ma size, I'll teach ma son to speak so to me.”

The old strap, now long disused, hung in the chimney corner. As he spoke the little man sprang back, ripped it from the wall, and, almost before David realized what he was at, had brought it down with a savage slash across his son's shoulders; and as he smote he whistled a shrill, imperative note:

“Wullie, Wullie, to me!”

David felt the blow through his coat like a bar of hot iron laid across his back. His passion seethed within him; every vein throbbed; every nerve quivered. In a minute he would wipe out, once and for all, the score of years; for the moment, however, there was urgent business on hand. For outside he could hear the quick patter of feet hard-galloping, and the scurry of a huge creature racing madly to a call.

With a bound he sprang at the open door; and again the strap came lashing down, and a wild voice:

“Quick, Wullie! For God's sake, quick!”

David slammed the door to. It shut with a rasping snap; and at the same moment a great body from without thundered against it with terrific violence, and a deep voice roared like the sea when thwarted of its prey.

“Too late, agin!” said David, breathing hard; and shot the bolt home with a clang. Then he turned on his father.

“Noo,” said he, “man to man!”

“Ay,” cried the other, “father to son!”

The little man half turned and leapt at the old musketoon hanging on the wall. He missed it, turned again, and struck with the strap full at the other's face. David caught the falling arm at the wrist, hitting it aside with such tremendous force that the bone all but snapped. Then he smote his father a terrible blow on the chest, and the little man staggered back, gasping, into the corner; while the strap dropped from his numbed fingers.

Outside Red Wull whined and scratched; but the two men paid no heed.

David strode forward; there was murder in his face. The little man saw it: his time was come; but his bitterest foe never impugned Adam M'Adam's courage.

He stood huddled in the corner, all dishevelled, nursing one arm with the other, entirely unafraid.

“Mind, David,” he said, quite calm, “murder 'twill be, not manslaughter.”

“Murder 'twill be,” the boy answered, in thick, low voice, and was across the room.

Outside Red Wull banged and clawed high up on the door with impotent pats.

The little man suddenly slipped his hand in his pocket, pulled out something, and flung it. The missile pattered on his son's face like a rain-drop on a charging bull, and David smiled as he came on. It dropped softly on the table at his side; he looked down and—it was the face of his mother which gazed up at him!

“Mither!” he sobbed, stopping short. “Mither! Ma God, ye saved him—and me!”

He stood there, utterly unhinged, shaking and whimpering.

It was some minutes before he pulled himself together; then he walked to the wall, took down a pair of shears, and seated himself at the table, still trembling. Near him lay the miniature, all torn and crumpled, and beside it the deep-buried axe-head.

He picked up the strap and began cutting it into little pieces.

“There! and there! and there!” he said with each snip. “An' ye hit me agin there may be no mither to save ye.”

M'Adam stood huddling in the corner. He shook like an aspen leaf; his eyes blazed in his white face; and he still nursed one arm with the other.

“Honor yer father,” he quoted in small, low voice.

TAMMAS is on his feet in the tap-room of the Arms, brandishing a pewter mug.

“Gen'lemen!” he cries, his old face flushed; “I gie you a toast. Stan' oop!”

The knot of Dalesmen round the fire rises like one. The old man waves his mug before him, reckless of the good ale that drips on to the floor.

“The best sheep-dog i' th' North—Owd Bob o' Kenmuir!” he cries. In an instant there is uproar: the merry applause of clinking pewters; the stamping of feet; the rattle of sticks. Rob Saunderson and old Jonas are cheering with the best; Tupper and Ned Hoppin are bellowing in one another's ears; Long Kirby and Jem Burton are thumping each other on the back; even Sam'l Todd and Sexton Ross are roused from their habitual melancholy.

“Here's to Th' Owd Un! Here's to oor Bob!” yell stentorian voices; while Rob Saunderson has jumped on to a chair.

“Wi' the best sheep-dog i' th' North I gie yo' the Shepherd's Trophy!—won outreet as will be!” he cries. Instantly the clamor redoubles.

“The Dale Cup and Th' Owd Un! The Trophy and oor Bob! 'Ip, 'ip, for the gray dogs! 'Ip, 'ip, for the best sheep-dog as ever was or will be! 'Ooray, 'ooray!”

It is some minutes before the noise subsides; and slowly the enthusiasts resume their seats with hoarse throats and red faces.

“Gentlemen a'!”

A little unconsidered man is standing up at the back of the room. His face is aflame, and his hands twitch spasmodically; and, in front, with hackles up and eyes gleaming, is a huge, bull-like dog.

“Noo,” cries the little man, “I daur ye to repeat that lie!”

“Lie!” screams Tammas; “lie! I'll gie 'im lie! Lemme at im', I say!”

The old man in his fury is half over the surrounding ring of chairs before Jim Mason on the one hand and Jonas Maddox on the other can pull him back.

“Coom, Mr. Thornton,” soothes the octogenarian, “let un be. Yo' surely bain't angered by the likes o' 'im!”—and he jerks contemptuously toward the solitary figure at his back.

Tammas resumes his seat unwillingly.

The little man in the far corner of the room remains silent, waiting for his challenge to be taken up. It is in vain. And as he looks at the range of broad, impassive backs turned on him, he smiles bitterly.

“They dursen't Wullie, not a man of them a'!” he cries. “They're one—two—three—four—eleven to one, Wullie, and yet they dursen't. Eleven of them, and every man a coward! Long Kirby—Thornton—Tupper—Todd—Hoppin—Ross—Burton—and the rest, and not one but's a bigger man nor me, and yet—Weel, we might ha' kent it. We should ha' kent Englishmen by noo. They're aye the same and aye have bin. They tell lies, black lies—”

Tammas is again half out his chair and, only forcibly restrained by the men on either hand.

“—and then they ha' na the courage to stan' by 'em. Ye're English, ivery man o' ye, to yer marrow.”

The little man's voice rises as he speaks. He seizes the tankard from the table at his side.

“Englishmen!” he cries, waving it before him. “Here's a health! The best sheep-dog as iver penned a flock—Adam M'Adam's Red Wull!”

He pauses, the pewter at his lips, and looks at his audience with flashing eyes. There is no response from them.

“Wullie, here's to you!” he cries. “Luck and life to ye, ma trusty fier! Death and defeat to yer enemies!”

     “'The warld's warld's wrack we share o't,
     The warstle and the care o't;”
 

He raises the tankard and drains it to its uttermost dreg.

Then drawing himself up, he addresses his audience once more:

“An' noo I'll warn ye aince and for a', and ye may tell James Moore I said it: He may plot agin us, Wullie and me; he may threaten us; he may win the Cup outright for his muckle favorite; but there was niver a man or dog yet as did Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull a hurt but in the end he wush't his mither hadna borne him.”

A little later, and he walks out of the inn, the Tailless Tyke at his heels.

After he is gone it is Rob Saunderson who says: “The little mon's mad; he'll stop at nothin”; and Tammas who answers:

“Nay; not even murder.”

The little man had aged much of late. His hair was quite white, his eyes unnaturally bright, and his hands were never still, as though he were in everlasting pain. He looked the picture of disease.

After Owd Bob's second victory he had become morose and untalkative. At home he often sat silent for hours together, drinking and glaring at the place where the Cup had been. Sometimes he talked in low, eerie voice to Red Wull; and on two occasions, David, turning, suddenly, had caught his father glowering stealthily at him with such an expression on his face as chilled the boy's blood. The two never spoke now; and David held this silent, deadly enmity far worse than the old-time perpetual warfare.

It was the same at the Sylvester Arms. The little man sat alone with Red Wull, exchanging words with no man, drinking steadily, brooding over his wrongs, only now and again galvanized into sudden action.

Other people than Tammas Thornton came to the conclusion that M'Adam would stop at nothing in the undoing of James Moore or the gray dog. They said drink and disappointment had turned his head; that he was mad and dangerous. And on New Year's day matters seemed coming to a crisis; for it was reported that in the gloom of a snowy evening he had drawn a knife on the Master in the High Street, but slipped before he could accomplish his fell purpose.

Most of them all, David was haunted with an ever-present anxiety as to the little man's intentions. The boy even went so far as to warn his friend against his father. But the Master only smiled grimly.

“Thank ye, lad,” he said. “But I reck'n we can 'fend for oorsel's, Bob and I. Eh, Owd Un?”

Anxious as David might be, he was not so anxious as to be above taking a mean advantage of this state of strained apprehension to work on Maggie's fears.

One evening he was escorting her home from church, when, just before they reached the larch copse: “Goo' sakes! What's that?” he ejaculated in horror-laden accents, starting back.

“What, Davie?” cried the girl, shrinking up to him all in a tremble.

“Couldna say for sure. It mought be owt, or agin it mought be nowt. But yo' grip my arm, I'll grip yo' waist.”

Maggie demurred.

“Canst see onythin'?” she asked, still in a flutter.

“Be'ind the 'edge.”

“Wheer?”

“Theer! “—pointing vaguely.

“I canna see nowt.”

“Why, theer, lass. Can yo' not see? Then yo' pit your head along o' mine—so—closer—closer.” Then, in aggrieved tones: “Whativer is the matter wi' yo', wench? I might be a leprosy.”

