Mr.
Garth, growling again.

"And if he took it afterwards, what matter?" said Constable Jonathan,
with an expression of contempt. "Push on, there. Here we're at the
top. Is it down now? What's that below? A house, truly--a house at
last. Who's that running from it? We must be near our trysting place.
Is that our man? Come, if we are to do this thing, let us do it."

"It's the fellow Ray, to a certainty," said the little man, pricking
his horse into a canter as soon as he reached the first fields of
Ennerdale.

In a few minutes the three men had drawn up at the cottage on the
breast of Brandreth where Sim had asked for a drink.

"Mistress! Hegh! hegh! Who was the man that left you just now?"

"I dunnet know wha't war--some feckless body, I'm afeart. He was a'
wizzent and savvorless. He begged ma a drink o' milk, but lang ere a
cud cum tul him he was gane his gate like yan dazt-like."

"Who could this be? It's not our man clearly. Who could it be,
blacksmith?"

The gentleman addressed had turned alternately white and red at the
woman's description. There had flashed upon his brain the idea that
little Lizzie Branthwaite had betrayed him.

"I reckon it must have been that hang-gallows of a tailor--that Sim,"
he said, perspiring from head to foot.

"And he's here to carry tidings of our coming. Push on--follow the
man--heed this blockhead no longer."

VI. The procession of mourners, with Robbie Anderson and the mare at its
head, had walked slowly down Borrowdale after the men on foot had
turned back towards Withburn. Following the course of the winding
Derwent, they had passed the villages of Stonethwaite and Seathwaite,
and in two hours from the time they set out from Shoulthwaite they had
reached the foot of Stye Head Pass. The brightness of noon had now
given place to the chill leaden atmosphere of a Cumbrian December.

In the bed of the dale they were sheltered from the wind, but they saw
the mists torn into long streaks overhead, and knew that the storm had
not abated. When they came within easy range of the top of the great
gap between the mountains over which they were to pass, they saw for a
moment a man's figure clearly outlined against the sky.

"He's yonder," thought Robbie, and urged on the mare with her burden.
He remembered that Ralph had said, "Chain the young horse to the mare
at the bottom of the pass," and he did so. Before going far, however,
he found this new arrangement impeded rather