at first puzzled. Then he caught
the other's meaning, and his eyes flashed.

"Ye fool, M'Adam! did ye hear iver tell o' a sheep-dog worryin' his
master's sheep?"

The little man was smiling and suave again now, rubbing his hands softly
together.

"Ye're right, I never did. But your dog is not as ither dogs--'There's
none like him--none,' I've heard ye say so yersel, mony a time. An' I'm
wi' ye. There's none like him--for devilment." His voice began to quiver
and his face to blaze. "It's his cursed cunning that's deceived ivery
one but me--whelp o' Satan that he is!" He shouldered up to his tall
adversary. "If not him, wha else had done it?" he asked, looking, up
into the other's face as if daring him to speak.

The Master's shaggy eyebrows lowered. He towered above the other like
the Muir Pike above its surrounding hills.

"Wha, ye ask?" he replied coldly, "and I answer you. Your Red Wull,
M'Adam, your Red Wull. It's your Wull's the Black Killer! It's your
Wull's bin the plague o' the land these months past! It's your Wull's
killed ma sheep back o'yon!"

At that all the little man's affected good-humor fled.

"Ye lee, mon! ye lee!" he cried in a dreadful scream, dancing up to his
antagonist. "I knoo hoo 'twad be. I said so. I see what ye're at. Ye've
found at last--blind that ye've been!--that it's yer ain hell's tyke
that's the Killer; and noo ye think by yer leein' impitations to throw
the blame on ma Wullie. Ye rob me o' ma Cup, ye rob me o' ma son, ye
wrang me in ilka thing; there's but ae thing left me--Wullie. And noo
ye're set on takin' him awa'. But ye shall not--I'll kill ye first!"

He was all a-shake, bobbing up and down like a stopper in a soda-water
bottle, and almost sobbing.

"Ha' ye no wranged me enough wi' oo that? Ye lang-leggit liar, wi' yer
skulkin murderin' tyke!" he cried. "Ye say it's Wullie. Where's yer
proof?"--and he snapped his fingers in the other's face.

The Master was now as calm as his foe was passionate. "Where?" he
replied sternly; "why, there!" holding out his right hand. "Yon's proof
enough to hang a hunner'd." For lying in his broad palm was a little
bundle of that damning red hair.

"Where?"

"There!"

"Let's see it!" The little man bent to look closer.

"There's for yer proof!" he cried, and spat deliberately down into the
other's naked palm. Then he stood back, facing his enemy in a manner to
have done credit to a nobler deed.

James Moore strode forward. It lo