ars caught a sound--the sound of
someone moving stealthily among the fallen leaves. Seizing my gun, I
demanded who was there.

There was, however, no response. The instant I spoke the movement
ceased.

As far as I could judge, the person in concealment was within the wood
about ten yards from me, separated by an impenetrable thicket. As,
however, I stood out against the sky, my silhouette was, I knew, a
well-defined mark for anyone with fire-arms.

It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the victim at my
feet was a woman. But whom?

Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without
matches, I heard the movement repeated. Someone was quickly
receding--escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not
of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low
thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough
stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.

I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did
so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the
wall of the wood.

In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of whoever the fugitive
was, man or woman, was marvelous. I considered myself a fairly good
runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-plowed
land in the darkness and carrying my gun soon caused me to pant and
blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble
in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.

Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing
the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards
the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close
behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in
two directions, I lost all trace of the person who flew from me. Whoever
it was they had very cleverly gone into hiding in the undergrowth of one
or other of the two glens--which I could not decide.

I stood out of breath, the perspiration pouring from me, undecided how
to act.

Was it Leithcourt himself whom I had surprised?

That idea somehow became impressed upon me and I suddenly resolved to go
boldly across to Rannoch and ascertain for myself. Therefore, with the
excuse that I was belated on my walk home, I turned back down the glen,
and half an hour afterward entered the great well-lighted hall of the
castle where t