est watershed in the county by an open,
low-sided valley on the southern shoulder of Cawsand. To the left lay
the mountain, and to the right tors of weathered granite, dim in the
changing moonlight. Before him was a small moor-pool, in summer a mere
reedy marsh, but now a bleak tarn, standing among dangerous mosses,
sending ghostly echoes across the solitude, as the water washed wearily
against the black peat shores, or rustled among the sere skeleton reeds
in the shallow bays.

Suddenly he stopped with a jar in his brain and a chill at his heart.
His breath came short, and raising one hand, he stood beating the
ground for half a minute with his foot. He gave a stealthy glance
around, and then murmured hoarsely to himself,--

"Aye, that would do; that would do well. And I could do it, too, when I
was half-drunk."

Was that the devil, chuckling joyous to himself across the bog? No,
only an innocent little snipe, getting merry over the change of
weather, bleating to his companions as though breeding time were come
round again.

Crowd close, little snipes, among the cup-moss and wolf's-foot, for he
who stalks past you over the midnight moor, meditates a foul and
treacherous murder in his heart.

Yes, it had come to that, and so quickly. He would get this man Lee,
who held his life in his hand, and was driving him on from crime to
crime, to meet him alone on the moor if he could, and shoot him. What
surety had he that Lee would leave him in peace after this next
extortion? none but his word,--the word of a villain like that. He knew
what his own word was worth; what wonder if he set a small value on
Lee's? He might be hung as it was; he would be hung for something. Taw
Steps was a wild place, and none were likely to miss either Lee or his
friend. It would be supposed they had tramped off as they came. There
could be no proof against him, none whatever. No one had ever seen them
together. They must both go. Well, two men were no worse than one.
Hatherleigh had killed four men with his own hand at Waterloo, and they
gave him a medal for it. They were likely honest fellows enough, not
such scoundrels as these two.

So arguing confusedly with himself, only one thing certain in his mind,
that he was committed to the perpetration of this crime, and that the
time for drawing back was passed long ago, he walked rapidly onwards
towards the little village where he had left his horse in an outhouse,
fearing to trust him among