But the girl was walking away with her head high as the snow-capped Pike.

“So long as I live, David M'Adam,” she cried, “I'll niver go to church wi' you agin!”

“Iss, but you will though—onst,” he answered low.

Maggie whisked round in a flash, superbly indignant.

“What d'yo' mean, sir-r-r?”

“Yo' know what I mean, lass,” he replied sheepish and shuffling before her queenly anger.

She looked him up and down, and down and up again.

“I'll niver speak to you agin, Mr. M'Adam,” she cried; “not if it was ever so—Nay, I'll walk home by myself, thank you. I'll ha' nowt to do wi' you.”

So the two must return to Kenmuir, one behind the other, like a lady and her footman.

David's audacity had more than once already all but caused a rupture between the pair. And the occurrence behind the hedge set the cap on his impertinences. That was past enduring and Maggie by her bearing let him know it.

David tolerated the girl's new attitude for exactly twelve minutes by the kitchen clock. Then: “Sulk wi' me, indeed! I'll teach her!” and he marched out of the door, “Niver to cross it agin, ma word!”

Afterward, however, he relented so far as to continue his visits as before; but he made it clear that he only came to see the Master and hear of Owd Bob's doings. On these occasions he loved best to sit on the window-sill outside the kitchen, and talk and chaff with Tammas and the men in the yard, feigning an uneasy bashfulness when reference made to Bessie Bolstock. And after sitting thus for some time, he would half turn, look over his shoulder, and remark in indifferent tones to the girl within: “Oh, good-evenin'! I forgot yo', “—and then resume his conversation. While the girl within, her face a little pinker, her lips a little tighter, and her chin a little higher, would go about her business, pretending neither to hear nor care.

The suspicions that M'Adam nourished dark designs against James Moore were somewhat confirmed in that, on several occasions in the bitter dusks of January afternoons, a little insidious figure was reported to have been seen lurking among the farm-buildings of Kenmuir.

Once Sam'l Todd caught the little man fairly, skulking away in the woodshed. Sam'l took him up bodily and carried him down the slope to the Wastrel, shaking him gently as he went.

Across the stream he put him on his feet.

“If I catches yo' cadgerin' aroun' the farm agin, little mon,” he admonished, holding up a warning finger; “I'll tak' yo' and drap yo' in t' Sheep-wash, I warn yo' fair. I'd ha' done it noo an' yo'd bin a bigger and a younger mon. But theer! yo'm sic a scrappety bit. Noo, rin whoam.” And the little man slunk silently away.

For a time he appeared there no more. Then, one evening when it was almost dark, James Moore, going the round of the outbuildings, felt Owd Bob stiffen against his side.

“What's oop, lad” he whispered, halting; and, dropping his hand on the old dog's neck felt a ruff of rising hair beneath it.

“Steady, lad, steady,” he whispered; “what is 't?” He peered forward into the gloom; and at length discerned a little familiar figure huddled away in the crevice between two stacks.

“It's yo, is it, M'Adam?” he said, and, bending, seized a wisp of Owd Bob's coat in a grip like a vice.

Then, in a great voice, moved to rare anger:

“Oot o' this afore I do ye a hurt, ye meeserable spyin' creetur” he roared. “Yo' mun wait till dark cooms to hide yo', yo' coward, afore yo daur coom crawlin' aboot ma hoose, frightenin' the women-folk and up to yer devilments. If yo've owt to say to me, coom like a mon in the open day. Noo git aff wi' yo', afore I lay hands to yo'!”

He stood there in the dusk, tall and mighty, a terrible figure, one hand pointing to the gate, the other still grasping the gray dog.

The little man scuttled away in the half-light, and out of the yard.

On the plank-bridge he turned and shook his fist at the darkening house.

“Curse ye, James Moore!” he sobbed, “I'll be even wi' ye yet.”

ON the top of this there followed an attempt to poison Th' Owd Un. At least there was no other accounting for the affair.

In the dead of a long-remembered night James Moore was waked by a low moaning beneath his room. He leapt out of bed and ran to the window to see his favorite dragging about the moonlit yard, the dark head down, the proud tail for once lowered, the lithe limbs wooden, heavy, unnatural—altogether pitiful.

In a moment he was downstairs and out to his friend's assistance. “Whativer is't, Owd Un?” he cried in anguish.

At the sound of that dear voice the old dog tried to struggle to him, could not, and fell, whimpering.

In a second the Master was with him, examining him tenderly, and crying for Sam'l, who slept above the stables.

There was every symptom of foul play: the tongue was swollen and almost black; the breathing labored; the body twitched horribly; and the soft gray eyes all bloodshot and straining in agony.

With the aid of Sam'l and Maggie, drenching first and stimulants after, the Master pulled him around for the moment. And soon Jim Mason and Parson Leggy, hurriedly summoned, came running hot-foot to the rescue.

Prompt and stringent measures saved the victim—but only just. For a time the best sheep-dog in the North was pawing at the Gate of Death. In the end, as the gray dawn broke, the danger passed.

The attempt to get at him, if attempt it was, aroused passionate indignation in the countryside. It seemed the culminating-point of the excitement long bubbling.

There were no traces of the culprit; not a vestige to lead to incrimination, so cunningly had the criminal accomplished his foul task. But as to the perpetrator, if there where no proofs there were yet fewer doubts.

At the Sylvester Arms, Long Kirby asked M'Adam point-blank for his explanation of the matter.

“Hoo do I 'count for it?” the little man cried. “I dinna 'count for it ava.”

“Then hoo did it happen?” asked Tammas with asperity.

“I dinna believe it did happen,” the little man replied. “It's a lee o' James Moore's—a characteristic lee.” Whereon they chucked him out incontinently; for the Terror for once was elsewhere.

Now that afternoon is to be remembered for threefold causes. Firstly, because, as has been said, M'Adam was alone. Secondly, because, a few minutes after his ejectment, the window of the tap-room was thrown open from without, and the little man looked in. He spoke no word, but those dim, smouldering eyes of his wandered from face to face, resting for a second on each, as if to burn them on his memory. “I'll remember ye, gentlemen,” he said at length quietly, shut the window, and was gone.

Thirdly, for a reason now to be told.

Though ten days had elapsed since the attempt on him, the gray dog had never been his old self since. He had attacks of shivering; his vitality seemed sapped; he tired easily, and, great heart, would never own it. At length on this day, James Moore, leaving the old dog behind him, had gone over to Grammoch-town to consult Dingley, the vet. On his way home he met Jim Mason with Gyp, the faithful Betsy's unworthy successor, at the Dalesman's Daughter. Together they started for the long tramp home over the Marches. And that journey is marked with a red stone in this story.

All day long the hills had been bathed in impenetrable fog. Throughout there had been an accompanying drizzle; and in the distance the wind had moaned a storm-menace. To the darkness of the day was added the sombreness of falling night as the three began the ascent of the Murk Muir Pass. By the time they emerged into the Devil's Bowl it was altogether black and blind. But the threat of wind had passed, leaving utter stillness; and they could hear the splash of an otter on the far side of the Lone Tarn as they skirted that gloomy water's edge. When at length the last steep rise on to the Marches had been topped, a breath of soft air smote them lightly, and the curtain of fog began drifting away.

The two men swung steadily through the heather with that reaching stride the birthright of moor-men and highlanders. They talked but little, for such was their nature: a word or two on sheep and the approaching lambing-time; thence on to the coming Trials; the Shepherds' Trophy; Owd Bob and the attempt on him; and from that to M'Adam and the Tailless Tyke.

“D'yo' reck'n M'Adam had a hand in't?” the postman was asking.

“Nay; there's no proof.”

“Ceptin' he's mad to get shut o' Th' Owd Un afore Cup Day.”

“Im or me—it mak's no differ. For a dog is disqualified from competing for the Trophy who has changed hands during the six months prior to the meeting. And this holds good though the change be only from father to son on the decease of the former.”

Jim looked up inquiringly at his companion.

“D'yo' think it'll coom to that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Why—murder.”

“Not if I can help it,” the other answered grimly.

The fog had cleared away by now, and the moon was up. To their right, on the crest of a rise some two hundred yards away, a low wood stood out black against the sky. As they passed it, a blackbird rose up screaming, and a brace of wood-pigeons winged noisily away.

“Hullo! hark to the yammerin'!” muttered Jim, stopping; “and at this time o' night too!”

Some rabbits, playing in the moonlight on the outskirts of the wood, sat up, listened, and hopped back into security. At the same moment a big hill-fox slunk out of the covert. He stole a pace forward and halted, listening with one ear back and one pad raised; then cantered silently away in the gloom, passing close to the two men and yet not observing them.

“What's up, I wonder?” mused the postman.

“The fox set 'em clackerin', I reck'n,” said the Master.

“Not he; he was scared 'maist oot o' his skin,” the other answered. Then in tones of suppressed excitement, with his hands on James Moore's arm: “And, look'ee, theer's ma Gyp a-beckonin' on us!”

There, indeed, on the crest of the rise beside the wood, was the little lurcher, now looking back at his master, now creeping stealthily forward.

