Dan and his sledge passed through. The encounter had cost him some minutes of precious time, but the ardor of his purpose had suffered no abatement from the untoward event, though his heart was the heavier for it and the dreary day looked the darker. Near the angle of the road that turns to the left to Ramsey and to the right to the Sherragh Vane, there was a little thatched cottage of one story, with its window level with the road. It was the house of a cobbler named Callister, a lean, hungry, elderly man, who lived there alone under the ban of an old rumor of evil doings of some sort in his youth. Dan knew the poor soul. Such human ruins had never been quarry to him, the big-hearted scapegrace, and now, drawing near, he heard the beat of the old man's hammer as he worked. The hammering ceased, and Callister appeared at his door. "Capt'n," he stammered, "do you know--do you know--?" He tried to frame his words and could not, and at last he blurted out, "Quayle the Gyke drove by an hour ago." Dan knew what was in the heart of the poor battered creature, and it touched him deeply. He was moving off without speaking, merely waving his hand for answer and adieu, when the cobbler's dog, as lean and hungry as its master to look upon, came from the house and looked up at Dan out of its rheumy eyes and licked his hand. The cobbler still stood at his door, fumbling in his fingers his cutting-knife, worn obliquely to the point, and struggling to speak more plainly. "The Whitehaven packet leaves Ramsey to-night, capt'n," he said. Dan waved his hand once more. His heart sank yet lower. Only by the very dregs of humanity, the very quarry of mankind, and by the dumb creatures that licked his hand, was his fellowship rewarded. Thus had he wasted his fidelity, and thrown his loyalty away. In a day he had become a hunted man. So much for the world's gratitude and even the world's pity. And yet, shunned or hunted, a mark for the finger of shame or an aim for the hand of fate, he felt, as he had felt before, bound by strong ties to his fellow-creatures. He was about to part from them; he was meeting them for the last time. Not even their coldest glance of fear or suspicion made a call on his resolution.