'What would Kate say if she saw me here to-day?' he thought to himself. And then her warning rang in his ears. 'As you value your life,' he seemed to hear. 'When I get back,' he said, 'I will swear to take excellent care of myself.' 'If such a thing as prudence can be knocked into a Trevanion, surely what I have undergone should produce it. But what a lunatic! what a benighted idiot I was to leave England at all! Why couldn't I have borne the old man's petulance, like scores of other fellows that I have known? All would have come right in the end, with Estelle's help. What a girl she was! And what a fool I have been! Looking back, it seems incredible that I--that _any man_--could have been so mad, so blindly besotted! I wonder how the old Squire is now? He and Estelle must have a lonely time enough of it in the gloomy old manor-house. Well, I swear--as God hears me now--that when I return--if I ever do--I will humble myself before the old man, and, yes, try for the rest of my life to make amends to him and to her for the sorrow and anxiety which I have cost them.' As this last thought passed through his mind, shaping itself unconsciously into articulate speech, he stopped, with his right foot raised upon a block of stone, and listened intently, with head half turned towards the thickest portion of the scrub, which here approached the narrow track worn in old days by the cattle-herds of the surrounding pastures. At that moment a shot was heard, and Lance Trevanion fell forward on his face, temporarily disabled, if not mortally wounded. Following the report, two men emerged from the covert, one of whom carried a gun. They were Caleb Coke and Lawrence Trevenna. 'That dropped him,' said the former, with a fiendish chuckle. 'Not far from the "curl," I'd say, if it was a bullock. Many a one the old single barrel has finished. I thought she'd carry straight that distance.' Here the wounded man moved his arm and groaned. 'Ha! my fine gentleman!' said Trevenna, 'I swore I'd have ye under my feet yet. Where are ye now?' And here the hellish villain spurned the unresisting form of his prostrate foe. 'What do ye say about "time" now? This is the last round of all.' 'That's no good,' growled Coke, 'and d--d cowardly, into the bargain. You couldn't stand up to him when he was right, so ye may leave him alone now. He's only stunned; the ball's grazed his forehead. Lend us that tomahawk o' yourn. I'll finish him.' Two crashing blows, one of which clove the skull even to the brain, and this man--this 'masterpiece of nature,' so lately in full possession of the strength and beauty of youth--lay a disfigured corpse. 'Now lend a hand and let's get him off the road a bit,' said Coke, as coolly as if he was directing the assistants of a slaughter-yard. 'Scrape some sand over that blood; there ain't much, but it might show. We've got to strip him first, and then it won't take long to drop him where he won't be seen again in a hurry.'