LITMIR.BIZ

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and harrying bees’ hives, or playing with millers’ boys, could find no place in his thoughts.

      Archie lost his way once or twice, and it grew quite dark. He was wondering what he should do when he noticed a light spring up not far away, and commenced walking towards it. It came from the little window of a rustic cottage, and the boy knew at once now in which way to steer.

      Curiosity, however, impelled him to draw near to the window. He gave just one glance in, but very quickly drew back. Sitting round a table was a gang of half a dozen poachers. He knew them as the worst and most notorious evil-doers in all the country round. They were eating and drinking, and guns stood in the corners, while the men themselves seemed ready to be off somewhere.

      Away went Archie. He wanted no nearer acquaintance with a gang like that.

      In his way home he had to pass Bob Cooper’s cottage, and thought he might just look in, because Bob had a whole book of new flies getting ready for him, and perhaps they were done.

      Bob was out, and his mother was sitting reading the good Book by the light of a little black oil lamp. She looked very anxious, and said she felt so. Her laddie had “never said where he was going. Only just went away out, and hadn’t come back.”

      It was Archie’s turn now to be anxious, when he thought of the gang, and the dark work they might be after. Bob was not among them, but who could tell that he would not join afterwards?

      He bade the widow “Good-night,” and went slowly homewards thinking.

      He found everyone in a state of extreme anxiety. Hours ago Tell had galloped to his stable door, and if there be anything more calculated to raise alarm than another, it is the arrival at his master’s place of a riderless horse.

      But Archie’s appearance, alive and intact, dispelled the cloud, and dinner was soon announced.

      “Oh, by the way,” said Archie’s tutor, as they were going towards the dining-room, “your old friend Bob Cooper has been here, and wants to see you! I think he is in the kitchen now.”

      Away rushed Archie, and sure enough there was Bob eating supper in old Kate’s private room.

      He got up as Archie’s entered, and looked shy, as people of his class do at times.

      Archie was delighted.

      “I brought the flies, and some new sorts that I think will do for the Kelpie burn,” he said.

      “Well, I’m going to dine, Bob; you do the same. Don’t go till I see you. How long have you been here?”

      “Two hours, anyhow.”

      When Archie returned he invited Bob to the room in the Castle Tower. Kate must come too, and Branson with his fiddle.

      Away went Archie and his rough friend, and were just finishing a long debate about flies and fishing when Kate and Peter, and Branson and Bounder, came up the turret stairs and entered the room.

      Archie then told them all of what he had seen that night at the cottage.

      “Mark my words for it,” said Bob, shaking his head, “they’re up to some black work to-night.”

      “You mustn’t go yet awhile, Bob,” Archie said. “We’ll have some fun, and you’re as well where you are.”

      Chapter Eight

      The Widow’s Lonely Hut

      Bob Cooper bade Archie and Branson good-bye that night at the bend of the road, some half mile from his own home, and trudged sturdily on in the starlight. There was sufficient light “to see men as trees walking.”

      “My mother’ll think I’m out in th’ woods,” Bob said to himself. “Well, she’ll be glad when she knows she’s wrong this time.”

      Once or twice he started, and looked cautiously, half-fearfully, round him; for he felt certain he saw dark shadows in the field close by, and heard the stealthy tread of footsteps.

      He grasped the stout stick he carried all the firmer, for the poacher had made enemies of late by separating himself from a well-known gang of his old associates – men who, like the robbers in the ancient ballad —

      “Slept all day and waked all night,

      And kept the country round in fright.”

      On he went; and the strange, uncomfortable feeling at his heart was dispelled as, on rounding a corner of the road, he saw the light glinting cheerfully from his mother’s cottage.

      “Poor old creature,” he murmured half aloud, “many a sore heart I’ve given her. But I’ll be a better boy now. I’ll – ”

      “Now, lads,” shouted a voice, “have at him!”

      “Back!” cried Bob Cooper, brandishing his cudgel. “Back, or it’ll be worse for you!”

      The dark shadows made a rush. Bob struck out with all his force, and one after another fell beneath his arm. But a blow from behind disabled him at last, and down he went, just as his distracted mother came rushing, lantern in hand, from her hut. There was the sharp click of the handcuffs, and Bob Cooper was a prisoner. The lantern-light fell on the uniforms of policemen.

      “What is it? Oh, what has my laddie been doin’?”

      “Murder, missus, or something very like it! There has been dark doin’s in th’ hill to-night!”

      Bob grasped the nearest policeman by the arm with his manacled hands. “When – when did ye say it had happened?”

      “You know too well, lad. Not two hours ago. Don’t sham innocence; it sits but ill on a face like yours.”

      “Mother,” cried Bob bewilderingly, “I know nothing of it! I’m innocent!”

      But his mother heard not his words. She had fainted, and with rough kindness was carried into the hut and laid upon the bed. When she revived some what they left her.

      It was a long, dismal ride the unhappy man had that night; and indeed it was well on in the morning before the party with their prisoner reached the town of B – .

      Bob’s appearance before a magistrate was followed almost instantly by his dismissal to the cells again. The magistrate knew him. The police had caught him “red-handed,” so they said, and had only succeeded in making him prisoner “after a fierce resistance.”

      “Remanded for a week,” without being allowed to say one word in his own defence.

      The policeman’s hint to Bob’s mother about “dark doin’s in th’ hill” was founded on fearful facts. A keeper had been killed after a terrible melée with the gang of poachers, and several men had been severely wounded on both sides.

      The snow-storm that came on early on the morning after poor Bob Cooper’s capture was one of the severest ever remembered in Northumbria. The frost was hard too all day long. The snow fell incessantly, and lay in drifts like cliffs, fully seven feet high, across the roads.

      The wind blew high, sweeping the powdery snow hither and thither in gusts. It felt for all the world like going into a cold shower-bath to put one’s head even beyond the threshold of the door. Nor did the storm abate even at nightfall; but next day the wind died down, and the face of the sky became clear, only along the southern horizon the white clouds were still massed like hills and cliffs.

      It was not until the afternoon that news reached Burley Old Farm of the fight in the woods and death of the keeper. It was a sturdy old postman who had brought the tidings. He had fought his way through the snow with the letters, and his account of the battle had well-nigh caused old Kate to swoon away. When Mary, the little parlour maid, carried the mail in to her master she did not hesitate to relate what she had heard.

      Squire Broadbent himself with Archie repaired to the kitchen, and found the postman surrounded by the startled servants, who were drinking in every word he said.

      “One man killed, you say, Allan?”

      “Ay, sir, killed dead enough. And it’s a providence they

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