M'Adam had become an old man of late. But little more than fifty, yet he looked to have reached man's allotted years. His sparse hair was quite white; his body shrunk and bowed; and his thin hand shook like an aspen as it groped to the familiar bottle. In another matter, too, he was altogether changed. Formerly, whatever his faults, there had been no harder-working man in the country-side. At all hours, in all weathers, you might have seen him with his gigantic attendant going his rounds. Now all that was different: he never put his hand to the plough, and with none to help him the land was left wholly untended; so that men said that, of a surety, there would be a farm to let on the March Mere Estate come Michaelmas. Instead of working, the little man sat all day in the kitchen at home, brooding over his wrongs, and brewing vengeance. Even the Sylvester Arms knew him no more; for he stayed where he was with his dog and his bottle. Only, when the shroud of night had come down to cover him, he slipped out and away on some errand on which not even Red Wull accompanied him. * * * * * So the time glided on, till the Sunday before the Trials came round. All that day M'Adam sat in his kitchen, drinking, muttering, hatching revenge. “Curse it, Wullie! curse it! The time's slippin'--slippin'--slippin'! Thursday next--but three days mair! and I haena the proof--I haena the proof!”--and he rocked to and fro, biting his nails in the agony of his impotence. All day long he never moved. Long after sunset he sat on; long after dark had eliminated the features of the room. “They're all agin us, Wullie. It's you and I alane, lad. M'Adam's to be beat somehow, onyhow; and Moore's to win. So they've settled it, and so 'twill be--onless, Wullie, onless--but curse it! I've no the proof!”--and he hammered the table before him and stamped on the floor. At midnight he arose, a mad, desperate plan looming through his fuddled brain. “I swore I'd pay him, Wullie, and I will. If I hang for it I'll be even wi' him. I haena the proof, but I _know_--I _know_!” He groped his way to the mantel piece with blind eyes and swirling brain. Reaching up with fumbling hands, he took down the old blunderbuss from above the fireplace. “Wullie,” he whispered, chuckling hideously, “Wullie, come on! You and I--he! he!” But the Tailless Tyke was not there. At nightfall he had slouched silently out of the house on business he best wot of. So his master crept out of the room alone--on tiptoe, still chuckling. The cool night air refreshed him, and he stepped stealthily along, his quaint weapon over his shoulder: down the hill; across the Bottom; skirting the Pike; till he reached the plank-bridge over the Wastrel. He crossed it safely, that Providence whose care is drunkards placing his footsteps. Then he stole up the slope like a hunter stalking his prey.