t all his cursed cruelty--we can laugh, and
we can die laughing, and we can die when we please. Yes, that's one
thing he can't do--torment us an hour more than we choose."

Suicide was always a familiar thought with this man, but it had never
been farther from his mind than of late. Cowardly in himself, his love
for Chris Blanchard was too great to suffer even the shadow of
self-slaughter to tempt him at the present moment. What might happen in
the future, he could not tell; but while her happiness was threatened
and her life's welfare hung in the balance, his place was by her side.
Then he looked into Will Blanchard's future and asked himself what was
the worst that could result from his pending treachery. He did not know
and wished time had permitted him to make inquiries. But his soul was
too weary to care. He only looked for the ordeal to be ended; his aching
eyes, now bent on his temporal environment, ranged widely for the
spectacle of a rider on a brown horse.

A red flag flapped from a lofty pole at the foot of Steeperton, but
Hicks, to whom the object and its significance were familiar, paid no
heed and passed on towards Oke Tor. On one side the mass rose gradually
up by steps and turrets; on the other, the granite beetled into a low
cliff springing abruptly from the turf. Within its clefts and crannies
there grew ferns, and to the north-east, sheltered under ledges from the
hot sun, cattle and ponies usually stood or reclined upon such a summer
day as this, and waited for the oncoming cool of evening before
returning to pasture. On the present occasion, however, no stamp of
hoof, snort of nostril, whisk of tail, and hum of flies denoted the
presence of beasts. For some reason they had been driven elsewhere.
Clement climbed the Tor, then stood upon its highest point, and turning
his back to the sun, scanned the wide rolling distances over which he
had tramped, and sought fruitlessly for an approaching horseman. But no
particular hour had been specified, and he knew not and cared not how
long he might have to wait.

In a direction quite contrary to that on which the eyes of Hicks were
set, sat John Grimbal upon his horse and talked with another man. They
occupied a position at the lower-most end of Taw Marsh, beneath the
Belstones; and they watched some seventy artillerymen busily preparing
for certain operations of a nature to specially interest the master of
the Red House. Indeed the pending proceedings had u