“Ma word! theer's summat wrong yonder!” cried Jim, and jerked the post-bags off his shoulder. “Coom on, Master! “—and he set off running toward the dog; while James Moore, himself excited now, followed with an agility that belied his years.

Some score yards from the lower edge of the spinney, upon the farther side of the ridge, a tiny beck babbled through its bed of peat. The two men, as they topped the rise, noticed a flock of black-faced mountain-sheep clustered in the dip 'twixt wood and stream. They stood martialled in close array, facing half toward the wood, half toward the newcomers, heads up, eyes glaring, handsome as sheep only look when scared.

On the crest of the ridge the two men halted beside Gyp. The postman stood with his head a little forward, listening intently. Then he dropped in the heather like a dead man, pulling the other with him.

“Doon, mon!” he whispered, clutching at Gyp with his spare hand.

“What is't, Jim?” asked the Master, now thoroughly roused.

“Summat movin' i' th' wood,” the other whispered, listening weasel-eared.

So they lay motionless for a while; but there came no sound from the copse.

“'Appen 'twas nowt,” the postman at length allowed, peering cautiously about. “And yet I thowt—I dunno reetly what I thowt.”

Then, starting to his knees with a hoarse cry of terror: “Save us! what's yon theer?”

Then for the first time the Master raised his head and noticed, lying in the gloom between them and the array of sheep, a still, white heap.

James Moore was a man of deeds, not words.

“It's past waitin'!” he said, and sprang forward, his heart in his mouth.

The sheep stamped and shuffled as he came, and yet did not break.

“Ah, thanks be!” he cried, dropping beside the motionless body; “it's nob'but a sheep.” As he spoke his hands wandered deftly over the carcase. “But what's this?” he called. “Stout* she was as me. Look at her fleece—crisp, close, strong; feel the flesh—firm as a rock. And ne'er a bone broke, ne're a scrat on her body a pin could mak'. As healthy as a mon—and yet dead as mutton!”

     *N.B. Stout—Hearty.

Jim, still trembling from the horror of his fear, came up, and knelt beside his friend. “Ah, but there's bin devilry in this!” he said; “I reck'ned they sheep had bin badly skeared, and not so long agone.”

“Sheep-murder, sure enough!” the other answered. “No fox's doin'—a girt-grown two-shear as could 'maist knock a h'ox.”

Jim's hands travelled from the body to the dead creature's throat. He screamed.

“By gob, Master! look 'ee theer!” He held his hand up in the moonlight, and it dripped red. “And warm yet! warm!”

“Tear some bracken, Jim!” ordered the other, “and set alight. We mun see to this.”

The postman did as bid. For a moment the fern smouldered and smoked, then the flame ran crackling along and shot up in the darkness, weirdly lighting the scene: to the right the low wood, a block of solid blackness against the sky; in front the wall of sheep, staring out of the gloom with bright eyes; and as centre-piece that still, white body, with the kneeling men and lurcher sniffing tentatively round.

The victim was subjected to a critical examination. The throat, and that only, had been hideously mauled; from the raw wounds the flesh hung in horrid shreds; on the ground all about were little pitiful dabs of wool, wrenched off apparently in a struggle; and, crawling among the fern-roots, a snake-like track of red led down to the stream.

“A dog's doin', and no mistakin' thot,” said Jim at length, after a minute inspection.

“Ay,” declared the Master with slow emphasis, “and a sheep-dog's too, and an old un's, or I'm no shepherd.”

The postman looked up.

“Why thot?” he asked, puzzled.

“Becos,” the Master answered, “'im as did this killed for blood—and for blood only. If had bin ony other dog—greyhound, bull, tarrier, or even a young sheep-dog—d'yo' think he'd ha' stopped wi' the one? Not he; he'd ha' gone through 'em, and be runnin' 'em as like as not yet, nippin' 'em, pullin' 'em down, till he'd maybe killed the half. But 'im as did this killed for blood, I say. He got it—killed just the one, and nary touched the others, d'yo 'see, Jim?”

The postman whistled, long and low.

“It's just what owd Wrottesley'd tell on,” he said. “I never nob'but half believed him then—I do now though. D'yo' mind what th' owd lad'd tell, Master?”

James Moore nodded.

“Thot's it. I've never seen the like afore myself, but I've heard ma grandad speak o't mony's the time. An owd dog'll git the cravin' for sheep's blood on him, just the same as a mon does for the drink; he creeps oot o' nights, gallops afar, hunts his sheep, downs 'er, and satisfies the cravin'. And he nary kills but the one, they say, for he knows the value o' sheep same as you and me. He has his gallop, quenches the thirst, and then he's for home, maybe a score mile away, and no one the wiser i' th' mornin'. And so on, till he cooms to a bloody death, the murderin' traitor.”

“If he does!” said Jim.

“And he does, they say, nigh always. For he gets bolder and bolder wi' not bein' caught, until one fine night a bullet lets light into him. And some mon gets knocked nigh endways when they bring his best tyke home i' th' mornin', dead, wi' the sheep's wool yet stickin' in his mouth.”

The postman whistled again.

“It's what owd Wrottesley'd tell on to a tick. And he'd say, if ye mind, Master, as hoo the dog'd niver kill his master's sheep—kind o' conscience-like.”

“Ay, I've heard that,” said the Master. “Queer too, and 'im bein' such a bad un!”

Jim Mason rose slowly from his knees.

“Ma word,” he said, “I wish Th' Owd Un was here. He'd 'appen show us summat!”

“I nob'but wish he was, pore owd lad!” said the Master.

As he spoke there was a crash in the wood above them; a sound as of some big body bursting furiously through brushwood.

The two men rushed to the top of the rise. In the darkness they could see nothing; only, standing still and holding their breaths, they could hear the faint sound, ever growing fainter, of some creature splashing in a hasty gallop over the wet moors.

“Yon's him! Yon's no fox, I'll tak' oath. And a main big un, too, hark to him!” cried Jim. Then to Gyp, who had rushed off in hot pursuit: “Coom back, chunk-'ead. What's use o' you agin a gallopin' potamus?”

Gradually the sounds died away and away, and were no more.

“Thot's 'im, the devil!” said the Master at length.

“Nay; the devil has a tail, they do say,” replied Jim thoughtfully. For already the light of suspicion was focusing its red glare.

“Noo I reck'n we're in for bloody times amang the sheep for a while,” said the Master, as Jim picked up his bags.

“Better a sheep nor a mon,” answered the postman, still harping on the old theme.

THAT, as James Moore had predicted, was the first only of a long succession of such solitary crimes.

Those who have not lived in a desolate country like that about the Muir Pike, where sheep are paramount and every other man engaged in the profession pastoral, can barely imagine the sensation aroused. In market place, tavern, or cottage, the subject of conversation was always the latest sheep-murder and the yet-undetected criminal.

Sometimes there would be a lull, and the shepherds would begin to breathe more freely. Then there would come a stormy night, when the heavens were veiled in the cloak of crime, and the wind moaned fitfully over meres and marches, and another victim would be added to the lengthening list.

It was always such black nights, nights of wind and weather, when no man would be abroad, that the murderer chose for his bloody work; and that was how he became known from the Red Screes to the Muir Pike as the Black Killer. In the Daleland they still call a wild, wet night “A Black Killer's night:” for they say: “His ghaist'll be oot the night.”

There was hardly a farm in the countryside but was marked with the seal of blood. Kenmuir escaped, and the Grange; Rob Saunderson at the Holt, and Tupper at Swinsthwaite; and they were about the only lucky ones.

As for Kenmuir, Tammas declared with a certain grim pride: “He knows better'n to coom wheer Th' Owd Un be.” Whereat M'Adam was taken with a fit of internal spasms, rubbing his knees and cackling insanely for a half-hour afterward. And as for the luck of the Grange—well, there was a reason for that too, so the Dalesmen said.

Though the area of crime stretched from the Black Water to Grammoch-town, twenty-odd miles, there was never a sign of the perpetrator. The Killer did his bloody work with a thoroughness and a devilish cunning that defied detection.

It was plain that each murder might be set down to the same agency. Each was stamped with the same unmistakable sign-manual: one sheep killed, its throat torn into red ribands, and the others untouched.

It was at the instigation of Parson Leggy that the squire imported a bloodhound to track the Killer to his doom. Set on at a fresh killed carcase at the One Tree Knowe, he carried the line a distance in the direction of the Muir Pike; then was thrown out by a little bustling beck, and never acknowledged the scent again. Afterward he became unmanageable, and could be no further utilized. Then there was talk of inducing Tommy Dobson and his pack to come over from Eskdale, but that came to nothing. The Master of the Border Hunt lent a couple of foxhounds, who effected nothing; and there were a hundred other attempts and as many failures. Jim Mason set a cunning trap or two and caught his own bob-tailed tortoise-shell and a terrible wigging from his missus; Ned Hoppin sat up with a gun two nights over a new slain victim and Londesley of the Home Farm poisoned a carcase. But the Killer never returned to the kill, and went about in the midst of the all, carrying on his infamous traffic and laughing up his sleeve.

In the meanwhile the Dalesmen raged and swore vengeance; their impotence, their unsuccess, and their losses heating their wrath to madness. And the bitterest sting of it all lay in this; that though they could not detect him, they were nigh to positive as to the culprit.

