gth. Then I think
ye might hit me wi' safety to your person, and honor to yourself."

He took a pace back, smiling.

"Feyther," said David, huskily, "one day yo'll drive me too far."

Chapter XX. THE SNAPPING OF THE STRING

THE spring was passing, marked throughout with the bloody trail of
the Killer. The adventure in the Scoop scared him for a while into
innocuousness; then he resumed his game again with redoubled zest.
It seemed likely he would harry the district till some lucky accident
carried him off, for all chance there was of arresting him.

You could still hear nightly in the Sylvester Arms and elsewhere the
assertion, delivered with the same dogmatic certainty as of old, "It's
the Terror, I tell yo'!" and that irritating, inevitable reply: "Ay; but
wheer's the proof?" While often, at the same moment, in a house not far
away, a little lonely man was sitting before a low-burnt fire, rocking
to and fro, biting his nails, and muttering to the great dog whose head
lay between his knees: "If we had but the proof, Wullie! if we had
but the proof! I'd give ma right hand aff my arm gin we had the proof
to-morrow."

Long Kirby, who was always for war when some one else was to do the
fighting, suggested that David should be requested, in the name of the
Dalesmen, to tell M'Adam that he must make an end to Red Wull. But Jim
Mason quashed the proposal, remarking truly enough that there was too
much bad blood as it was between father and son; while Tammas proposed
with a sneer that the smith should be his own agent in the matter.

Whether it was this remark of Tammas's which stung the big man into
action, or whether it was that the intensity of his hate gave him
unusual courage, anyhow, a few days later, M'Adam caught him lurking in
the granary of the Grange.

The little man may not have guessed his murderous intent; yet the
blacksmith's white-faced terror, as he crouched away in the darkest
corner, could hardly have escaped remark; though--and Kirby may thank
his stars for it--the treacherous gleam of a gun-barrel, ill-concealed
behind him, did.

"Hullo, Kirby!" said M'Adam cordially, "ye'll stay the night wi' me?"
And the next thing the big man heard was a giggle on the far side the
door, lost in the clank of padlock and rattle of chain. Then--through
a crack--"Good-night to ye. Hope ye'll be comfie." And there he stayed
that night, the following day and next night--thirty-six hours in all,
with swedes