I confess, as I then felt, I could almost have let him run on his doom; yet when I recalled the vision in the kitchen last night of Paddy Corkill shouldering the borrowed gun, my humanity reasserted itself.

How could I stand idle with a human life, however worthless, at stake?
As to his being Miss Kit's father, that at the moment did not enter into my calculations; but as soon as it did, it urged my footsteps to a still more rapid stride as I made across the bleak tract for the Black Hill.
The morning was grey and squally, and the mists hung low on the hill- tops, and swept now and then thickly up the valleys.

But I knew the way well.

Tim and I had often as boys walked there to look at the spot where Terence Gorman fell, and often, in the Knockowen days, I had driven his honour's gig past the spot on the way to Malin.
The road ascends steeply some little way up the hill between high rocks.
Half-way up it takes a sharp turn inward, skirting the slope on the level, and so comes out on to the open bog-road beyond.

Just at the angle is a high boulder that almost overhangs the road, affording complete cover to any one waiting for a traveller, and commanding a view of him both as he walks his horse up the slope and as he trots forward on the level.