Many a time was the Black Killer named in low-voiced conclave; many a time did Long Kirby, as he stood in the Border Ram and watched M'Adam and the Terror walking down the High, nudge Jim Mason and whisper:

“Theer's the Killer—oneasy be his grave!” To which practical Jim always made the same retort:

“Ay, theer's the Killer; but wheer's the proof?”

And therein lay the crux. There was scarcely a man in the countryside who doubted the guilt of the Tailless Tyke; but, as Jim said, where was the proof? They could but point to his well-won nickname; his evil notoriety; say that, magnificent sheep-dog as he was, he was known even in his work as a rough handler of stock; and lastly remark significantly that the grange was one of the few farms that had so far escaped unscathed. For with the belief that the Black Killer was a sheep-dog they held it as an article of faith that he would in honour spare his master's flock.

There may, indeed, have been prejudice in their judgement. For each has his private grudge against the Terror; and nigh every man bore on his own person, or his clothes, or on the body of his dog, the mark of that huge savage.

Proof?

“Why, he near killed ma Lassie!” cries Londesley.

“And he did kill the Wexer!”

“And Wan Tromp!”

“And see pore old Wenus!” says John Swan, and pulls out that fair Amazon, battered almost past recognition, but a warrioress still.

“That's Red Wull—bloody be his end!”

“And he laid ma Rasper by for nigh three weeks!” continues Tupper, pointing to the yet-unhealed scars on the neck of the big bobtail. “See thisey—his work.”

“And look here!” cries Saunderson, exposing a ragged wound in Shep's throat; “thot's the Terror—black be his fa'!”

“Ay,” says Long Kirby with an oath; “the tykes love him nigh as much as we do.”

“Yes,” says Tammas. “Yo' jest watch!”

The old man slips out of the tap-room; and in another moment from the road without comes a heavy, regular pat-pat-pat, as of some big creature approaching, and, blending with the sound, little shuffling footsteps.

In an instant every dog in the room has risen to his feet and stands staring at the door with sullen, glowing eyes; lips wrinkling, bristles rising, throats rumbling.

An unsteady hand fumbles at the door; a reedy voice calls, “Wullie, come here!” and the dogs move away, surly to either side of the fireplace, tails down, ears back, grumbling still; the picture of cowed passion. Then the door opens; Tammas enters, grinning; and each, after a moment's scrutiny, resumes his former position before the fire.

Meanwhile over M'Adam, seemingly all unsuspicious of these suspicions, a change had come. Whether it was that for the time he heard less of the best sheep-dog in the North, or for some more occult reason, certain it is that he became his old self. His tongue wagged as gayly and bitterly as ever, and hardly a night passed but he infuriated Tammas almost to blows with his innuendoes and insidious sarcasms.

Old Jonas Maddox, one evening at the Sylvester Arms, inquired of him what his notion was as to the identity of the Killer.

“I hae ma suspicions, Mr. Maddox; I hae ma suspicions,” the little man replied, cunningly wagging his head and giggling. But more than that they could not elicit from him. A week later, however, to the question:

“And what are yo' thinkin' o' this black Killer, Mr. M'adam?”

“Why black?” the little man asked earnestly; “why black mair than white—or gray we'll say?” Luckily for him, however, the Dalesmen are slow of wit as of speech.

David, too, marked the difference in his father, who nagged at him now and then with all the old spirit. At first he rejoiced in then change, preferring his outward and open warfare to that aforetime stealthy enmity. But soon he almost wished the other back; for the older he grew the more difficult did he find it to endure calmly these everlasting bickerings.

For one reason he was truly glad of the altered condition of affairs; he believed that, for the nonce, at least his father had abandoned any ill designs he might have cherished against James Moore; those sneaking visits to Kenmuir were, he hoped, discontinued.

Yet Maggie Moore, had she been on speaking terms with him, could have undeceived him. For, one night, when alone in the kitchen, on suddenly looking up, she had seen to her horror a dim, moonlike face glued against the windowpane. In the first mad panic of the moment she almost screamed, and dropped her work; then—a true Moore—controlled herself and sat feigning to work, yet watching all the while.

It was M'Adam, she recognized that: the face pale in its framework of black; the hair lying dank and dark on his forehead; and the white eyelids blinking, slow, regular, horrible. She thought of the stories she had heard of his sworn vengeance on her father, and her heart stood still, though she never moved. At length with a gasp of relief she discerned that the eyes were not directed on her. Stealthily following their gaze, she saw they rested on the Shepherds' Trophy; and on the Cup they remained fixed, immovable, while she sat motionless and watched.

An hour, it seemed to her, elapsed before they shifted their direction, and wandered round the room. For a second they dwelt upon her; then the face withdrew into the night.

Maggie told no one what she had seen. Knowing well how terrible her father was in his anger, she deemed it wiser to keep silence. While as for David M'Adam, she would never speak to him again!

And not for a moment did that young man surmise whence his father came when, on the night in question, M'Adam returned to the Grange, chuckling to himself. David was growing of late accustomed to these fits of silent, unprovoked merriment; and when his father began giggling and muttering to Red Wull, at first he paid no heed.

“He! he! Wullie. Aiblins we'll beat him yet. There's many a slip twixt Cup and lip—eh, Wullie, he! he!” And he made allusion to the flourishing of the wicked and their fall; ending always with the same refrain: “He! he! Wullie. Aiblins we'll beat him yet.”

In this strain he continued until David, his patience exhausted, asked roughly:

“What is't yo' mumblin' aboot? Wha is it yo'll beat, you and yer Wullie?”

The lad's tone was as contemptuous as his words. Long ago he had cast aside any semblance of respect for his father.

M'Adam only rubbed his knees and giggled.

“Hark to the dear lad, Wullie! Listen hoo pleasantly he addresses his auld dad!” Then turning on his son, and leering at him: “What is it, ye ask? Wha should it be but the Black Killer? Wha else is there I'd be wushin' to hurt?”

“The Black Killer!” echoed the boy, and looked at his father in amazement.

Now David was almost the only man in Wastrel-dale who denied Red Wull's identity with the Killer. “Nay,” he said once; “he'd kill me, given half a chance, but a sheep—no.” Yet, though himself of this opinion, he knew well what the talk was, and was astonished accordingly at his father's remark.

“The Black Killer, is it? What d'you know o' the Killer?” he inquired.

“Why black, I wad ken? Why black?” the little man asked, leaning forward in his chair.

Now David, though repudiating in the village Red Wull's complicity with the crimes, at home was never so happy as when casting cunning innuendoes to that effect.

“What would you have him then?” he asked. “Red, yaller, muck-dirt colour?”—and he stared significantly at the Tailless Tyke, who was lying at his master's feet. The little man ceased rubbing his knees and eyed the boy. David shifted uneasily beneath that dim, persistent stare.

“Well?” he said at length gruffly.

The little man giggled, and his two thin hands took up their task again.

“Aiblins his puir auld doited fool of a dad kens mair than the dear lad thinks for, ay, or wushes—eh, Wullie, he! he!”

“Then what is it you do know, or think yo' know?” David asked irritably.

The little man nodded and chuckled.

“Naethin' ava, laddie, naethin' worth the mention. Only aiblins the Killer'll be caught afore sae lang.”

David smiled incredulously, wagging his head in offensive scepticism.

“Yo'll catch him yo'self, I s'pose, you and yer Wullie? Tak' a chair on to the Marches, whistle a while, and when the Killer comes, why! pit a pinch o' salt upon his tail—if he had one.”

At the last words, heavily punctuated by the speaker, the little man stopped his rubbing as though shot.

“What wad ye mean by that?” he asked softly.

“What wad I?” the boy replied.

“I dinna ken for sure,” the little man answered; “and it's aiblins just as well for you, dear lad”—in fawning accents—“that I dinna.” He began rubbing and giggling afresh. “It's a gran' thing, Wullie, to ha' a dutiful son; a shairp lad wha has no silly sens o' shame aboot sharpenin' his wits at his auld dad's expense. And yet, despite oor facetious lad there, aiblins we will ha' a hand in the Killer's catchin', you and I, Wullie—he! he!” And the great dog at his feet wagged his stump tail in reply.

David rose from his chair and walked across the room to where his father sat.

“If yo' know sic a mighty heap,” he shouted, “happen you'll just tell me what yo' do know!”

M'Adam stopped stroking Red Wull's massive head, and looked up.

“Tell ye? Ay, wha should I tell if not ma dear David? Tell? Ay, I'll tell ye this”—with a sudden snarl of bitterness—“That you'd be the vairy last person I wad tell.”

DAVID and Maggie, meanwhile, were drifting further and further apart. He now thought the girl took too much upon herself; that this assumption of the woman and the mother was overdone. Once, on a Sunday, he caught her hearing Andrew his catechism. He watched the performance through a crack in the door, and listened, giggling, to her simple teaching. At length his merriment grew so boisterous that she looked up, saw him, and, straightway rising to her feet, crossed the room and shut the door; tendering her unspoken rebuke with such a sweet dignity that he slunk away for once decently ashamed. And the incident served to add point to his hostility.

Consequently he was seldom at Kenmuir, and more often at home, quarrelling with his father.

