p to the deep
water, down below where the narrows are, and we thought we'd trapped
him; but somehow he managed to scramble up the side and get up here, so
we set the dogs on, and they run him down. Look here, Master Mark; he'd
got all these trout. Fine 'uns too."

The man opened Ralph's creel, and held it out for Mark to see, the lad
nodding at the sight.

"Know'd where the good uns was."

"And what were you going to do with him?" said Mark quietly.

"We had to ketch him first," said the man, with a savagely stupid grin.
"And he give us a lot o' trouble, and we thought best thing to do was to
tie a stone to his neck and pitch him in one of the holes. But Tom,
here, said the master wouldn't like it, and seeing he was a Darley,
might like to make a sample of him, or keep him down in the mine to
work. So we tied him tight, and was going to swing him between us, and
carry him up to the gateway for the master to see. Then you come."

Mark made no sign of either satisfaction or anger, but stood thinking
for a minute or so, before turning again to where Ralph lay gazing
straight up to the sky, waiting for whatever fate might be his, and
setting his teeth hard in the firm determination to die sooner than ask
for mercy from the cruel young savage who stood before him with what
seemed to be a malicious grin upon his face.

And as he lay, Ralph thought of his school life, and all that had passed
there, and how strange it was that in the wild part of Midland England
there, amongst the mountains of the Peak, people could still be so
savage as to be able to follow their own wills to as great an extent as
did the barons and feudal chiefs of a couple of hundred years before.

Such thoughts as these had never come to him till after he had left home
for school, to find his level. Earlier in his boyhood his father had
appeared to him to be chief or king of the district, with a neighbour
who was a rival chief or king. He knew that King James ruled the land;
but that was England, away from the Peak. There, Sir Morton Darley,
knight, was head of all, and the laws of England did not seem to apply
anywhere there. Then he had gradually grown more enlightened, and never
more so than at the present moment, as he lay bound on the mossy stones,
feeling that unless his father came with a strong enough force to rescue
him, his fate might even be death. And the result? Would the law
punish the Edens for the deed? He felt that they w