eat knoll. There we shall be in
full view of the posts of the Preventive men. Having arrived there, you
will appear to break from me after a struggle, and run as hard as you
can towards the north in the direction of the excisemen. They will know
you very well, having been your old cronies. You will have a white
handkerchief in your hand which you will wave to them. If they take that
signal to mean that you are escaping, we on our side will understand
that you have been at your old tricks. If they fire--then you are
cleared and can turn and come back to us. I will protect your retreat.
Now do you quite understand?"

Frequently in the exercise of his profession, Eben had need of
indomitable courage, but now perhaps more than ever. Yet he was
steadfast.

"I see no reason why you should trust me," he said. "I am willing to
take the risk. When shall we start?"

"Now," said Stair, and in a minute more he was marching his man along
the narrowing pathway between the dark pools of peat water. "There is
only one thing I have to say. Do not pass the dwarf thorn-tree at the
big elbow. If you run past that, I shall know you have it in your mind
to desert, and it will be my duty to shoot. You know I do not miss."

It was a grey day with a gentle wind, the sky of a teased pearl
woolliness with curious warm tints in it here and there. The face of the
moorland was generally black, sometimes broken by borders of vivid green
about the pools, and along the path edges by the little rosy rootlets of
the plant called Venus's Flytrap.

They came to the outlying peat knoll, where an extra supply of fuel had
been left under shelter during the previous autumn. Quite half of it
still remained, and the "fause-hoose," or cavernous pit left from the
digging out of the peats, afforded the best of cover. From it Stair
would be able to follow the spy with his rifle all the way to the posts
of the Preventive men which had been established on the rising ground
above the edge of the Wild. A portable semaphore stiffly flapped its
arms as they looked, no doubt signalling their coming to other and more
distant posts.

"There," said Stair, "they are all ready for you. Come outside and let
us get our bit of a trial over. There is your handkerchief. As soon as
you hear the bullets whistle, you can drop. Then turn about and crawl
back to me."

"It does not seem to you somewhat cruel--this test?" said Eben McClure,
looking wistfully at Stair. It was his o