Since that day, two years before, when the boy had been an instrument in the taking of the Cup from him, father and son had been like two vessels charged with electricity, contact between which might result at any moment in a shock and a flash. This was the outcome not of a moment, but of years.

Of late the contest had raged markedly fierce; for M'Adam noticed his son's more frequent presence at home, and commented on the fact in his usual spirit of playful raillery.

“What's come to ye, David?” he asked one day. “Yer auld dad's head is nigh turned wi' yer condescension. Is James Moore feared ye'll steal the Cup fra him, as ye stole it from me, that he'll not ha' ye at Kenmuir? or what is it?”

“I thought I could maybe keep an eye on the Killer gin I stayed here,” David answered, leering at Red Wull.

“Ye'd do better at Kenmuir—eh, Wullie!” the little man replied.

“Nay,” the other answered, “he'll not go to Kenmuir. There's Th' Owd Un to see to him there o' nights.”

The little man whipped round.

“Are ye so sure he is there o' nights, ma lad?” he asked with slow significance.

“He was there when some one—I dinna say who, though I have ma thoughts—tried to poison him,” sneered the boy, mimicking his father's manner.

M'Adam shook his head.

“If he was poisoned, and noo I think aiblins he was, he didna pick it up at Kenmuir, I tell ye that,” he said, and marched out of the room.

In the mean time the Black Killer pursued his bloody trade unchecked. The public, always greedy of a new sensation, took up the matter. In several of the great dailies, articles on the “Agrarian Outrages” appeared, followed by lengthy correspondence. Controversy raged high; each correspondent had his own theory and his own solution of the problem; and each waxed indignant as his were discarded for another's.

The Terror had reigned already two months when, with the advent of the lambing-time, matters took a yet more serious aspect.

It was bad enough to lose one sheep, often the finest in the pack; but the hunting of a flock at a critical moment, which was incidental to the slaughter of the one, the scaring of these woolly mothers-about-to-be almost out of their fleeces, spelt for the small farmers something akin to ruin, for the bigger ones a loss hardly bearable.

Such a woful season had never been known; loud were the curses, deep the vows of revenge. Many a shepherd at that time patrolled all night through with his dogs, only to find in the morning that the Killer had slipped him and havocked in some secluded portion of his beat.

It was heartrending work; and all the more so in that, though his incrimination seemed as far off as ever, there was still the same positiveness as to the culprit's identity.

Long Kirby, indeed, greatly daring, went so far on one occasion as to say to the little man: “And d'yo' reck'n the Killer is a sheep-dog, M'Adam?”

“I do,” the little man replied with conviction.

“And that he'll spare his own sheep?”

“Niver a doubt of it.”

“Then,” said the smith with a nervous cackle, “it must lie between you and Tupper and Saunderson.”

The little man leant forward and tapped the other on the arm.

“Or Kenmuir, ma friend,” he said. “Ye've forgot Kenmuir.”

“So I have,” laughed the smith, “so I have.”

“Then I'd not anither time,” the other continued, still tapping. “I'd mind Kenmuir, d'ye see, Kirby?”

It was about the middle of the lambing-time, when the Killer was working his worst, that the Dalesmen had a lurid glimpse of Adam M'Adam as he might be were he wounded through his Wullie.

Thus it came about: It was market-day in Grammoch-town, and in the Border Ram old Rob Saunderson was the centre of interest. For on the previous night Rob, who till then had escaped unscathed, had lost a sheep to the Killer: and—far worse—his flock of Herdwicks, heavy in lamb, had been galloped with disastrous consequences.

The old man, with tears in his eyes, was telling how on four nights that week he had been up with Shep to guard against mishap; and on the fifth, worn out with his double labor, had fallen asleep at his post. But a very little while he slumbered; yet when, in the dawn, he woke and hurried on his rounds, he quickly came upon a mangled sheep and the pitiful relic of his flock. A relic, indeed! For all about were cold wee lambkins and their mothers, dead and dying of exhaustion and their unripe travail—a slaughter of the innocents.

The Dalesmen were clustered round the old shepherd, listening with lowering countenances, when a dark gray head peered in at the door and two wistful eyes dwelt for a moment on the speaker.

“Talk o' the devil!” muttered M'Adam, but no man heard him. For Red Wull, too, had seen that sad face, and, rising from his master's feet, had leapt with a roar at his enemy, toppling Jim Mason like a ninepin in the fury of his charge.

In a second every dog in the room, from the battered Venus to Tupper's big Rasper, was on his feet, bristling to have at the tyrant and wipe out past injuries, if the gray dog would but lead the dance.

It was not to be, however. For Long Kirby was standing at the door with a cup of hot coffee in his hand. Barely had he greeted the gray dog with—

“Ullo, Owd Un!” when hoarse yells of “'Ware, lad! The Terror!” mingled with Red Wull's roar.

Half turning, he saw the great dog bounding to the attack. Straightway he flung the boiling contents of his cup full in that rage-wracked countenance. The burning liquid swished against the huge bull-head. Blinding, bubbling, scalding, it did its fell work well; nothing escaped that merciless torrent. With a cry of agony, half bellow, half howl, Red Wull checked in his charge. From without the door was banged to; and again the duel was postponed. While within the tap-room a huddle of men and dogs were left alone with a mad man and a madder brute.

Blind, demented, agonized, the Tailless Tyke thundered about the little room gnashing, snapping, oversetting; men, tables, chairs swirled off their legs as though they had been dolls. He spun round like a monstrous teetotum; he banged his tortured head against the wall; he burrowed into the unyielding floor. And all the while M'Adam pattered after him, laying hands upon him only to be flung aside as a terrier flings a rat. Now up, now down again, now tossed into a corner, now dragged upon the floor, yet always following on and crying in supplicating tones, “Wullie, Wullie, let me to ye! let yer man ease ye!” and then, with a scream and a murderous glance, “By ——, Kirby, I'll deal wi' you later!”

The uproar was like hell let loose. You could hear the noise of oaths and blows, as the men fought for the door, a half-mile away. And above it the horrid bellowing and the screaming of that shrill voice.

Long Kirby was the first man out of that murder-hole; and after him the others toppled one by one—men and dogs jostling one another in the frenzy of their fear. Big Bell, Londesley, Tupper, Hoppin, Teddy Bolstock, white-faced and trembling; and old Saunderson they pulled out by his heels. Then the door was shut with a clang, and the little man and mad dog were left alone.

In the street was already a big-eyed crowd, attracted by the uproar; while at the door was James Moore, seeking entrance. “Happen I could lend the little mon a hand,” said he; but they withheld him forcibly.

Inside was pandemonium: bangings like the doors of hell; the bellowing of that great voice; the patter of little feet; the slithering of a body on the floor; and always that shrill, beseeching prayer, “Wullie, Wullie, let me to ye!” and, in a scream, “By ——, Kirby, I'll be wi' ye soon!”

Jim Mason it was who turned, at length, to the smith and whispered, “Kirby, lad, yo'd best skip it.”

The big man obeyed and ran. The stamp-stamp of his feet on the hard road rang above the turmoil. As the long legs vanished round the corner and the sound of the fugitive died away, a panic seized the listening crowd.

A woman shrieked; a girl fainted; and in two minutes the street was as naked of men as the steppes of Russia in winter: here a white face at a window; there a door ajar; and peering round a far corner a frightened boy. One man only scorned to run. Alone, James Moore stalked down the centre of the road, slow and calm, Owd Bob trotting at his heels.

It was a long half-hour before the door of the inn burst open, and M'Adam came out with a run, flinging the door behind him.

He rushed into the middle of the road; his sleeves were rolled at the wrist like a surgeon's; and in his right hand was a black-handled jack-knife.

“Noo, by ——!” he cried in a terrible voice, “where is he?”

He looked up and down the road, darting his fiery glances everywhere; and his face was whiter than his hair.

Then he turned and hunted madly down the whole length of the High, nosing like a weasel in every cranny, stabbing at the air as he went, and screaming, “By ——, Kirby, wait till I get ye!”

No further harm came of the incident; but it served as a healthy object-lesson for the Dalesmen.

A coincidence it may have been, but, as a fact, for the fortnight succeeding Kirby's exploit there was a lull in the crimes. There followed, as though to make amends, the seven days still remembered in the Daleland as the Bloody Week.

On the Sunday the Squire lost a Cheviot ewe, killed not a hundred yards from the Manor wall. On the Monday a farm on the Black Water was marked with the red cross. On Tuesday—a black night—Tupper at Swinsthwaite came upon the murderer at his work; he fired into the darkness without effect; and the Killer escaped with a scaring. On the following night Viscount Birdsaye lost a shearling ram, for which he was reported to have paid a fabulous sum. Thursday was the one blank night of the week. On Friday Tupper was again visited and punished heavily, as though in revenge for that shot.

On the Saturday afternoon a big meeting was held at the Manor to discuss measures. The Squire presided; gentlemen and magistrates were there in numbers, and every farmer in the country-side.

To start the proceedings the Special Commissioner read a futile letter from the Board of Agriculture. After him Viscount Birdsaye rose and proposed that a reward more suitable to the seriousness of the case than the paltry 5 pounds of the Police should be offered, and backed his proposal with a 25 pound cheque. Several others spoke, and, last of all, Parson Leggy rose.

