"Oh, it's all ready planned. We've got a safe hiding in view. The scent will be hard up at somebody else's door. 'Twill be a good joke, too, to catch the psalm-singers up at Scarf Beck in a trap. But that's your concern, not mine."
"I'll not have that done, whatever else may be," cried Miles, with burning cheek and clenched fist. "I'd sooner die than any of them should be harmed. There shall not a breath stir against any one belonging to—to—the folk up at Scarf Beck."
The man sneered offensively, and said, "I know how the land lies well enough. But if you don't bring your cart tonight, and help us to shift right off, 'over sands,' * we'll move all the whisky jars into the old barn at Scarf Beck; and we'll see if anybody will believe the Hartley lads when they swear they didn't put them there." So saying, Tim o' the Brooms glided noiselessly away over the snow.
* Across Morecambe Bay.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE SNOW-DRIFT.
"A snow-feathered pillow,
On snow-drifted bed;
As foam on the billow,
So white was it spread."
Miles leaned on the windowsill, and thought long and anxiously. The snow, continued to fall, soft and silent. The deep stillness of the night was oppressive in its solemn weight. Even the dreary night-wind seemed to hold its breath for awe; but all this while, each downy snowflake that fluttered to the ground took its place slowly and surely beside its sister-flake, quietly laying the foundations of one of those heavy and long-standing falls which sometimes re-assert their dominion over the mountain land, even after spring has begun to awaken the sleeping life of the earth.
The soul of Miles Lawson was in the darkness of desertion and dismay. He thought that every moment there was a fresh loop added to the great net which Satan was forming around him; he almost fancied he could see him netting, netting on, plying his mesh and his supple cords, the while he laughed at his misery. "He got my will first; and now he has bound my limbs, so that I cannot work when I would. This is thick darkness—no light and no hope. And all this while I am losing precious time; all this while those men, who are too strong and too cunning for me, are laying their dreadful traps and snares at Bella's very door. I can't endure that. Anything rather than that. I will go directly to Scarf Beck, and give them warning; informer or no informer, spy or no spy, traitor or not, I will go and save Bella and those harmless lads from wrong."
He tried to open the window again, but it would scarcely stir, for it was so banked up with snow. "Darkness, deathly darkness, and deep, treacherous snow!" muttered the miserable young man. Suddenly there was a rent in the black pall of clouds, which parted on either hand, and the full moon looked serenely down upon the white world beneath.