wn with a fierce grip. The
stag was lying by the lake-shore, and a man with the muzzle of
his gun still smoking was running toward it from the woods. The
man was Angus Niel!

Jean was so astonished that for an instant she could not believe
her own eyes. The two children flattened themselves out on their
stomachs and watched him pull a boat from its hiding-place among
some bushes on the shore, paddle quietly to the spot where the
dead stag lay, and load it swiftly into the boat. Then he raced
back to the woods again and reappeared, carrying a string of dead
rabbits. These also he crowded into the boat, and then, taking up
the oars, rowed across the lake to a landing-place on the other
side. The children watched him, scarcely breathing in their
excitement, until he had unloaded his game from the boat and
disappeared into the woods, dragging the body of the stag after
him. In a few moments he came back for the rabbits and, having
disposed of them in the same mysterious way, returned to the
boat.

Then Jean exploded in a fierce whisper. "The old thief!" she
said, shaking her fist after him. "He's the poacher himself!
That's why he never brings any one before the bailie, though he's
always telling about catching them at it! And he making such a
fuss because Jock chased the rabbit that was eating up our
garden! Oh, oh, oh!"

She clutched Alan and shook him in her boiling indignation. Alan
laughed and shook her back. "I didn't do it, you little
spitfire!" he whispered, and Jean moaned, "Oh, I know it, Alan,
but I can't catch him and I'm so angry I've just got to do
something to somebody."

"Do you know what that old thief does?" said Alan. "He sends
that game down to the city--to Glasgow, or Edinburgh, or even
London, maybe--and gets a lot of money for it! No wonder he tells
big stories to make people afraid to go into the woods."

"I hope he won't meet the boys," moaned Jean. "Jock would be sure
to let his tongue loose, and then maybe he'd shoot him too!"

"Listen," said Alan. He gave the pewit's call and waited. It was
answered from a point so near that they were startled. They
looked in every direction but saw nothing of the boys.

"Maybe it was a real pewit after all," whispered Jean, but just
then a tiny pebble struck Alan's cap, and, looking around in the
direction from which it came, he saw two freckled faces rise up
from behind the rock on the opposite side of the spring.

"There they are," he said, punchi