He briefly summarized the history of the crimes; reiterated his belief that a sheep-dog was the criminal; declared that nothing had occurred to shake his conviction; and concluded by offering a remedy for their consideration. Simple it was, so he said, to laughableness; yet, if their surmise was correct, it would serve as an effectual preventive if not cure, and would at least give them time to turn round. He paused.

“My suggestion is: That every man-jack of you who owns a sheep-dog ties him up at night.”

The farmers were given half an hour to consider the proposal, and clustered in knots talking it over. Many an eye was directed on M'Adam; but that little man appeared all unconscious.

“Weel, Mr. Saunderson,” he was saying in, shrill accents, “and shall ye tie Shep?”

“What d'yo' think?” asked Rob, eying the man at whom the measure was aimed.

“Why, it's this way, I'm thinkin',” the little man replied. “Gin ye haud Shep's the guilty one I wad, by all manner o' means—or shootin'd be aiblins better. If not, why”—he shrugged his shoulders significantly; and having shown his hand and driven the nail well home, the little man left the meeting.

James Moore stayed to see the Parson's resolution negatived, by a large majority, and then he too quitted the hall. He had foreseen the result, and, previous to the meeting, had warned the Parson how it would be.

“Tie up!” he cried almost indignantly, as Owd Bob came galloping up to his whistle; “I think I see myself chainin' yo', owd lad, like any murderer. Why, it's yo' has kept the Killer off Kenmuir so far, I'll lay.”

At the lodge-gate was M'Adam, for once without his familiar spirit, playing with the lodge-keeper's child; for the little man loved all children but his own, and was beloved of them. As the Master approached he looked up.

“Weel, Moore,” he called, “and are you gaein' to tie yer dog?”

“I will if you will yours,” the Master answered grimly.

“Na,” the little man replied, “it's Wullie as frichts the Killer aff the Grange. That's why I've left him there noo.”

“It's the same wi' me,” the Master said. “He's not come to Kenmuir yet, nor he'll not so long as Th' Owd Un's loose, I reck'n.”

“Loose or tied, for the matter o' that,” the little man rejoined, “Kenmuir'll escape.” He made the statement dogmatically, snapping his lips.

The Master frowned.

“Why that?” he asked.

“Ha' ye no heard what they're sayin'?” the little man inquired with raised eyebrows.

“Nay; what?”

“Why, that the mere repitation o' th' best sheep-dog in the North' should keep him aff. An' I guess they're reet,” and he laughed shrilly as he spoke.

The Master passed on, puzzled.

“Which road are ye gaein' hame?” M'Adam called after him. “Because,” with a polite smile, “I'll tak' t'ither.”

“I'm off by the Windy Brae,” the Master answered, striding on. “Squire asked me to leave a note wi' his shepherd t'other side o' the Chair.” So he headed away to the left, making for home by the route along the Silver Mere.

It is a long sweep of almost unbroken moorland, the well-called Windy Brae; sloping gently down in mile on mile of heather from the Mere Marches on the top to the fringe of the Silver Mere below. In all that waste of moor the only break is the quaint-shaped Giant's Chair, puzzle of geologists, looking as though plumped down by accident in the heathery wild. The ground rises suddenly from the uniform grade of the Brae; up it goes, ever growing steeper, until at length it runs abruptly into a sheer curtain of rock—the Fall—which rises perpendicular some forty feet, on the top of which rests that tiny grassy bowl—not twenty yards across—they call the Scoop.

The Scoop forms the seat of the Chair and reposes on its collar of rock, cool and green and out of the world, like wine in a metal cup; in front is the forty-foot Fall; behind, rising sheer again, the wall of rock which makes the back of the Chair. Inaccessible from above, the only means of entrance to that little dell are two narrow sheep-tracks, which crawl dangerously up between the sheer wall on the one hand and the sheer Fall on the other, entering it at opposite sides.

It stands out clear-cut from the gradual incline, that peculiar eminence; yet as the Master and Owd Bob debouched on to the Brae it was already invisible in the darkening night.

Through the heather the two swung, the Master thinking now with a smile of David and Maggie; wondering what M'Adam had meant; musing with a frown on the Killer; pondering on his identity—for he was half of David's opinion as to Red Wull's innocence; and thanking his stars that so far Kenmuir had escaped, a piece of luck he attributed entirely to the vigilance of Th' Owd Un, who, sleeping in the porch, slipped out at all hours and went his rounds, warding off danger. And at the thought he looked down for the dark head which should be travelling at his knee; yet could not see it, so thick hung the pall of night.

So he brushed his way along, and ever the night grew blacker; until, from the swell of the ground beneath his feet, he knew himself skirting the Giant's Chair.

Now as he sped along the foot of the rise, of a sudden there burst on his ear the myriad patter of galloping feet. He turned, and at the second a swirl of sheep almost bore him down. It was velvet-black, and they fled furiously by, yet he dimly discovered, driving at their trails, a vague hound-like form.

“The Killer, by thunder!” he ejaculated, and, startled though he was, struck down at that last pursuing shape, to miss and almost fall.

“Bob, lad!” he cried, “follow on!” and swung round; but in the darkness could not see if the gray dog had obeyed.

The chase swept on into the night, and, far above him on the hill-side, he could now hear the rattle of the flying feet. He started hotly in pursuit, and then, recognizing the futility of following where he could not see his hand, desisted. So he stood motionless, listening and peering into the blackness, hoping Th' Owd Un was on the villain's heels.

He prayed for the moon; and, as though in answer, the lantern of the night shone out and lit the dour face of the Chair above him. He shot a glance at his feet; and thanked heaven on finding the gray dog was not beside him.

Then he looked up. The sheep had broken, and were scattered over the steep hill-side, still galloping madly. In the rout one pair of darting figures caught and held his gaze: the foremost dodging, twisting, speeding upward, the hinder hard on the leader's heels, swift, remorseless, never changing. He looked for a third pursuing form; but none could he discern.

“He mun ha' missed him in the dark,” the Master muttered, the sweat standing on his brow, as he strained his eyes upward.

Higher and higher sped those two dark specks, far out-topping the scattered remnant of the flock. Up and up, until of a sudden the sheer Fall dropped its relentless barrier in the path of the fugitive. Away, scudding along the foot of the rock-wall struck the familiar track leading to the Scoop, and up it, bleating pitifully, nigh spent, the Killer hard on her now.

“He'll doon her in the Scoop!” cried the Master hoarsely, following with fascinated eyes. “Owd Un! Owd Un! wheer iver are yo' gotten to?” he called in agony; but no Owd Un made reply.

As they reached the summit, just as he had prophesied, the two black dots were one; and down they rolled together into the hollow of the Scoop, out of the Master's ken. At the same instant the moon, as though loth to watch the last act of the bloody play, veiled her face.

It was his chance. “Noo!”—and up the hillside he sped like a young man, girding his loins for the struggle. The slope grew steep and steeper; but on and on he held in the darkness, gasping painfully, yet running still, until the face of the Fall blocked his way too.

There he paused a moment, and whistled a low call. Could he but dispatch the old dog up the one path to the Scoop, while he took the other, the murderer's one road to safety would be blocked.

He waited, all expectant; but no cold muzzle was shoved into his hand. Again he whistled. A pebble from above almost dropped on him, as if the criminal up there had moved to the brink of the Fall to listen; and he dared no more.

He waited till all was still again, then crept, cat-like, along the rock-foot, and hit, at length, the track up which a while before had fled Killer and victim. Up that ragged way he crawled on hands and knees. The perspiration rolled off his face; one elbow brushed the rock perpetually; one hand plunged ever and anon into that naked emptiness on the other side.

He prayed that the moon might keep in but a little longer; that his feet might be saved from falling, where a slip might well mean death, certain destruction to any chance of success. He cursed his luck that Th' Owd Un had somehow missed him in the dark; for now he must trust to chance, his own great strength, and his good oak stick. And as he climbed, he laid his plan: to rush in on the Killer as he still gorged and grapple with him. If in the darkness he missed—and in that narrow arena the contingency was improbable—the murderer might still, in the panic of the moment, forget the one path to safety and leap over the Fall to his destruction.

At length he reached the summit and paused to draw breath. The black void before him was the Scoop, and in its bosom—not ten yards away—must be lying the Killer and the killed.

He crouched against the wet rock-face and listened. In that dark silence, poised 'twixt heaven and earth, he seemed a million miles apart from living soul.

No sound, and yet the murderer must be there. Ay, there was the tinkle of a dislodged stone; and again, the tread of stealthy feet.

The Killer was moving; alarmed; was off.

Quick!

He rose to his full height; gathered himself, and leapt.

Something collided with him as he sprang; something wrestled madly with him; something wrenched from beneath him; and in a clap he heard the thud of a body striking ground far below, and the slithering and splattering of some creature speeding furiously down the hill-side and away.

“Who the blazes?” roared he.

“What the devil?” screamed a little voice.

The moon shone out.

“Moore!”

“M'Adam!”

And there they were still struggling over the body of a dead sheep.

In a second they had disengaged and rushed to the edge of the Fall. In the quiet they could still hear the scrambling hurry of the fugitive far below them. Nothing was to be seen, however, save an array of startled sheep on the hill-side, mute witnesses of the murderer's escape.

