med it full at his enemy's head.

The threatened man looked down the gun's great quivering mouth, wholly
unmoved.

"Yo' mon hold it steadier, little mon, if yo'd hit!" he said grimly.
"There, I'll coom help yo'!" He withdrew slowly; and all the time was
wondering where the gray dog was.

In another moment he was downstairs, undoing the bolts and bars of the
door. On the other side stood M'Adam, his blunderbuss at his shoulder,
his finger trembling on the trigger, waiting.

"Hi, Master! Stop, or yo're dead!" roared a voice from the loft on the
other side the yard.

"Feyther! feyther! git yo' back!" screamed Maggie, who saw it all from
the window above the door.

Their cries were too late! The blunderbuss went off with a roar,
belching out a storm of sparks and smoke. The shot peppered the door
like hail, and the whole yard seemed for a moment wrapped in flame.

"Aw! oh! ma gummy! A'm waounded A'm a goner! A'm shot! 'Elp! Murder! Eh!
Oh!" bellowed a lusty voice--and it was not James Moore's.

The little man, the cause of the uproar, lay quite still upon the
ground, with another figure standing over him. As he had stood, finger
on trigger, waiting for that last bolt to be drawn, a gray form,
shooting whence no one knew, had suddenly and silently attacked him from
behind, and jerked him backward to the ground. With the shock of the
fall the blunderbuss had gone off.

The last bolt was thrown back with a clatter, and the Master emerged. In
a glance he took in the whole scene: the fallen man; the gray dog; the
still-smoking weapon.

"Yo', was't Bob lad?" he said. "I was wonderin' wheer yo' were. Yo'
came just at the reet moment, as yo' aye do!" Then, in a loud voice,
addressing the darkness: "Yo're not hurt, Sam'l Todd--I can tell that
by yer noise; it was nob'but the shot off the door warmed yo'. Coom away
doon and gie me a hand."

He walked up to M'Adam, who still lay gasping on the ground. The shock
of the fall and recoil of the weapon had knocked the breath out of the
little man's body; beyond that he was barely hurt.

The Master stood over his fallen enemy and looked sternly down at him.

"I've put up wi' more from you, M'Adam, than I would from ony other
man," he said. "But this is too much--comin' here at night wi' loaded
arms, scarin' the wimmen and childer oot o' their lives, and I can
but think meanin' worse. If yo' were half a man I'd gie yo' the finest
thrashin' iver yo' had in yer life. But, as yo