nd who seemed
likely to cause dissension there.

Not long after this eventful morning, Ralph overheard his father and
Wilson in hot dispute at the other side of a hedge. He could learn
nothing of a definite nature. Angus was at the full pitch of
indignation. Wilson, he said, had threatened him; or, at least, his
own flesh and blood. He had told the man never to come near
Shoulthwaite Moss again.

"An' he does," said the dalesman, his eyes aflame, "I'll toitle him
into the beck till he's as wankle as a wet sack."

He was not so old but that he could have kept his word. His great
frame seemed closer knit at sixty than it had been at thirty. His
face, with its long, square, gray beard, looked severer than ever
under his cloth hood. Wilson returned no more, and the promise of a
drenching was never fulfilled.

The ungainly little Scot did not leave the Wythburn district. He
pitched his tent with the village tailor in a little house at
Fornside, close by the Moss. The tailor himself, Simeon Stagg, was
kept pitiably poor in that country, when one sack coat of homespun
cloth lasted a shepherd half a lifetime. He would have lived a
solitary as well as a miserable life but for his daughter Rotha, a
girl of nineteen, who kept his little home together and shared his
poverty when she might have enjoyed the comforts of easier homes
elsewhere.

"Your father is nothing but an ache and a stound to you, lass," Sim
would say in a whimper. "It'll be well for you, Rotha, when you give
me my last top-sark and take me to the kirkyard yonder," the little
man would snuffle audibly.

"Hush, father," the girl would say, putting the palm of her hand
playfully over his mouth, "you'll be sonsie-looking yet."

Sim was heavily in debt, and this preyed on his mind. He had always
been a grewsome body, sustaining none of the traditions of his craft
for perky gossip. Hence he was no favorite in Wythburn, where few or
none visited him. Latterly Sim's troubles seemed to drive him from his
home for long walks in the night. While the daylight lasted his work
gave occupation to his mind, but when the darkness came on he had no
escape from haunting thoughts, and roamed about the lanes in an effort
to banish them. It was to this man's home that Wilson turned when he
was shut out of Shoulthwaite Moss. Naturally enough, the sinister Scot
was a welcome if not an agreeable guest when he came as lodger, with
money to pay, where poverty itself seemed host.