ad come down to cover him,
he slipped out and away on some errand on which not even Red Wull
accompanied him.

* * * * *

So the time glided on, till the Sunday before the Trials came round.

All that day M'Adam sat in his kitchen, drinking, muttering, hatching
revenge.

"Curse it, Wullie! curse it! The time's slippin'--slippin'--slippin'!
Thursday next--but three days mair! and I haena the proof--I haena the
proof!"--and he rocked to and fro, biting his nails in the agony of his
impotence.

All day long he never moved. Long after sunset he sat on; long after
dark had eliminated the features of the room.

"They're all agin us, Wullie. It's you and I alane, lad. M'Adam's to be
beat somehow, onyhow; and Moore's to win. So they've settled it, and
so 'twill be--onless, Wullie, onless--but curse it! I've no the
proof!"--and he hammered the table before him and stamped on the floor.

At midnight he arose, a mad, desperate plan looming through his fuddled
brain.

"I swore I'd pay him, Wullie, and I will. If I hang for it I'll be even
wi' him. I haena the proof, but I _know_--I _know_!" He groped his way
to the mantel piece with blind eyes and swirling brain. Reaching up
with fumbling hands, he took down the old blunderbuss from above the
fireplace.

"Wullie," he whispered, chuckling hideously, "Wullie, come on! You and
I--he! he!" But the Tailless Tyke was not there. At nightfall he had
slouched silently out of the house on business he best wot of. So his
master crept out of the room alone--on tiptoe, still chuckling.

The cool night air refreshed him, and he stepped stealthily along,
his quaint weapon over his shoulder: down the hill; across the Bottom;
skirting the Pike; till he reached the plank-bridge over the Wastrel.

He crossed it safely, that Providence whose care is drunkards placing
his footsteps. Then he stole up the slope like a hunter stalking his
prey.

Arrived at the gate, he raised himself cautiously, and peered over into
the moonlit yard. There was no sign or sound of living creature. The
little gray house slept peacefully in the shadow of the Pike, all
unaware of the man with murder in his heart laboriously climbing the
yard-gate.

The door of the porch was wide, the chain hanging limply down, unused;
and the little man could see within, the moon shining on the iron studs
of the inner door, and the blanket of him who should have slept there,
and did not.

"He