Before the storm broke that drove Causleen and Hardcastle into shelter of the foresters’ hut, Long Murgatroyd had been poaching up the moor. He knew all about the uses of a wire looped at both ends and set across the tracks the grouse took to their drinking-places; and he laughed as he gathered his spoils together and turned for home.
“They’re Hardcastle’s birds,” he chuckled, “and they’ll taste sweeter in the pot for that.”
He had got half down the moor when the first of the tempest struck him, and he ran for the lower country as fast as his great legs would take him. He reached the first pasture only to be blinded by the swirl of snow, so that he had to creep forward, feeling his way. His hands touched stone at last, and he worked his way round to the lee side of a bield-wall, built two-sided to shelter ewes from the north wind and the bitter east. In the angle of this he dozed and shivered through the storm; and afterwards, when the moon shone out on thawing snow, he picked and slushed his way downhill to Garsykes.
His way lay past the foresters’ hut, and as he went by he halted, astonished to see its window shining crimson out across the snow. Peering in, he saw Causleen there beside the hearth, and no one else. Drenched to the skin, hungry and shivering, Long Murgatroyd laughed—as he had laughed when he snared Hardcastle’s birds on the moor. There was shelter here, and a log-fire, and a lass to share the warmth with him—a bonny lass, and a prime favourite up at Logie these last days, if all folk said was true.
He opened the door, to find Hardcastle rise in menace, to see Storm bristling at him in rage that seemed gigantic. He banged the door home and fled. By instinct of the hunted he knew they would catch him in this hindering broth of snow and water. So he doubled back into the wood. The snow made silence under his feet. The black firs hid him from the moon. He was lost utterly to Hardcastle and Storm.
Murgatroyd watched the moon pale in the dawning sky, and the sun leap ruddy to the top of old Pengables Hill, before he came in sight of Garsykes. It was a tedious way for one spent with fright and hunger, and he lumbered down into the hollow, and looked about him at the closed doors of the village—especially at the inn-sign, “The Poacher’s Rest,” that swayed cracked and dirty in the breeze.
He went in at last, and a flaunting, big-breasted woman answered his call.
“Oh, ye, Long Murgatroyd!” she said, her arms akimbo. “What d’ye want?”
“A dollop of rum, and summat to eat.”
Widow Mathison pointed to a row of figures on the door. “Nay, you’ll ruin me. I’m for ever chalking up your slate till I’m tired of you and your debts.”