About that time both of them held their breath and stopped their work. Dick stuck his spade again in the half-dug row of potatoes. Elizabeth came out to the door. A hurrying, headlong step, coming on in mad haste, now ceasing for a moment as it reached the bog, coming nearer, rushing on--with other sounds, broken cries, gaspings and pantings, as of somebody hunted, came to their ears. While the mother and son listened in growing alarm, old Watch, the dog--most steady of dogs--suddenly raised his old black muzzle and gave vent to a long wailing bark of alarm, which echoed through the hills. Terror fell upon the minds of the mother and son. What was it? The light seemed to go out of the sky, the echoes to tingle all about them. These wild hurrying sounds did not come even by the usual path, but, as Dick perceived sooner than his mother, descended from the higher way, a way no one ever came. This was how it was that when the new-comer reached the place at last, Elizabeth did not see him. She knew nothing till he was close upon her. A terrible figure, bare-headed, bloody, his clothes hanging torn about him, his face ghastly and distorted, strange, harsh, broken sounds coming from his lips. She turned round only when he was within a few steps of her, when she saw him, and with a shriek of terror threw up her arms and started out of his way. Dick came rushing to her help; but the stranger heeded neither of them. He burst into the house, and threw himself, all convulsed and shivering, before the kitchen fire. "God help us, Dick--it's a madman!" cried Elizabeth. "What will we do?" They both stood in terror at the door. There was a moment's pause of horror and dismay. Dick was pale, but he was brave. "Go you and shut yourself in the byre, mother, and I will see----" "Nay, nay, my lad; your mother's life is less worth than yours. But look at Watch!" she said, with a strange thrill at her heart. Watch had been taken by surprise, and struck with terror as well as themselves. He had run terrified out of the way with another howl when the man rushed past. But now he had followed into the kitchen, without either fear or anger apparently. "He never can bide a tramp," Elizabeth said, with a strange aching wonder in her heart. They could see the huddled mass of shivering limbs before the fire. Watch went in, cautiously snuffed all round the prostrate figure, and then began slowly to wag his tail--slowly at first, and then with an appearance of wild joy, and yelps and barks of welcome. Elizabeth Murray's heart seemed to stand still. She gave Dick a look of horrible suspicion and misery. Then she made a gesture to him to keep behind her, and went in with the silence and swiftness of a ghost.