stumbling.

At her feet was the back of the dead man's head, the face wedged into
the wheel-rut, with the beard pushed up between the left cheek and the
hardened edge of mud. The channel of the rut, where she could see down
into it between ear and shoulder, seemed full of the blood which had
dyed the shirt-collar and the shoulder of the coat.

And aimed at her eyes, like an accusing finger, there stuck out from the
hairy neck the point of Dutch Fridji's knife.

An absurd sense of guilt, maudlin pity for mere death, and dread of the
unknown, crowding in cruel rivalry to destroy her weakened self-control,
sent her staggering to Dick over ground which seemed to rise and fall
like the sea. For she was keeping hold on common sense by the thought
that there was something that Dick wanted--what, she had forgotten--but
she had it, and he must have it.

He had seen her bending over Ockley, and went to meet her.

Dimly she saw him, and stretched out her hands, lifting the pistol.

"It's for you," she said; and fainted, falling forward into his arms.

CHAPTER XIV.

PENNY PANSY.

Dick Bellamy lifted the girl and carried her to a spot where he could
lay her down with head a little lower than heels; watched her until the
colour of the face improved and the breath became more regular; and then
made use of her insensibility to pay his last duty to the dead.

Without moving the body, he went through the pockets, finding nothing
worth keeping except a few letters and a bunch of keys; for revolver
cartridges there were none.

For a moment he regarded the grim dagger point, deciding to leave it
where it was.

"If Melchard finds it," he thought, "he'll think it's something to do
with his little Dutch trollop."

Returning to Amaryllis, he stood once more looking down at her.

He could not carry her in her present state two miles across the moor in
the growing heat, and with only one of their five enemies safely dead,
while the four others hung on his flank, cunning and desperate, if able
to think and act.

And there was Fridji--she was surely herself again--either screaming or
at liberty.

His own stomach, in spite of his few mouthfuls at "The Coach and
Horses," reminded him that Amaryllis had not eaten during the last
thirteen, or fourteen hours.

A little breeze had arisen, blowing from the south-east, and brought
with it to his nostrils the smell of wood-smoke. He looked at the pile
of cut wood.

"I ought t