to laugh. What a
laugh it was!

"No matter," he said; "no matter. Now I've nowt left, I've nowt to lose.
There's comfort in that, anyways. Ha! ha! ha! But my heart is like to
choke for all. You say reet, Mr. Ritson, there's villainy in it."

The old man's eyes wandered vacantly.

"Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father--broken-hearted--him
'at loved her--no matter, I've nowt left to--Ha! ha! ha!"

He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered
face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms.
They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead.

Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and
looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his
brother's arms.

Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered.

"Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes
traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless
work; and may the sight follow him to his death!"

At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the
old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and
put a glass of water to his lips.

CHAPTER VIII.

In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a
cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a
"griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and
barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta
Lowther sat together.

At intervals that grew shorter, and with a grave face that became more
anxious, Mrs. Ritson walked to the door and looked out into the
thickening sky. The young people had been too much absorbed to notice
her increasing perturbation, until she opened a clothes-chest and took
out dry flannels and spread them on the hearth to air.

"Don't worrit yourself, mother," said Paul. "He'll be here soon. He had
to cross the Coledale Pass, and that's a long stroke of the ground, you
know."

"It's an hour past supper-time," said Mrs. Ritson, glancing aside at the
old clock that ticked audibly from behind the great arm-chair. "The rain
is coming again--listen!" There was a light patter of rain-drops against
the window-panes. "If he's on the fells now he'll be wet to the skin."

"I wish I'd gone in place of him," said Paul, turning to Greta. "A bad
wetting troubles him nowadays. Not same as of old, when he'd follow the
fells all