“I thought I could maybe keep an eye on the Killer gin I stayed here,” David answered, leering at Red Wull.
“Ye'd do better at Kenmuir—eh, Wullie!” the little man replied.
“Nay,” the other answered, “he'll not go to Kenmuir. There's Th' Owd Un to see to him there o' nights.”
The little man whipped round.
“Are ye so sure he is there o' nights, ma lad?” he asked with slow significance.
“He was there when some one—I dinna say who, though I have ma thoughts—tried to poison him,” sneered the boy, mimicking his father's manner.
M'Adam shook his head.
“If he was poisoned, and noo I think aiblins he was, he didna pick it up at Kenmuir, I tell ye that,” he said, and marched out of the room.
In the mean time the Black Killer pursued his bloody trade unchecked. The public, always greedy of a new sensation, took up the matter. In several of the great dailies, articles on the “Agrarian Outrages” appeared, followed by lengthy correspondence. Controversy raged high; each correspondent had his own theory and his own solution of the problem; and each waxed indignant as his were discarded for another's.
The Terror had reigned already two months when, with the advent of the lambing-time, matters took a yet more serious aspect.