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. It needed not much guessing to decide that it was here that Terence Gorman's murderer had lurked that fatal night, and that here Paddy Corkill would come to find his victim this morning. As I came to the top of a hill that gave a distant view of the road by which the traveller would approach, my heart leaped to my mouth. For there, not a mile and a half away, appeared, in a break of the mist, a black speck, which I knew well enough to be his honour's gig. In half- an-hour or less it would reach the fatal spot, and I could barely hope to reach it before him. The ground in front of me was littered with boulders, and in places was soft with bog. Rapid progress was impossible. A false step, a slip might lame me, and so stop me altogether. Yet on every moment hung the fate of _her_ father! It was a wild career I made that morning--down hollows, over rocks, through swamps, and up banks. I soon lost all sight of the road, and knew I should not see it again till I came above the boulder behind which the assassin probably lurked. Once I fancied I heard the clatter of the hoofs very near; and once, on the hill before me, I seemed to catch the gleam of a gun-barrel among the rocks. A minute more brought me in view of the boulder and the road below. Stretched on the former, with his gun levelled, lay Corkill, waiting the moment when his victim should reach the corner. On the road, still toiling up the hill, came the gig, and to my horror and dismay, not only his honour in it, but Miss Kit herself. Even in that moment of terror I could not help noticing how beautiful she looked, her face intent on the horse she was driving as she sat, inclined a little forward, gently coaxing him up the hill. His honour, aged and haggard, leaned back in his seat, glancing uneasily now and then at the rocks on either side, and now and then uttering an impatient "tchk" at the panting animal. I had barely time to whip out my ship's pistol from my belt--luckily already loaded--and level it at the assassin. Almost at the instant of my discharge his gun went off; and in the moment of silence that followed, I heard the horse start at a gallop along the level road.