“On my honour, sir,” said Tuke, much amused, “I am not a coroner nor even a J. P.” “Oh! well,” muttered the soldier--“I am ready, gentlemen.” As he was preparing to mount: “Tuke,” said Sir David, “now I think on’t--wasn’t it that girl at the inn first gave you warning of Mr. Breeds and his gang?” “Betty Pollack? Yes.” He answered brusquely, and touched his horse with his heel. “The women, it seems, give us the lead in this business.” “Betty,” said Tuke, with a little fierce glow of emotion, “is gold to the inside of her heart. Now, gentlemen--and keep your eyes alert, by your favour, as we pass the ‘Dog and Duck.’” A creaking, and pounding of the frozen snow, and the three were on their way once more. The long white stretches of road behind them returned to the sombreness of quiet that their human voices had interrupted. The very dun sky, that seemed to have withdrawn in high offence at their careless chatter, drooped down again, frowning and austere, to resume its ward of the imprisoned forces of life. No movement was in the stiff spurs of grass or in the petrified Hedgerows; no least cry of bird or insect in all the wastes of air. Yet something there was that gave out a stealthy sound by and by--something that all the time they talked had held its panic breath in the copse, and sweated with terror lest the little snap of some twig under its feet should reveal its hiding-place--something with a puffed, leaden face and coward eyes--the unlovely Mr. Breeds, in fact. He would not come out into the road, even after the last echo of the horsemen’s retreat had died away. But he crept to his little windy house on the hill by the way he had come--and Mr. Breeds’s way was always a backstairs one. Once only he paused, and his weak, evil features gathered all the definite expression of scoundrelism they could master. “Betty Pollack!” he muttered. “So it was you, my girl, that set your dirty little torch to the beacon! Now ain’t it dangerous to play with fire, Betty? And what should you say if it came to burn your own fingers?” He mused a moment; then brought his hand softly down on his thigh. “But the skull comes first,” he murmured. “What’ll they give me for that piece of news, I wonder?” CHAPTER XXXVII. The night fell dead and blank, and with it came the snow, crisp, large-flaked, dropping silently as autumn leaves in a windless garden. These were but the pickets of a gathering army--whose cloudy regiments moved up unwieldily from the north-west, where for weeks they had been forming and manœuvring--and the world looked indifferently on them, little thinking how presently it should be overwhelmed in the rush of forces of which they were the pioneers. Sometimes a little galloping wind, like one of a distracted staff, would scatter a company of them right and left; and then to folks within-doors would sound a rubbing noise on window-panes, as if stealthy fingers were feeling for the hasp.