“Ay, plenty,” said the rough fellow with a great sigh, which was not sentiment but fatigue. “If that will not vex you, my young lord, saving your presence, I’ll sit down and rest my bones while I talk to you, for I’m near dead with tiredness. _He’s_ given us the slip--I cannot tell you how. Many a fear we’ve had, but this time it’s come true. Tuesday was a week he got away, the day after I’d been to see about the little lad. We thought he was but hanging about the fells in corners that none but him and me know, as he once did before, and I got him back. But it’s worse than that. Lord! there’s many an honest man lost on the fells in the mists, that has a wife and bairns looking to him. Would it not be more natural to take the likes of him, and let the father of a family go free? I cannot touch him, but there’s no law to bind the Almighty. But all that’s little to the purpose. He’s loose ranging about the country and me on his heels. I’ve all but had him three or four times, but he’s aye given me the slip.” “But this is terrible; it is a danger for the whole country,” said Geoff. “The children!” The young man shuddered, he did not realize that the children were at a distance. He thought of nothing more than perhaps an expedition among the fells for Lilias--and what if she should fall into the madman’s hands? “You should have help--you should rouse the country,” he said. “I’ll no do that. Please God I’ll get him yet, and this will be the end,” said Bampfylde solemnly. “She cannot make up her mind to it even now. She’s infatuate with him. I thought it would have ended when you put your hand into the web, my young lord.” “It is my fault,” said Geoff. “I should have done something more; but then Mr. Musgrave fell ill, and I have been waiting. If he dies, everything must be gone into. I was but waiting.”