ore
might come of it after all, but he had done the task he had set
himself without flinching, and that was a satisfaction. He wound
up his watch, which he had forgotten to do the night before, and
then stood up, and threw his damp plaid aside, and swung his arm
across his chest to restore circulation. The crescent moon was
high up in the sky, faint and white, and he could scarcely now
make out the stars which were fading out as the glow in the
north-east got stronger and broader.

Forgetting for a moment the purpose of his vigil, he was thinking
of a long morning's fishing, and had turned to pick up his plaid
and go off to the house for his fishing-rod, when he thought he
heard the sound of dry wood snapping. He listened intently; and
the next moment it came again, some way off, but plainly to be
heard in the intense stillness of the morning. Some living thing
was moving down the stream. Another moment's listening and he was
convinced that the sound came from a hedge some hundred yards
below.

He had noticed the hedge before; the keeper had stopped up a gap
in it the day before, at the place where it came down to the
water, with some old hurdles and dry thorns. He drew himself up
behind his alder, looking out from behind it cautiously towards
the point from which the sound came. He could just make out the
hedge through the mist, but saw nothing.

But now the crackling began again, and he was sure that a man was
forcing his way over the keeper's barricade. A moment afterwards
he saw a figure drop from the hedge into the slip in which he
stood. He drew back his head hastily, and his heart beat like a
hammer as he waited the approach of the stranger. In a few
seconds the suspense was too much for him, for again there was
perfect silence. He peered out a second time cautiously round the
tree, and now he could make out the figure of a man stopping by
the water-side just above the hedge, and drawing in a line. This
was enough, and he drew back again, and made himself small behind
the tree; now he was sure that the keeper's enemy, the man he had
come out to take, was here! His next halt would be at the line
which was set within a few yards of the place where he stood. So
the struggle which he had courted was come! All his doubts of the
night wrestled in his mind for a minute; but forcing them down,
he strung himself up for the encounter, his whole frame trembling
with excitement, and his blood tingling through his veins