e.

The next moment the man, his gun in the hollow of his arm and the red
setter dog at his heels, crawled forth from the pigsty, looked round as
if to make certain he was not watched, and followed the white figure of
the girl as she glided up the zig-zag path in the direction of the
haughs which formed the wild sea coast.

It did not take Fred and me very long to take off our boots and
noiselessly follow, guided by the figure in white, rather than by the
man who went before us, for the dim light of the moon and the northern
night made his dark dress difficult to see in the shadows of the hedges
and trees.

I knew that Deborah would take the usual path to the rocks, and bade
Fred follow close behind me while I took a shorter route. In ten minutes
we were again under cover when the girl passed close by us, her long
hair knotted roughly into a mass of rolls about her large and
well-formed head. Her eyes were open, and fixed in a glassy stare
straight ahead. She seemed to move along, rather than walk, and had no
appearance of either hesitation or haste; and Kermode, with his dog and
his gun, stealthily followed in her wake not twenty yards behind.

While we were crossing the field bordering the Gordon haughs, keeping
under the shadow of a gorse-clad hedge, Deborah disappeared over the
cliff, and the man, watched by Fred and myself, crept up to the edge of
the cliffs down which the poor girl had descended.

Before another minute had elapsed, Kermode had stretched himself out
his full length on a craig which overlooked the precipitous rocks down
which Deborah had disappeared. We then secured the cover of a mound not
thirty feet away from him.

The dog gave a low whine when he saw the head of his master craned out
to watch the movements of the white figure descending the rocks, and
then all was quiet as before.

Fred's suspense and anxiety for the safety of the girl was apparent in
his hard breathing; but my own were inconsiderable, for I knew that if
undisturbed by any noise unusual to the night, or any interference by
the fellow who now held the future happiness of Andrew, the smith, in
his hands she would safely climb up the haugh and make her way home to
bed, all unconscious of the awful position she had placed herself in.

Wicked as I knew the man to be, I did not now imagine that he had any
other intention in watching around the house than to try to discover
Andrew paying a nocturnal visit, with some gulls' egg