* * * * *

At the same moment, high on the hill-side above them, a young woman was talking to a young man.  She had walked towards him holding a bell-mouthed musket in her hands.  As she approached, the youth rose to his feet with a puzzled expression on his face.  But there was no fear in it, only doubt and surprise, slowly fading into admiration.  He put his forefinger and the one next it through the hole in his hat, and said calmly, since the young woman seemed to expect him to begin the conversation—­

“Did you do this?”

“I took the gun from the man who did.  The accident will not happen again!”

It seemed inadequate as an explanation, but there was something in the girl’s manner of saying it which seemed to give the young man complete satisfaction.  Then the speaker seated herself on a fragment of rock, and set her chin upon her hand.  It was a round and rather prominent chin, and the young man, who stood abstractedly twirling his hat, making a pivot of the two fingers which protruded through the hole, thought that he had never seen a chin quite like it.  Or perhaps, on second thoughts, was it that dimple at the side of the mouth, in which an arch mockery seemed to be lurking, which struck him more?  He resolved to think this out.  It seemed now more important than the little matter of the hole in the hat.

“You had better go away,” said the young girl suddenly.

“And why?” asked the young man.

“Because my father does not like strangers!” she said.

Again the explanation appeared inadequate, but again the youth was satisfied, finding reason enough for the dislike, mayhap, either in the dimple on the prominent chin, or in the hole by which he twirled his hat.

“Do you come from England?” he asked, referring to her accent.

The girl rose from her seat as she answered—­

“Oh, no, I come from the ‘Back o’ Beyont’!  What is your name?”

“My name,” said the young man stolidly, “is Hugh Kennedy; and I am coming soon to the ‘Back o’ Beyont,’ father or no father!”

* * * * *

It was a dark night in August, brightening with the uncertain light of a waning moon, which had just risen.  High up on a mountain-side a man was hastening along, running with all his might whenever he reached a dozen yards of fairly level ground, desperately clinging at other times with fingers and knees and feet to the niches in the bare slates which formed the slippery roofing of the mountain-side.  As he paused for a long moment, the moon turned a scarred and weird face towards him, one-half of it apparently eaten away.  Panting, he resumed his course, and the pebbles that he started rattled noisily down the mountain-side.  But as he drew near the top of the ridge up which he had been climbing, he became more cautious.  He raced no more wildly, and took care that he loosened