"I have," he answered. "He is dead, and more than dead. If the shot did not take effect, the fall would kill him." "Oh, Richard, say it was an accident!" she moaned, very nearly bereft of reason in her shock of horror. "What madness came over you?" "He earned it of his own accord; earned it deliberately. I held my pistol to his head before, this night, and I spared him. I had him on his knees to me, and he took an oath to be away from this place instantly, and to be silent. I told him if he broke it, if he lingered here but for a moment, I would put the bullet into him. I saw him off; I send Cyril with him to speed him on his road; and--see!--the fool came back again. I was right to do it." "I will denounce you!" she fiercely uttered, anger getting the better of other feelings. "Ay, though you are my brother, Richard Thornycroft! I will raise the hue and cry upon you." "You had better think twice of that," he answered, shaking her arm in his passion. "If you do, you must raise it against your father and your father's house!" "What do you mean?" she asked, quailing, for there was a savage earnestness in his words which told of startling truth. "Girl! see you no mystery? can't you fathom it? You would have aided Hunter in discovering the smugglers: see you not that _we_ are the smugglers? We are running a cargo now--now"--and his voice rose to a hoarse shriek as he pointed to the Half-moon, "and he would have turned Judas to us! He was on the watch there, on the plateau's edge, doing traitor's work for Kyne." "He did not know it was you he would have denounced," she faintly urged, gathering in the sense of his revelation to her sinking heart. "He did know it. The knowledge came to him tonight. He was abject enough before me, the coward, and swore he would be silent, and be gone from hence there and then. But his traitor's nature prevailed, and he has got his deserts. Now go and raise the hue and cry upon us! Bring your father to a felon's bar." Mary Anne Thornycroft, with a despairing cry, sank down on the grass at her brother's feet. He was about to raise her, rudely enough it must be confessed, rather than tenderly, when his eye caught the form of some one advancing; he darted off at right angles across the plateau, and descended recklessly the dangerous path. The intruder was Sarah. Miss Thornycroft, passing off her own emotion as the effect of fear at the shot, though scarcely knowing how she contrived not to betray herself, remembered Anna. She lay within the walls in a fainting-fit. Only as they went in was consciousness beginning to return to her. It must be mentioned that at this stage Sarah did not know any one had been killed. "Who was the man?" asked Sarah of Miss Thornycroft. "Did you see him?" was the only answer. "Not to know him, miss; only at a distance. A regular fool he must be to fire off guns at night, to frighten folks! Was it a stranger?" "Yes." Mary Anne wiped the dew from her cold brow as she told the lie.