ing to do so for many weeks, but had stayed partly out of bravado,
and partly because there were few opportunities of getting away during
the winter.

He went home and shut himself in his own room, and began to count his
hoarded gold. While thus employed, there was a stir or movement under
his feet which he quite understood. Some one was in the secret cellar,
and was coming up. He turned hastily round, and there was Sandy Beg.

"Thou scoundrel!" and he fairly gnashed his teeth at the intruder,
"what dost thou want here?"

"She'll be wanting money an' help."

Badly enough Sandy wanted both; and a dreadful story he told. He had
indeed engaged himself at Wick for a whaling voyage, but at the last
moment had changed his mind and deserted. For somewhere among the
wilds of Rhiconich in Sutherland he had a mother, a wild,
superstitious, half-heathen Highland woman, and he wanted to see her.
Coming back to the coast, after his visit, he had stopped a night at a
little wayside inn, and hearing some drovers talking of their gold in
Gallic, a language which he well understood, he had followed them into
the wild pass of Gualon, and there shot them from behind a rock. For
this murder he had been tracked, and was now so closely pursued that
he had bribed with all the gold he had a passing fishing-smack to drop
him at Stromness during the night.

"She'll gae awa now ta some ither place; 'teet will she! An' she's
hungry--an' unco dry;" all of which Sandy emphasized by a desperate
and very evil look.

The man was not to be trifled with, and Ragon knew that he was in his
power. If Sandy was taken, he would confess all, and Ragon knew well
that in such case transportation for life and hard labor would be his
lot. Other considerations pressed him heavily--the shame, the loss,
the scorn of Margaret, the triumph of all his ill-wishers. No, he had
gone too far to retreat.

He fed the villain, gave him a suit of his own clothes, and L50, and
saw him put off to sea. Sandy promised to keep well out in the bay,
until some vessel going North to Zetland or Iceland, or some Dutch
skipper bound for Amsterdam, took him up. All the next day Ragon was
in misery, but nightfall came and he had heard nothing of Sandy,
though several craft had come into port. If another day got over he
would feel safe; but he told himself that he was in a gradually
narrowing circle, and that the sooner he leaped outside of it the
better.

When he reached home the