The word chilled my blood—I shivered. The glow of the smithy fire grew stronger as we advanced, the ring of a hammer on metal reached us. The men seemed to be disturbed by something and spoke low to one another. They even drew rein for a moment and conferred, but on second thoughts they moved on. “It can’t be old Barter,” said one. “But I’m mighty surprised if there was a fire when we came by. Who’s lit it?” “Perhaps his lad’s come back?” “Jake? Maybe. We’ll soon know.” They drew up towards the forge at a walk. When we were twenty yards from the doorway whence the light issued, a man strolled out of the shed, his hands in his pockets. He stood in the glow of the fire, looking towards us; doubtless he had heard the sound of the horses’ hoofs above the clink of the hammer. He had a cigar in his mouth, and as he stood watching our approach he did not remove it, nor take his hands from his pockets. He stood quietly watching us, as we came towards him. “Halloa!” said Levi, as we pulled up two or three paces from the stranger. “Lit the forge, have you?” “Cast a shoe,” the man replied. He was a small man, plainly, but, for the up-country, neatly dressed, and wearing a black leather jockey-cap. A rather elegant finical little man he seemed to me, and unarmed. Such as he was, my hopes flew to him, and rested on him, though in the way of help old Barter could scarcely have seemed less promising. “You alone?” Levi asked, looking him over. “You’ve said it,” the man replied placidly. His eyes traveled from one to another of us. He did not move. Levi bent his head and looked under the low eaves of the smithy. “You ride a good horse,” he said. “A d—d good horse!” he repeated in a rising voice. The man nodded. Levi glanced over his shoulder. “Fetch it,” he said to one of his followers—and I knew that he meant the spade, not the horse. Then, “What are you doing here?” he asked the stranger. It was on this that the first real hope awoke in me. The man’s calmness in face of this bunch of armed men—he had never removed his hands from his pockets or the cigar from his mouth—and a certain gleam in his eyes, that gave the lie to his mild manner—these two things impressed me. And his answer to Levi’s question. “I’m just looking round,” he said gently. For a moment I think that Levi was on the point of turning on his heel, and letting the man go his way. But his greed had been roused, I suppose, by a second look at the stranger’s horse; and “That’s no answer,” he said roughly. “What’s your errand here? Who are you? What are you doing? Come!” he continued more violently. “We want no strangers here and no spies! We’ve caught one already, and it’s as easy, s’help me, to find two halters as one!” “And there are plenty of trees,” the man answered coolly, with his eyes on me. “No lack of them either! Spy is he. He might well be English by the look of him.”