The two men turned and eyed each other; the one grim, the other sardonic: both dishevelled and suspicious.

“Well?''

“Weel?”

A pause and, careful scrutiny.

“There's blood on your coat.”

“And on yours.”

Together they walked hack into the little moonlit hollow. There lay the murdered sheep in a pool of blood. Plain it was to see whence the marks on their coats came. M'Adam touched the victim's head with his foot. The movement exposed its throat. With a shudder he replaced it as it was.

The two men stood back and eyed one another.

“What are yo' doin' here?”

“After the Killer. What are you?”

“After the Killer?”

“Hoo did you come?”

“Up this path,” pointing to the one behind him. “Hoo did you?”

“Up this.”

Silence; then again:

“I'd ha' had him but for yo'.”

“I did have him, but ye tore me aff,”

A pause again.

“Where's yer gray dog?” This time the challenge was unmistakable.

“I sent him after the Killer. Wheer's your Red Wull?”

“At hame, as I tell't ye before.”

“Yo' mean yo' left him there?” M'Adam's fingers twitched.

“He's where I left him.”

James Moore shrugged his shoulders. And the other began:

“When did yer dog leave ye?”

“When the Killer came past.”

“Ye wad say ye missed him then?”

“I say what I mean.”

“Ye say he went after the Killer. Noo the Killer was here,” pointing to the dead sheep. “Was your dog here, too?”

“If he had been he'd been here still.”

“Onless he went over the Fall!”

“That was the Killer, yo' fule.”

“Or your dog.”

“There was only one beneath me. I felt him.”

“Just so,” said M'Adam, and laughed. The other's brow contracted.

“An' that was a big un,” he said slowly. The little man stopped his cackling.

“There ye lie,” he said, smoothly. “He was small.”

They looked one another full in the eyes.

“That's a matter of opinion,” said the Master.

“It's a matter of fact,” said the other.

The two stared at one another, silent and stern, each trying to fathom the other's soul; then they turned again to the brink of the Fall. Beneath them, plain to see, was the splash and furrow in the shingle marking the Killer's line of retreat. They looked at one another again, and then each departed the way he had come to give his version of the story.

“'If Th' Owd Un had kept wi' me, I should ha' had him.”

And—

“I tell ye I did have him, but James Moore pulled me aff. Strange, too, his dog not bein' wi' him!”

AN immense sensation this affair of the Scoop created in the Daleland. It spurred the Dalesmen into fresh endeavors. James Moore and M'Adam were examined and re-examined as to the minutest details of the matter. The whole country-side was placarded with huge bills, offering 100 pounds reward for the capture of the criminal dead or alive. While the vigilance of the watchers was such that in a single week they bagged a donkey, an old woman, and two amateur detectives.

In Wastrel-dale the near escape of the Killer, the collision between James Moore and Adam, and Owd Bob's unsuccess, who was not wont to fail, aroused intense excitement, with which was mingled a certain anxiety as to their favorite.

For when the Master had reached home that night, he had found the old dog already there; and he must have wrenched his foot in the pursuit or run a thorn into it, for he was very lame. Whereat, when it was reported at the Sylvester Arms, M'Adam winked at Red Wull and muttered, “Ah, forty foot is an ugly tumble.”

A week later the little man called at Kenmuir. As he entered the yard, David was standing outside the kitchen window, looking very glum and miserable. On seeing his father, however, the boy started forward, all alert.

“What d'yo' want here?” he cried roughly.

“Same as you, dear lad,” the little man giggled, advancing. “I come on a visit.”

“Your visits to Kenmuir are usually paid by night, so I've heard,” David sneered.

The little man affected not to hear.

“So they dinna allow ye indoors wi' the Cup,” he laughed. “They know yer little ways then, David.”

“Nay, I'm not wanted in there,” David answered bitterly, but not so loud that his father could hear. Maggie within the kitchen heard, however, but paid no heed; for her heart was hard against the boy, who of late, though he never addressed her, had made himself as unpleasant in a thousand little ways as only David M'Adam could.

At that moment the Master came stalking into the yard, Owd Bob preceding him; and as the old dog recognized his visitor he bristled involuntarily.

At the sight of the Master M'Adam hurried forward.

“I did but come to ask after the tyke,” he said, “Is he gettin' over his lameness?”

James Moore looked surprised; then his stern face relaxed into a cordial smile. Such generous anxiety as to the welfare of Red Wull's rival was a wholly new characteristic in the little man.

“I tak' it kind in yo', M'Adam,” he said, “to come and inquire.”

“Is the thorn oot?” asked the little man with eager interest, shooting his head forward to stare closely at the other.

“It came oot last night wi' the poulticin',” the Master answered, returning the other's gaze, calm and steady.

“I'm glad o' that,” said the little man, still staring. But his yellow, grinning face said as plain words, “What a liar ye are, James Moore.”

The days passed on. His father's taunts and gibes, always becoming more bitter, drove David almost to distraction.

He longed to make it up with Maggie; he longed for that tender sympathy which the girl had always extended to him when his troubles with his father were heavy on him. The quarrel had lasted for months now, and he was well weary of it, and utterly ashamed. For, at least, he had the good grace to acknowledge that no one was to blame but himself; and that it had been fostered solely by his ugly pride.

At length he could endure it no longer, and determined to go to the girl and ask forgiveness. It would be a bitter ordeal to him; always unwilling to acknowledge a fault, even to himself, how much harder would it be to confess it to this strip of a girl. For a time he thought it was almost more than he could do. Yet, like his father, once set upon a course, nothing could divert him. So, after a week of doubts and determinations, of cowardice and courage, he pulled himself together and off he set.

An hour it took him from the Grange to the bridge over the Wastrel—an hour which had wont to be a quarter. Now, as he walked on up the slope from the stream, very slowly, heartening himself for his penance, he was aware of a strange disturbance in the yard above him: the noisy cackling of hens, the snorting of pigs disturbed, and above the rest the cry of a little child ringing out in shrill distress.

He set to running, and sped up the slope as fast as his long legs would carry him. As he took the gate in his stride, he saw the white-clad figure of Wee Anne fleeing with unsteady, toddling steps, her fair hair streaming out behind, and one bare arm striking wildly back at a great pursuing sow.

David shouted as he cleared the gate, but the brute paid no heed, and was almost touching the fugitive when Owd Bob came galloping round the corner, and in a second had flashed between pursuer and pursued. So close were the two that as he swung round on the startled sow, his tail brushed the baby to the ground; and there she lay kicking fat legs to heaven and calling on all her gods.

David, leaving the old dog to secure the warrior pig, ran round to her; but he was anticipated. The whole matter had barely occupied a minute's time; and Maggie, rushing from the kitchen, now had the child in her arms and was hurrying back with her to the house.

“Eh, ma pet, are yo' hurted, dearie?” David could hear her asking tearfully, as he crossed the yard and established himself in the door.

“Well,” said he, in bantering tones, “yo'm a nice wench to ha' charge o' oor Annie!”

It was a sore subject with the girl, and well he knew it. Wee Anne, that golden-haired imp of mischief, was forever evading her sister-mother's eye and attempting to immolate herself. More than once she had only been saved from serious hurt by the watchful devotion of Owd Bob, who always found time, despite his many labors, to keep a guardian eye on his well-loved lassie. In the previous winter she had been lost on a bitter night on the Muir Pike; once she had climbed into a field with the Highland bull, and barely escaped with her life, while the gray dog held the brute in check; but a little while before she had been rescued from drowning by the Tailless Tyke; there had been numerous other mischances; and now the present mishap. But the girl paid no heed to her tormentor in her joy at finding the child all unhurt.

“Theer! yo' bain't so much as scratted, ma precious, is yo'?” she cried. “Rin oot agin, then,” and the baby toddled joyfully away.

Maggie rose to her feet and stood with face averted. David's eyes dwelt lovingly upon her, admiring the pose of the neat head with its thatch of pretty brown hair; the slim figure, and slender ankles, peeping modestly from beneath her print frock.

“Ma word! if yo' dad should hear tell o' hoo his Anne—” he broke off into a long-drawn whistle.

Maggie kept silence; but her lips quivered, and the flush deepened on her cheek.

“I'm fear'd I'll ha' to tell him,” the boy continued, “'Tis but ma duty.”

“Yo' may tell wham yo' like what yo' like,” the girl replied coldly; yet there was a tremor in her voice.

“First yo' throws her in the stream,” David went on remorselessly; “then yo' chucks her to the pig, and if it had not bin for me—”

“Yo', indeed!” she broke in contemptuously. “Yo'! 'twas Owd Bob reskied her. Yo'd nowt' to do wi' it, 'cept lookin' on—'bout what yo're fit for.”

“I tell yo',” David pursued stubbornly, “an it had not bin for me yo' wouldn't have no sister by noo. She'd be lyin', she would, pore little lass, cold as ice, pore mite, wi' no breath in her. An' when yo' dad coom home there'd be no Wee Anne to rin to him, and climb on his knee, and yammer to him, and beat his face. An he'd say, 'What's gotten to oor Annie, as I left wi' yo'?' And then yo'd have to tell him, 'I never took no manner o' fash after her, dad; d'reckly yo' back was turned, I—'”

The girl sat down, buried her face in her apron, and indulged in the rare luxury of tears.

