"Send away your dogs, or I'll finish them right out," said the voice uneasily from below.
"Be off; Chance, I say—away with thee, Laddie," said their poor master from the chamber window. Laddie obeyed, and disappeared; Chance withdrew a few yards, and then sat down determinately on the cold white snow. They thought he was gone, and the voices renewed their parley.
"You have got the old fox in there. Now that he has run to earth, I say keep him there."
"I can't keep him here, unless the snow stops the hole for you," was the troubled reply.
"What are you at by saying for us? It is just as much for yourself. You are in it full as deep as we. I would lame his old mare, but the stable door is locked, and the dogs are about."
"He came unbidden, and he shall leave unhindered," said Miles firmly.
"Yes; and you think to be his guide. You are going to try your mean hand at the informer's trade; for it is always the chief rogue that turns king's evidence," said Tim o' the Brooms, with an insulting sneer.
"I'm going to do naught of the kind," said Miles, "but the old man shall go his own gait. He has always been a friend of the family, like—my dead father's friend; and nothing shall harm him."
"Very well, as you like," was the cool reply: "then the stock must be shifted before morning; that's all."
"Stay, where will you be putting it? I will know that," cried Miles.