Page:That Lass o' Lowrie's.djvu/221

Rh "I ha' summat to do," said Joan. "Stay tha here with th' choild." And almost before she finished speaking she was gone, and the door had closed behind her.

There would be three of them against one man. She walked faster as she thought of it, and her breath was drawn heavily.

Lowrie bent down in his hiding-place, smiling grimly. He knelt upon the grass behind a hedge at the road-side. He had reached the place a quarter of an hour before, and he had chosen his position as coolly as if he had been sitting down to take his tramp dinner in the shade. There was a gap in the hedge and he must not be too near to it or too far from it. It would be easier to rush through this gap than to leap the hedge; but he must not risk being seen. The corner where the other men lay concealed was not far above him. It was only a matter of a few yards, but if he stood to wait at one turn and the engineer took the other, the game would escape. So he had placed his comrades at the second, and he had taken the first.

"I'd loike to ha' th' first yammer at him," he had said, savagely. "Yo' can coom when yo' hear me."

As he waited by the hedge, he put his hand out stealthily toward his "knob-stick" and drew it nearer, saying to himself:

"When I ha' done settlin' wi' him fur mysen, I shall ha' a bit o' an account to settle fur her. If it's his good looks as she's takken wi', she'll be noan so fond on him when she sees him next, I'll warrant."

He had hit upon the greater villainy of stopping short of murder,—if he could contain himself when the time came.

At this instant a sound reached his ears which caused