e?"

"No: bring him here a prisoner, and my father will settle that."

"Very well, sir. We'll take him, dead or alive oh; but if I had my way,
I'd like to turn him over to my mother and all the women him and his
have robbed. Why, do you know, sir, night afore last the beggars
carried off a pickle-tub and two feather beds. And they call themselves
men."

Nick Garth spat on the ground in his disgust, closed one eye as he
looked at his young master, gave his mouth a sounding slap, and went
round at once to garden, stable, and barns, to quietly enlist the little
force, making each man swear secrecy, so that at nightfall not another
soul save the initiated had the slightest inkling of what was going on,
either at Cliff Castle or the Black Tor.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

ALLIED FORCES.

The crescent moon sank like a thin curve of light in the western sky
soon after nine o'clock that night. At ten the last light disappeared
at both places connected with the adventure, when Mark Eden lowered
himself from his window on to the top of the dining-hall bay, and from
thence to the ground.

Soon after, there was a faint whispering and chinking, and three dark
figures, carrying swords and pikes, descended the steep zigzag to the
bottom of the great tongue of rock, where six men were lying down
waiting; and a few minutes later, all well-armed, they were tramping in
single file through the darkness toward Steeple Stone. Their young
leader, armed only with his sword, and wearing a steel morion of rather
antiquated date, which could only be kept in place by a pad formed of a
carefully folded silk handkerchief, was at their head; and in obedience
to his stern command, not a word was spoken as they made for the
appointed tryst.

A similar scene had taken place in the dry moat of Cliff Castle; and at
the head of his little party of eight, Ralph Darley was silently on his
way to the Steeple Stone, a great rugged block of millstone-grit, which
rose suddenly from a bare place just at the edge of the moor.

The night was admirable for the venture, for it was dark, but not too
much so, there being just enough light to enable the men to avoid the
stones and bushes that lay in their way, which was wide of any regular
path or track.

Ralph's heart throbbed high with excitement, and in imagination he saw
the gang of ruffians beaten and wounded, secured by the ropes he had had
the foresight to make Nick Garth and Ram Jennings bring, and dr