Rotha; the sleet is hard and slape."

"Don't heed me, Ralph; go faster; I'll follow."

Just then a sharp bark was heard close at hand, followed by another
and another, but in a different key. Laddie had met a friend.

"He's coming," Rotha said, catching her breath.

"He's here."

With the shrill cry of a hunted creature that has got back, wounded,
to its brethren, Sim seemed to leap upon them out of the darkness.

"Ralph, take me with you--take me with you; do not let me go back to
the fell to-night. I cannot go--no, believe me, I cannot--I dare not.
Take me, Ralph; have mercy on me; do not despise me for the coward
that I am; it's enough to make me curse the great God--no, no; not
that neither. But, Ralph, Ralph--"

The poor fellow would have fallen breathless and exhausted at Ralph's
feet, but he held him up and spoke firmly but kindly to him,--

"Bravely, Sim; bravely, man; there," he said, as the tailor regained
some composure.

"You sha'n't go back to-night. How wet you are, though! There's not a
dry rag to your body, man. You must first return with me to the fire
at the Red Lion, and then we'll go--"

"No, no, no!" cried Sim; "not there either--never there; better the
wind and rain, aye, better anything, than that."

And he turned his head over his shoulder as though peering into the
darkness behind. Ralph understood him. There were wilder companions
for this poor hunted creature than any that lived on the mountains.

"But you'll never live through the night in clothes like these."

Sim shivered with the cold; his teeth chattered; his lank hands shook
as with ague.

"Never live? Oh, but I must not die, Ralph; no not yet--not yet."

Was there, then, something still left in life that a poor outcast like
this should cling to it?

"I'll go back with you," he said more calmly. They turned, and with
Sim between them Ralph and Rotha began to retrace their steps. They
had not far to go, when Sim reeled like a drunken man, and when they
were within a few paces he stopped.

"No," he said, "I can't." His breath was coming quick and fast.

"Come, man, they shall give you the ingle bench; I'll see to that.
Come now," said Ralph soothingly.

"I've walked in front of this house for an hour to-night, I have,"
said Sim, "to and fro, to and fro, waiting for you; waiting, waiting;
starting at my own shadow cast from the dim lowe of the windows, and
then flying to hide when the door did at last--at long last--o