‘I shall not condescend to answer your question nor to link our names together. Do you know what you are?’ ‘I know what _you_ are, Mr Darley, and that’s a villain!’ Poor Larry had said he would have it out with him, and he thought his time had come. A sudden thought flashed through Darley’s brain that here was the informer who had stopped his little game with the farmer’s pretty daughter. ‘Are you the man,’ he demanded fiercely, ‘who has thought fit to inform Mr Murray of my antecedents?’ ‘Antecedents’ was a long word for Larry’s comprehension, but he grasped the meaning somehow. ‘If you’d say, am I the man who told the master that you have got a wife and children down in Devonshire, I answer “Yes;” and I hope he’s told you of it, and kicked you out of the barn to-night for a scoundrel, as you are, to try and make love to his daughter.’ ‘You brute!’ cried Darley, throwing off his coat; ‘I’ll be revenged on you for this if there’s any strength left in my arm.’ ‘All right,’ replied the young country-man; ‘I’ve longed to punch your head many and many a day. I’m glad it’s come at last. There’s plenty of room for us to have it out here, and the devil take the hindmost.’ He flew at his adversary as he spoke, and fastened his hands on to his coat-collar. Larry was the younger and the stronger built man of the two; but Frederick Darley had had the advantage of a politer education, in which the use of his fists was included, so that after a very little while it would have been evident to any bystander that Barnes was getting the worst of it. He had energy and muscle and right on his side, but his antagonist, unfortunately, possessed the skill, and after he had stood on the defensive four or five times, he seized his opportunity, and with a dexterous twist threw Larry heavily from him on the ground. The young man fell backward, crashing his skull against a projecting fragment of rock, and then lay there, bleeding and unconscious. Darley glanced around him—not a creature was in sight. The broad harvest moon looked down placidly upon the deed of blood he had just committed, but human eyes to see it there were none. Finding that Barnes neither stirred nor groaned, he stooped down after a while, and laid his hand upon his heart. It had stopped beating. The body was getting cold. The man was dead! Darley had not intended this, and it alarmed him terribly. His first idea was what he should do to secure his own safety. If he left the body there, would it be discovered, and the guilt traced home to him, or would the in-coming tide carry it out to sea, and wash it up again, weeks hence perhaps, as a drowned corpse upon the shore? He thought it might. He hoped it would. He remembered Larry’s words, that Miss Rosa had sent him there that night. It was known, then, that he had gone to the marshes, and the fact was favourable.