for his hunger and the dew off the thatch for his thirst.

Meanwhile the struggle between David and his father seemed coming to a
head. The little man's tongue wagged more bitterly than ever; now it was
never at rest--searching out sores, stinging, piercing.

Worst of all, he was continually dropping innuendoes, seemingly innocent
enough, yet with a world of subtile meaning at their back, respecting
Maggie. The leer and wink with which, when David came home from
Kenmuir at nights, he would ask the simple question, "And was she kind,
David--eh, eh?" made the boy's blood boil within him.

And the more effective the little man saw his shots to be, the more
persistently he plied them. And David retaliated in kind. It was a war
of reprisals. There was no peace; there were no truces in which to
bury the dead before the opponents set to slaying others. And every day
brought the combatants nearer to that final struggle, the issue of which
neither cared to contemplate.

* * * * *

There came a Saturday, toward the end of the spring, long to be
remembered by more than David in the Dale.

For that young man the day started sensationally. Rising before
cock-crow, and going to the window, the first thing he saw in the misty
dawn was the gaunt, gigantic figure of Red Wull, hounding up the hill
from the Stony Bottom; and in an instant his faith was shaken to its
foundation.

The dog was travelling up at a long, slouching trot; and as he rapidly
approached the house, David saw that his flanks were all splashed with
red mud, his tongue out, and the foam dripping from his jaws, as though
he had come far and fast.

He slunk up to the house, leapt on to the sill of the unused
back-kitchen, some five feet from the ground, pushed with his paw at the
cranky old hatchment, which was its only covering; and, in a second, the
boy, straining out of the window the better to see, heard the rattle of
the boards as the dog dropped within the house.

For the moment, excited as he was, David held his peace. Even the Black
Killer took only second place in his thoughts that morning. For this was
to be a momentous day for him.

That afternoon James Moore and Andrew would, he knew, be over at
Grammoch-town, and, his work finished for the day, he was resolved to
tackle Maggie and decide his fate. If she would have him--well, he would
go next morning and thank God for it, kneeling beside her in the
tiny village churc