both
understood and neither needed to explain.

"Do the words of a song ever torment you, Liza, rising up in your mind
again and again, and refusing to go away?"

"No--why?" said Liza, simply.

"Nothing--only I can't get a song out of my head today. It comes back
and back--

One lonely foot sounds on the keep,
And that's the warder's tread."

The girls had not gone far when they saw the object of their search
leaning over a low wall, and holding his hands to his eyes as though
straining his sight to catch a view of some object in the distance.
Simeon Stagg was already acquiring the abandoned look of the man who
is outlawed from his fellows. His hair and beard were growing long,
shaggy, and unkempt. They were beginning to be frosted with gray. His
dress was loose; he wore no belt. The haggard expression, natural to
his thin face, had become more marked.

Sim had not seen the girls, and in the prevailing wind his quick ear
had not caught the sound of their footsteps until they were nearly
abreast of him. When he became fully conscious of their presence,
Rotha was standing by his side, with her hand on his arm. Liza was a
pace or two behind.

"Father," said Rotha, "are you strong enough to make a long journey?"

Sim had turned his face full on his daughter's with an expression of
mingled shame, contrition, and pride. It was as though his heart
yearned for that love which he thought he had forfeited the right to
claim.

In a few words Rotha explained the turn of events. Sim's agitation
overpowered him. He walked to and fro in short, fitful steps, crying
that there was no help, no help.

"I thought I saw three men leading three horses up High Seat from
behind the smithy. It must have been those very taistrels, it must. I
was looking at them the minute you came up. See, there they are--there
beyond the ghyll on the mere side of yon big bowder. But they'll be at
the top in a crack, that they will--and the best man in Wythburn will
be taken--and there's no help, no help."

The little man strode up and down, his long, nervous fingers twitching
at his beard.

"Yes, but there _is_ help," said Rotha; "there _must_ be."

"How? How? Tell me--you're like your mother, you are--that was the
very look she had."

"Tell _me_, first, if Ralph intended to be on Stye Head or Wastdale
Head."

"He did--Stye Head--he left me to go there at daybreak this morning."

"Then he can be saved," said the girl firmly. "T