"Now, then, I am strong to do my duty," said Mark, "for they are murderers in their hearts, though God has spared me."
Another bullet whizzed by.
"This will not do at all," said old Geordie, quietly; "now, then, my lads, make a rush for your dear lives."
The old man planted his iron-shod shepherd's staff on the rock, and sprang up with the agility of a native-born cragsman; for he had robbed many a raven's nest, and eagle's eyrie, in his distant youth, and had won the shepherd's prize for the feat. At this instant, a man rushed down the craggy path and sprang away like a goat from rock to rock.
"There goes Miner Jack," cried one of the lads.
But another figure which had been stealing round a buttress of the mountain fortress, suddenly leaped out upon Mark Wilson with a yell of hatred, and grappling with him, rolled heavily down the steep.
"Save the master, save him," shouted old Geordie from above.
The young men rushed down after the yet rolling figures, and contrived to stop them in their headlong course. It was but just in time; a yard or two more and they would have bounded together down a precipice which was masked by snow, and been dashed in pieces at the foot. Tim o' the Brooms instantly shook himself free from the lads, writhing from their grasp like a slippery serpent, as he was, glided rapidly down the path, and disappeared.
"Now for the hawk's nest, without the old birds," said Geordie.
They climbed to the entrance of an old working of the deserted mine—an "adit," the Cornish miners would have called it—and looking in, they were half-stifled by the smoke of an expiring heather fire, and by the stupefying fumes of distilling whiskey.