" he cried, "or I shall fire."

His own fear of pistols was so great that he expected everyone else to
be terrorized by the threat of using them; and yet he had never
possessed nor carried a pistol in his life.

"Please--please don't fire," cried a trembling voice, from out the
darkness. "I will do as you tell me." And so saying the figure moved
out upon the road.

Trenchon peered at her through the darkness, but whether she was old or
young he could not tell. Her voice seemed to indicate that she was
young.

"Why, lass," said Trenchon, kindly, "what dost thou here at such an
hour and in such a night?"

"Alas!" she cried, weeping; "my father turned me out, as he has often
done before, but to-night is a bitter night, and I had nowhere to go,
so I came here to be sheltered from the rain. He will be asleep ere
long, and he sleeps soundly. I may perhaps steal in by a window,
although sometimes he fastens them down."

"God's truth!" cried Trenchon, angrily. "Who is thy brute of a father?"

The girl hesitated, and then spoke as if to excuse him, but again
Trenchon demanded his name.

"He is the blacksmith of the village, and Cameron is his name."

"I remember him," said Trenchon. "Is thy mother, then, dead?"

"Yes," answered the girl, weeping afresh. "She has been dead these five
years."

"I knew her when I was a boy," said Trenchon. "Thy father also, and
many a grudge I owe him, although I had forgotten about them. Still, I
doubt not but as a boy I was as much in fault as he, although he was
harsh to all of us, and now it seems he is harsh to thee. My name is
Trenchon. I doubt if any in the village now remember me, although,
perhaps, they may have heard of me from London," he said, with some
pride, and a hope that the girl would confirm his thoughts. But she
shook her head.

"I have never heard thy name," she said.

Trenchon sighed. This, then, was fame!

"Ah, well!" he cried, "that matters not; they shall hear more of me
later. I will go with thee to thy father's house and demand for thee
admittance and decent usage."

But the girl shrank back. "Oh, no, no!" she cried; "that will never do.
My father is a hard man to cross. There are none in the village who
dare contend with him."

"That is as it may be," said Trenchon, with easy confidence. "I, for
one, fear him not. Come, lass, with me, and see if I cannot, after all
these years, pick out thy father's dwelling. Come, I say, thou must not
longer tarry