ursday
night he comes. Black Jim as broke thy head for thee is coming with t'
quarrymen to poach t' covers. Got the office from yan with a grudge
against t' gang, an' Captain Franklin, who's layin' for him, sends his
compliments, thinkin' as maybe thee would like t' fun."

Thurston rarely forgot either an injury or a friend, and, the preceding
October, when tripping, he fell helpless, Black Jim twice, with
murderous intent, had brought a gun-butt down upon his unprotected
skull. Excitement was at all times as wine to him, so, promising to be
at the rendezvous, he rode homeward faster than before, with a sense of
anticipation which helped to dull the edge of his care.

CHAPTER II

A DISILLUSION

It was a clear cold night when Geoffrey Thurston met Captain Franklin,
who held certain sporting rights in the vicinity, at the place agreed
upon. The captain had brought with him several amateur assistants and
stablehands besides two stalwart keepers. Greeting Thurston he said:

"Very good of you to help me! Our local constable is either afraid or
powerless, and I must accordingly allow Black Jim's rascals to sweep my
covers or take the law into my own hands. It is the pheasants he is
after now, and he'll start early so as to get his plunder off from the
junction by the night mail, and because the moon rises soon. We had
better divide, and you might come with Evans and me to the beeches
while the others search the fir spinney."

Geoffrey, assenting, followed the officer across a dew-damped meadow
and up a winding lane hung with gossamer-decked briars, until the party
halted, ankle-deep among withered leaves, in a dry ditch just outside
the wood. There were reasons why each detail of all that happened on
that eventful night should impress itself upon Geoffrey's memory, and,
long afterwards, when wandering far out in the shadow of limitless
forests or the chill of eternal snow, he could recall every incident.
Leaves that made crimson glories by day still clung low down about the
wide-girthed trunks beyond the straggling hedge of ancient thorns, but
the higher branches rose nakedly against faintly luminous sky. Spruce
firs formed clumps of solid blackness, and here and there a delicate
tracery of birch boughs filled gaps against the sky-line between. The
meadows behind him were silent and empty, streaked with belts of
spectral mist, and, because it was not very late, he could see a red
glimmer of light in th