's brood escape!
She is a woman, this Elsie, and will breed the like--murderers and
monsters every one! She is a Stennis, and we have had enough of such.
To Breckonside! To the Bridge End! Find the heiress, chosen as the
fittest to succeed the man-slayers and make an end! Hang her quick to
a tree!"

I could now see what my father had meant by leaving the place so
hurriedly. Mr. Ablethorpe, who knew, had warned him of what was
coming. And that, as there was no other outlet for the passions of the
angry mob, Elsie might be in some temporary danger of violence and ill
usage, if of nothing worse. Therefore, he had hurried off, taking Rob
Kingsman with him. As for me, even while thinking these thoughts, I
was swept out of the doorway, and carried along by the throng, my feet
scarcely touching the ground. The mob, chiefly rough Bewick miners and
labourers, took the road toward the Bridge End of Brecksonside at a
trot, bawling "Death and vengeance!" against all of the blood of
Stennis.

And there was now but one of that name and race--Elsie!

CHAPTER XXXVII

I AM HEROIC

You may be sure that I kept up with the crowd. It was a disagreeable
crowd--Bewick Muir pitmen, and the navvies from the East Dene and
Thorsby waterworks--they were making a new pipe-line through the Bewick
Beck Valley, and the navvies were interested in poaching--so that was
what had brought them so far from home. Only the few Breckonside
people who had not left early knew anything bout Elsie.

All that was known to the bulk of those present was that Hobby Stennis
had amassed a great fortune by entrapping and making away with drovers,
farmers and cattle dealers--that he had rigged out Deep Moat Grange for
that purpose, and that in his last will and testament he had expressed
a wish that his heirs should continue the business. The sole heir
appeared to be a certain Elsie, and her they naturally enough took for
a dangerous malefactor.

There must, however, have been a Breckonside traitor among them, for as
soon as they reached the town they made straight for the cottage at the
Bridge End. The door was burst in, the poor furniture turned
topsy-turvy--Elsie's books thrown about. But I knew better than to
interfere at this point. There was something much more serious coming.

I knew very well that my father would never let poor Nance Edgar suffer
for something that she had not been mixed in at all. When Joseph
Yarrow started in to