know their names and warn somebody else. Any way, keep
your eye on Finlay, and let me know if he stirs."

A sensation of horror crept over Neal when his uncle left him. He
realised that he was hunting a fellow-creature, that the hunt might end
at any moment in the taking of human life. In Dunseveric Manse, while
the anger which the yeomen's blows and bonds had raised in him was
awake, while the enormity of Finlay's treachery was still fresh in his
mind, it seemed natural and right that the spy should be killed. Now,
when he had seen the man swagger down the street, when he had just
watched him cringe and apologize, when he had sat within a few feet of
him, it seemed a ghastly and horrible thing to track and pursue him for
his life. A cold sweat bathed his limbs. His hands trembled. He sat
on the stool near the fire shivering with cold and fear. He listened
intently. It was growing late, and the piper had stopped playing in the
street. The boys and girls who danced had gone home. There were
voices of passers by, but these grew rarer. Now and then there was the
trampling of a horse's hoofs on the road as some belated traveller from
Belfast pushed fast for home. A murmur of voices came to him from the
interior of the inn, he supposed from the tap-room to which his uncle
had gone, but he could hear nothing of what was said. Once the girl who
had served his supper came in and told him that his bed was ready if he
cared to go to it. Neal shook his head. Gradually he became drowsy. His
eyes closed. He nodded. Then the very act of nodding awoke him with a
start. He blamed himself for having gone near to sleeping at his post,
for being neglectful of the very first duty imposed on him. The horror
of the watch he was keeping returned on him. He felt that he was like
a murderer lurking in the dark for some unsuspecting victim. For Finlay
had no thought that he was distrusted, discovered, tracked. Then, to
steel himself against pity, he let his mind go back over the events of
the previous night. He thought of the scene in the MacClures' cottage,
of the heart-broken woman, of her husband riding with the brutal
troopers to a trial without justice and a death without pity. He felt
with his hand the blood caked on his own cheek, the scab on the cut
where the yeoman had struck him. He remembered Una's shriek and the
Comtesse's frantic struggles as the soldiers dragged them from their
hiding-place. Of his own rush to their rescue he rememb