make his fortune and save his life. He had had enough of Galloway, and a
permanent change of air was what he longed for--to a far land, under
other skies, and among a people of a strange tongue, who had never heard
of press-gangs and Solway smugglers.

CHAPTER X

THE WICKED LAYETH A SNARE

In the enforced leisure provided for him by the stoppage of compulsory
recruitments, Eben McClure added to his knowledge. He left the men and
women in the drama which was unrolling itself about Glenanmays to take
care of themselves. He might not have had any the least interest in
them. He gave his whole thought to Whitefoot, Stair's lean, shaggy
collie.

By observation he obtained a good working knowledge of the whereabouts
of Whitefoot's master--not sufficient, certainly, to act upon if it had
been a case of capture. But all the same, near enough to enable him to
keep well out of Stair Garland's way, which at the moment was what he
most desired.

He rather despised the heather-craft of the other brothers, Fergus and
Agnew Garland, and he gave never a thought to Godfrey McCulloch or the
Free Trade band, which, he knew, was busy running in small cargoes as
quickly as possible during the blessed time of relief from military and
naval supervision.

But Stair Garland was another matter. Instinctively the spy knew his
danger. This was not a man to hesitate about pulling a trigger, and his
life, in the hollow of Stair Garland's hand, would weigh no heavier than
a puff of dandelion smoke which a gust of wind carries along with it. So
from his first acquaintance with him the spy had given Stair a wide
berth.

As the result of many observations and much reflection, McClure decided
that the lurking-place of this dangerous second son of the house of
Glenanmays was on the hill called Knock Minto, a rocky, irregular mass,
shaped like the knuckles of a clenched fist.

The summit overlooked the wide Bay of Luce, and the spy had remarked
thin columns of smoke rising up into the twilight, and lights which
glittered a moment and then were shut off in the short, pearl-grey
nights of later June, when the heavens are filled with quite useless
stars, and the darkness never altogether falls upon the earth.

Cargoes were being run on the east side--of that he was assured. But
after all that was no business of his. Eben found it more in his way to
watch Whitefoot. He had attempted, in the farm kitchen of Glenanmays, to
make friends with th