“Nita wanted me to go with them to-night,” said Murgatroyd; “but I told her I’d rather hang myself in a wood than do her bidding.”
The man fell into cackling laughter again, then shivered as memory of the rope returned.
“We’d have been a bonnie couple, swinging side by side; but ’twas not to be, it seems.”
II
Hardcastle left him there, and swung up the fields to Logie. His pace quickened with every stride, for Murgatroyd’s tale of peril to the house had found its mark. If it were true that an attack was planned, he might already be too late; and he thought ceaselessly of his home—and of Causleen.
When he topped the rise that looked down on Logie, he glanced eagerly up-dale. Prepared to see flames leaping high into the dusk, he saw only a steady lamplight glow that shone from the window over the porch—Causleen’s window—and instead of men’s frenzied shouts he heard only a farm-lad’s song as he went about the business of the mistals.
The relief was so quick, so urgent, that a sudden “God be thanked” escaped him. Murgatroyd had lied. He should have known as much, and saved himself the sick suspense of his journey up the fell.
“For why should God specially be thanked?” asked a quiet voice at his elbow.
Brant the shepherd, a silent man in all his ways, had come noiselessly to the Master’s side, and was tugging at his wispy beard.
“Confound you, Stephen, you startled me. They said the Garsykes Men had come to Logie.”