Now, by this time the shades of night had begun to fall. There was no moon and few stars, and the track across the moor was none too plain, and I had to guide myself some extent by those turf covers those shooters put up when they are beating the grouse--landmarks I knew well from frequently passing that way. I was about midway to my destination when I heard a couple of gunshots in quick succession. "Strange," I thought. "It's late hours for the shooters to be about. Happen it's poachers, and if any of those gentry are about yon kist of gold's none too safe, with no one but a dying man to guard it." It is curious that at this moment the thought of the Burnplatters crossed my mind--but they had an unenviable reputation, though, like enough, like a certain other personage, they were not as black as they were painted. Anyhow, I increased my pace almost to a run, but had hardly gone a score of yards when I was brought to a sudden stop by a sound that lifted the hair on my head. It was a deep moan, as of one in pain, followed by a petulant curse, and there was the heavy rustling as of a body dragging through the bracken and heather; another moan, and many another oath, and then silence. Now, to be sure I'd enough on my hands with the sick parson, but I could not find it in my heart to leave a man, or maybe a woman, to perish on the moor, as wayfarers from Lancashire to Yorkshire, or t'other way about, often did in dark or fog. I had bought a pound of tallow dips at the "Floating Light," for I'd no mind to sit out the night with my patient and ne'er the gleam of a light to company me withal. I put down my pack, and with much ado struck a light on my tinder box, and not a dozen yards ahead of me, near the track, sprawled, face downwards, the body of a man. I turned him over, dipped my kerchief in a pool of stagnant water, and mopped his forehead, forced some of that precious brandy down his throat, and had the satisfaction of hearing a deep sigh and a quick stream of profanity, which, however, I'm fain to confess was as tuneful to my ears as choicer language for when a man's swearing he's not like to die. "Wheer am I, an' who are ta?" And the man, raising himself with a grunt on to his elbow, peered into my face by the flickering light of the dip. "If it isn't little Abe." Now I was by no means little, but I suppose Ephraim--for Ephraim it was, sure enough as I had seen when I turned him over--still thought of me as the urchin he had companied with as a lad. "You're on Stanedge Moor, and how you got here and what you're doing in this coil you known best--up to no good I reckon," I said testily, for no man of my inches likes calling little. "Seems to me the question is, being here, how to get away. Are you hurt? You made noise enough."