of the great dailies, articles on the "Agrarian Outrages"
appeared, followed by lengthy correspondence. Controversy raged high;
each correspondent had his own theory and his own solution of the
problem; and each waxed indignant as his were discarded for another's.

The Terror had reigned already two months when, with the advent of the
lambing-time, matters took a yet more serious aspect.

It was bad enough to lose one sheep, often the finest in the pack; but
the hunting of a flock at a critical moment, which was incidental to the
slaughter of the one, the scaring of these woolly mothers-about-to-be
almost out of their fleeces, spelt for the small farmers something akin
to ruin, for the bigger ones a loss hardly bearable.

Such a woful season had never been known; loud were the curses, deep
the vows of revenge. Many a shepherd at that time patrolled all night
through with his dogs, only to find in the morning that the Killer had
slipped him and havocked in some secluded portion of his beat.

It was heartrending work; and all the more so in that, though his
incrimination seemed as far off as ever, there was still the same
positiveness as to the culprit's identity.

Long Kirby, indeed, greatly daring, went so far on one occasion as to
say to the little man: "And d'yo' reck'n the Killer is a sheep-dog,
M'Adam?"

"I do," the little man replied with conviction.

"And that he'll spare his own sheep?"

"Niver a doubt of it."

"Then," said the smith with a nervous cackle, "it must lie between you
and Tupper and Saunderson."

The little man leant forward and tapped the other on the arm.

"Or Kenmuir, ma friend," he said. "Ye've forgot Kenmuir."

"So I have," laughed the smith, "so I have."

"Then I'd not anither time," the other continued, still tapping. "I'd
mind Kenmuir, d'ye see, Kirby?"

* * * * *

It was about the middle of the lambing-time, when the Killer was working
his worst, that the Dalesmen had a lurid glimpse of Adam M'Adam as he
might be were he wounded through his Wullie.

Thus it came about: It was market-day in Grammoch-town, and in the
Border Ram old Rob Saunderson was the centre of interest. For on the
previous night Rob, who till then had escaped unscathed, had lost a
sheep to the Killer: and--far worse--his flock of Herdwicks, heavy in
lamb, had been galloped with disastrous consequences.

The old man, with tears in his eyes, was telling how on four nights t