“Yo're the cruellest mon as iver was, David M'Adam,” she sobbed, rocking to and fro.

He was at her side in a moment, tenderly bending over her.

“Eh, Maggie, but I am sorry, lass—”

She wrenched away from beneath his hands.

“I hate yo',” she cried passionately.

He gently removed her hands from before her tear-stained face.

“I was nob'but laffin', Maggie,” he pleaded; “say yo' forgie me.”

“I don't,” she cried, struggling. “I think yo're the hatefullest lad as iver lived.”

The moment was critical; it was a time for heroic measures.

“No, yo' don't, lass,” he remonstrated; and, releasing her wrists, lifted the little drooping face, wet as it was, like the earth after a spring shower, and, holding it between his two big hands, kissed it twice.

“Yo' coward!” she cried, a flood of warm red crimsoning her cheeks; and she struggled vainly to be free.

“Yo' used to let me,” he reminded her in aggrieved tones.

“I niver did!” she cried, more indignant than truthful.

“Yes, yo' did, when we was little uns; that is, yo' was allus for kissin' and I was allus agin it. And noo,” with whole-souled bitterness, “I mayn't so much as keek at yo' over a stone wall.”

However that might be, he was keeking at her from closer range now; and in that position—for he held her firmly still—she could not help but keek back. He looked so handsome—humble for once; penitent yet reproachful; his own eyes a little moist; and, withal, his old audacious self—that, despite herself, her anger grew less hot.

“Say yo' forgie me and I'll let yo' go.”

“I don't, nor niver shall,” she answered firmly; but there was less conviction in her heart than voice.

“Iss yo' do, lass,” he coaxed, and kissed her again.

She struggled faintly.

“Hoo daur yo'?” she cried through her tears. But he was not to be moved.

“Will yo' noo?” he asked.

She remained dumb, and he kissed her again.

“Impidence!” she cried.

“Ay,” said he, closing her mouth.

“I wonder at ye, Davie!” she said, surrendering.

After that Maggie must needs give in; and it was well understood, though nothing definite had been said, that the boy and girl were courting. And in the Dale the unanimous opinion was that the young couple would make “a gradely pair, surely.”

M'Adam was the last person to hear the news, long after it had been common knowledge in the village. It was in the Sylvester Arms he first heard it, and straightway fell into one of those foaming frenzies characteristic of him.

“The dochter o' Moore o' Kenmuir, d'ye say? sic a dochter o' sic a man! The dochter o' th' one man in the warld that's harmed me aboon the rest! I'd no ha' believed it gin ye'd no tell't me. Oh, David, David! I'd no ha' thocht it even o' you, ill son as ye've aye bin to me. I think he might ha' waited till his auld dad was gone, and he'd no had to wait lang the noo.” Then the little man sat down and burst into tears. Gradually, however, he resigned himself, and the more readily when he realized that David by his act had exposed a fresh wound into which he might plunge his barbed shafts. And he availed himself to the full of his new opportunities. Often and often David was sore pressed to restrain himself.

“Is't true what they're sayin' that Maggie Moore's nae better than she should be?” the little man asked one evening with anxious interest.

“They're not sayin' so, and if they were 'twad be a lie,” the boy answered angrily.

M'Adam leant back in his chair and nodded his head.

“Ay, they tell't me that gin ony man knew 'twad be David M'Adam.”

David strode across the room.

“No, no mair o' that,” he shouted. “Y'ought to be 'shamed, an owd mon like you, to speak so o' a lass.” The little man edged close up to his son, and looked up into the fair flushed face towering above him.

“David,” he said in smooth soft tones, “I'm 'stonished ye dinna strike yen auld dad.” He stood with his hands clasped behind his back as if daring the young giant to raise a finger against him. “Ye maist might noo,” he continued suavely. “Ye maun be sax inches taller, and a good four stane heavier. Hooiver, aiblins ye're wise to wait. Anither year twa I'll be an auld man, as ye say, and feebler, and Wullie here'll be gettin' on, while you'll be in the prime o' yer strength. Then I think ye might hit me wi' safety to your person, and honor to yourself.”

He took a pace back, smiling.

“Feyther,” said David, huskily, “one day yo'll drive me too far.”

THE spring was passing, marked throughout with the bloody trail of the Killer. The adventure in the Scoop scared him for a while into innocuousness; then he resumed his game again with redoubled zest. It seemed likely he would harry the district till some lucky accident carried him off, for all chance there was of arresting him.

You could still hear nightly in the Sylvester Arms and elsewhere the assertion, delivered with the same dogmatic certainty as of old, “It's the Terror, I tell yo'!” and that irritating, inevitable reply: “Ay; but wheer's the proof?” While often, at the same moment, in a house not far away, a little lonely man was sitting before a low-burnt fire, rocking to and fro, biting his nails, and muttering to the great dog whose head lay between his knees: “If we had but the proof, Wullie! if we had but the proof! I'd give ma right hand aff my arm gin we had the proof to-morrow.”

Long Kirby, who was always for war when some one else was to do the fighting, suggested that David should be requested, in the name of the Dalesmen, to tell M'Adam that he must make an end to Red Wull. But Jim Mason quashed the proposal, remarking truly enough that there was too much bad blood as it was between father and son; while Tammas proposed with a sneer that the smith should be his own agent in the matter.

Whether it was this remark of Tammas's which stung the big man into action, or whether it was that the intensity of his hate gave him unusual courage, anyhow, a few days later, M'Adam caught him lurking in the granary of the Grange.

The little man may not have guessed his murderous intent; yet the blacksmith's white-faced terror, as he crouched away in the darkest corner, could hardly have escaped remark; though—and Kirby may thank his stars for it—the treacherous gleam of a gun-barrel, ill-concealed behind him, did.

“Hullo, Kirby!” said M'Adam cordially, “ye'll stay the night wi' me?” And the next thing the big man heard was a giggle on the far side the door, lost in the clank of padlock and rattle of chain. Then—through a crack—“Good-night to ye. Hope ye'll be comfie.” And there he stayed that night, the following day and next night—thirty-six hours in all, with swedes for his hunger and the dew off the thatch for his thirst.

Meanwhile the struggle between David and his father seemed coming to a head. The little man's tongue wagged more bitterly than ever; now it was never at rest—searching out sores, stinging, piercing.

Worst of all, he was continually dropping innuendoes, seemingly innocent enough, yet with a world of subtile meaning at their back, respecting Maggie. The leer and wink with which, when David came home from Kenmuir at nights, he would ask the simple question, “And was she kind, David—eh, eh?” made the boy's blood boil within him.

And the more effective the little man saw his shots to be, the more persistently he plied them. And David retaliated in kind. It was a war of reprisals. There was no peace; there were no truces in which to bury the dead before the opponents set to slaying others. And every day brought the combatants nearer to that final struggle, the issue of which neither cared to contemplate.

There came a Saturday, toward the end of the spring, long to be remembered by more than David in the Dale.

For that young man the day started sensationally. Rising before cock-crow, and going to the window, the first thing he saw in the misty dawn was the gaunt, gigantic figure of Red Wull, hounding up the hill from the Stony Bottom; and in an instant his faith was shaken to its foundation.

The dog was travelling up at a long, slouching trot; and as he rapidly approached the house, David saw that his flanks were all splashed with red mud, his tongue out, and the foam dripping from his jaws, as though he had come far and fast.

He slunk up to the house, leapt on to the sill of the unused back-kitchen, some five feet from the ground, pushed with his paw at the cranky old hatchment, which was its only covering; and, in a second, the boy, straining out of the window the better to see, heard the rattle of the boards as the dog dropped within the house.

For the moment, excited as he was, David held his peace. Even the Black Killer took only second place in his thoughts that morning. For this was to be a momentous day for him.

That afternoon James Moore and Andrew would, he knew, be over at Grammoch-town, and, his work finished for the day, he was resolved to tackle Maggie and decide his fate. If she would have him—well, he would go next morning and thank God for it, kneeling beside her in the tiny village church; if not, he would leave the Grange and all its unhappiness behind, and straightway plunge out into the world.

All through a week of stern work he had looked forward to this hard-won half-holiday. Therefore, when, as he was breaking off at noon, his father turned to him and said abruptly:

“David, ye're to tak' the Cheviot lot o'er to Grammoch-town at once,” he answered shortly:

“Yo' mun tak' 'em yo'sel', if yo' wish 'em to go to-day.”

“Na,” the little man answered; “Wullie and me, we're busy. Ye're to tak' 'em, I tell ye.”

“I'll not,” David replied. “If they wait for me, they wait till Monday,” and with that he left the room.

“I see what 'tis,” his father called after him; “she's give ye a tryst at Kenmuir. Oh, ye randy David!”

“Yo' tend yo' business; I'll tend mine,” the boy answered hotly.

Now it happened that on the previous day Maggie had given him a photograph of herself, or, rather, David had taken it and Maggie had demurred. As he left the room it dropped from his pocket. He failed to notice his loss, but directly he was gone M'Adam pounced on it.