face, as he retired cowed and baffled to the window-seat, where the side light brought out all that was most repulsive in his craven features, told a tale there was no mistaking. The child stayed awhile, fascinated by the spectacle, and saw the woman take her seat on the meal chest and spin, smiling and patient, while Gridley gnawed his nails and devoured her with his eyes. But the longer he watched the more frightened he grew; and at last he broke the spell with an effort, and fled to the purer air outside.

He was wise, for the morn was at its best. It was the most perfect morning of the year. Ingleborough had no cap on, Penighent stood up hard and sharp against the blue sky. The summer sunshine, unrelieved by a single cloud or so much as a wreath of mist, fell hotly on the open moor, where the larks sank and the bees hummed, and the boy's heart rose in sympathy with the life about him. Feeling an unwonted lightness and cheerfulness, he started to climb the fell at the back of the house, following the right bank of the hollow in which the yew-trees grew. This hollow, as it rose to a level with the upper moor, spent itself in a dozen fissures, which, radiating in every direction, drained the moss. Some were three or four feet deep, some ten or twelve, with steep and everhanging edges.

Presently the boy found his progress barred by one of these, and peeping into its shadowy depths, which a little to his left melted into the gloom of the yew-trees, grew timid and stopped, sitting down and looking back the way he had come, to gain courage. For a while his eyes dwelt idly on the sunny slope. Then on a sudden he saw a sight which he remembered all his life.

A quarter of a mile below the house, a road crossed the moor. On this a solitary horseman had just appeared, urging a piebald horse to a tired trot, while continually looking back the way he had come. The boy had scarcely remarked him and the strange color of his steed, when a second rider came into sight over the brow, with a man running by his side and clinging to his stirrup-leather. To him succeeded two more horsemen, trotting abreast and spurring furiously; and then while the lad wondered what it all meant, and who these people were, a single footman topped the brow, and after running a score of paces--but not in the direction the others had taken--flung himself down on his face among the bracken.

Flung himself on his face among the bracken.--Page 59.

He had scarcely executed this manœuvre, when a party of six men, three mounted--the boy could see them rising and falling briskly in their stirrups--and three running beside them, appeared above the ridge, and quickening their pace followed with a loud cry on the others' heels. The cry seemed to spur on the fugitives--such he now saw the first party to be--to fresh exertions, but despite this, the two horsemen who brought up the rear were quickly overtaken by the six. The lad saw a tiny flash and heard a faint report. One of the two threw up his arms and fell backwards. The other made as if he would have turned his horse to meet his pursuers; but it shied and carried him across the moor. Two of the six rode after him, one on either side, and the lad saw the flash of their blades in the sunshine as they rained cuts on his head and shoulders--which the poor wretch vainly strove to shield by raising his arms--till he too sank down, and the two turned back to their comrades, who were still following after the three who survived.

The boy, sick and shuddering, and utterly unmanned by the sight he had seen, hid his eyes; and for a time saw no more. His very heart melted within him for terror and for pity. Sweating all over, he rolled himself into a little hollow beside him where the ground sank, and lay there trembling. By-and-by he heard a scream, and then another, and each time he drew in his breath and closed his eyes. Then silence fell again upon the moor. The bees hummed round him. A peewit screamed and wheeled above his head.

He plucked up heart after a while to peep fearfully over the edge of the little basin in which he lay, and saw that the six men were retracing their steps, but not, as they had gone, in a body. They were now beating the moor backwards in a long line, each man a score of paces from his neighbor. The lad, after watching them a moment, had wit enough to understand what they were doing, and from his elevated position could see also their quarry, who had lost no time in removing himself from the spot where he had first thrown himself down in the fern. He was half way up the fell now, on a level with the farm, and a hundred paces above the uppermost of his enemies. Apparently he was satisfied with his position, or despaired of bettering it, for he lay still, though the searchers drew each moment nearer.

Jack could see their flushed cheeks and streaming brows as they toiled along in the sunshine, probing the fern with pikes and going sometimes many yards out of the way to inspect a likely bush. He felt his heart stand still when they halted opposite the man's lair and seemed to suspect something; and again he felt it race on as if it would choke him, when they passed by unnoticing, and began to quarter the ground towards the farm.

Their backs were scarcely turned before the man, whose conduct from the first had proved him a hardy and resolute fellow, moved again, and crawling stealthily on his stomach, as the ground afforded him shelter, began to make his way up the hill. The lad, lying still and fascinated, watched him; forseeing that the fugitive's course must bring him, if pursued, to the hollow in which he lay, yet unable to move or escape. It seemed an age before the man reached the mound, and wriggling himself up its least exposed side, pushed his head cautiously over the rim, and met the boy's eyes.

Both started violently; but whereas Jack saw before him only a swollen, blood-stained face, white and haggard with fatigue, and half disguised by a kerchief which covered the man's brow and came down to his eyes, the man saw more--much more.

"Jack!" he muttered, the instinct of caution remaining with him even in his great astonishment. "Jack! Why, don't you know me, lad? It is I, Frank."

"Frank?"

"Ay, Frank! You know me now."

The boy did know him then, more by his voice than his face; and broke into a passion of weeping, holding out his hands and murmuring incoherent words. The fugitive whom chance had brought to his feet was his brother! the brother whom he had not seen for more than a year, of whose misfortunes and misdeeds he had dimly heard, the brother whom he had mourned as dead!

Twelve months of hardship and danger and rough companionship had changed Frank Patten much, inwardly as well as outwardly; but they had not sapped the family tie nor closed his heart against such a meeting as this. He crept into the hollow beside the child with every nobler feeling in his nature aroused, and with one eye on the moor below and one on him strove to comfort him.

Courage is contagious. The elder brother possessed it in a peculiar degree, uniting the daring of youth to the hardihood and resource which as a rule come only of long experience; and Jack was not slow to feel his influence. The boy quickly stilled his sobs and dried his tears. In such crises resolutions are formed rapidly, the impulse to help is instinctive. In a few moments he was back in the old place, watching the moor; while Frank, whose bandaged head was so much more likely to catch the eye and attract attention, lay resting in the lap of the hollow.

"Do you see them now?" Frank asked presently, when he had somewhat recovered his