Elias sat upon a rock and so remained a long while with his head between his hands.  Then he got up and walked slowly homeward; while Minnie Merle, despite the fact that she was far too early for her appointment, proceeded steadily toward Wistman’s Wood.  Presently, with a light, sure foot, she entered the old forest and passed where auburn autumn foliage rustled under the wan light.  The wind sighed here and there in the stunted timber, then died off and left the place breathless, awake, watching as it seemed.

There was a familiar tree whose boughs, heavily draped with grey lichen and metallic-coloured mosses, made amongst them a comfortable sort of couch.  The low branches scarcely sprung above the rocky earth, and many a deep cleft and cranny lay beneath the withered boles.  Here the wood-rush flourished, and the briar, and the little corydalis shared sunny corners with the snake on summer days.  Where Minnie now climbed, that her head might rise above the low crowns of the wood, ivy and whortleberry grew, and polypody ferns extended along the limbs of the tree.  About each dwarf, p. 159bleared and hoary, moved festoons of ash-coloured lichen, like ghostly dryads grown old.  The arms of the trees were bedded with centuries of decayed vegetation, their trunks were twisted into the shape of fossil beasts; yet life was strong in them; yearly they broke their amber buds; yearly they blossomed and bore fruit.

Gazing about her and wondering from whence her mysterious lover would appear, Minnie was suddenly startled to see a huge creature moving in the night.  It came toward her, magnified by the moon.  Supposing it some wandering ox from the herds of half-wild cattle that roamed the Moor, she was glad of her elevated security; but the object proved a horse, and on it a man sat—the man she loved best in the world.  Nicholas was also very early, and, well pleased to find it so, his sweetheart prepared to leap out of her refuge and run to him, when something made her hesitate and she waited a moment and watched her lover dismount.

He carried a curious long parcel under his arm, and the girl wondered what manner of gift this might be.  Then, within twenty yards of her hiding-place, Nicholas Merle, having consulted a big watch, proceeded to a curious occupation that first puzzled the watcher, then froze her young limbs with an awful chill not born of cold.

First, tethering his horse on the high ground above p. 160the wood, the man lighted a lantern, set his pistols at his elbow on a stone, and turned to the long parcel he had brought with him.  From this he unwound some rope and produced a spade and a short, heavy pick.  He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and sought a place for digging.  Presently a hollow between two great slabs of granite met his view, and carefully thrusting away the briars, ferns and honeysuckle that draped this spot, he set to work and began deepening it with his tools.  A mound quickly grew at hand, and a long, narrow hole began to yawn between the shelves of stone.  He toiled with all his might and feared not to sing at his labour.  Then, as he lifted his voice, the words he uttered told his deed to the girl who, above in the ancient oak, looked down through a screen of red leaves.  She shook so that the dry foliage rustled all about her, but Nicholas Merle’s own melody filled his ear and he sang the historic song of another he once had watched mimicking the same business that now engaged him in earnest:—

    “A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade,
       For and a shrouding sheet:
    O! a pit of clay for to be made
       For such a guest is meet.”

Then the girl in the tree grasped the friendly limbs and cowered close and set her teeth to save p. 161herself from fainting and falling, for she knew that she watched the digging of her own grave.  She struggled with herself to think what she should do; but to solve that problem was easy enough.  Her life depended upon the sheltering tree.  The pistol that glittered at Merle’s elbow was waiting for her young heart.

Half an hour before their appointed time of meeting Merle finished his labours, hid his tools, trailed the weeds over his work and then, putting on his coat, blew out the lantern and sat down to wait his cousin’s arrival.  And presently, while Minnie watched and wondered how long his patience would keep him in Wistman’s Wood, and how long her strength would bear the ordeal of this terror under nightly cold, she saw another shape, and a tall man’s form suddenly heaved up out of the darkness.

He approached the other, and spoke.  Then the girl felt her fears almost at an end, for it was Elias Bassett.  He had indeed turned his face homeward, but could not find it in his heart to obey Minnie.

“Late work and strange work, neighbour,” said the keeper.  “I’ve bided hidden an’ watched you this hour, an’ yet I be so much in the dark as when I comed.  Who are you, and what do you here?”

“I mind my business, and do you the like, if you are a wise man!”

p. 162“Why!  ’Tis Nicholas Merle!  I thought you had gone home to your wife.”

The other rose and Elias saw his teeth flash white under the moon.

“You rash fool, are you so weary of living that you come here to hunt for your death?  Yes, Nick Merle—a name that if............