It was not long before the trees began to thin before him, the open west shining a wall of amber pilastered by the dark boles of the pines. Jeffray, growing cautious, dismounted and led his mare aside from the path, and tethered her in a slight hollow of the ground where she was hidden from the path by undergrowth and bracken. He took the pistols out of the holsters, reprimed them, and pushed on towards the hamlet. Looking down from the converging aisles of the forest, he saw the green break in the woods lying calm and quiet under the western sun. The place appeared deserted and silent, save for a few cows with swelling udders that were waiting at a byre-gate to be milked. Jeffray’s eyes fixed themselves upon the cottage farthest from him. The gray walls were half hidden by the apple-trees of old Isaac’s orchard. The cottage was Dan Grimshaw’s cottage; Bess had spoken of it to Jeffray, and he recognized it from her words. But what was more significant to him for the moment was that a man stood leaning against the rough fencing of the garden with a musket lying in the crook of his left arm. The sunlight flashed on the long barrel, and the faint sound of the man’s whistling came up to Jeffray in the woods. He felt convinced, as he scanned the hamlet, that the Grimshaws were entangled in the smuggling enterprise, that Bess was in the cottage, and that they had left one of their men on guard. There was no time to be wasted, and Jeffray, casting a half circle round the clearing, came to the thickets to the north of the cottage. The trees grew close to the garden on the north and west. Crouching behind the bracken, Jeffray won a clear view of the man leaning against the fence. He was Enoch, Solomon Grimshaw’s eldest son, a raw-boned lout, with a red beard fringing his chin. He was whistling a country song, dandling his musket lazily on his left arm, and taking his duty very stolidly. Jeffray’s wit served him at the crisis. He slipped back from the bracken, and skirted round under the trees till he came to the back of the cottage. There was no second door to it, and the narrow lattices were closed. He gained the back of the cottage, moved step by step to the angle of the wall, and peered round it with his pistols ready. An apple-tree half hid from him the man leaning against the fence. The fellow was still whistling stolidly, and seemed in no fear of a surprise. The grass path gave Jeffray the advantage that he needed. He crept on till he reached the farther edge of the cottage, and had the broad back of Solomon’s son in full view. Covering the man with one of his pistols, he stamped his foot, and kept his finger tight upon the trigger. The man by the fence whipped round as though he had been touched on the shoulder. The levelled pistol, with the black circle of the muzzle covering him, appeared to astonish him considerably. “Put down your musket, or I fire.”