Bob, Son of Battle

He was sitting a little forward in his chair; his thin hands rested on his knees; and on his face was a gentle, dreamy expression such as no man had ever seen there before. All...

And well it was so. For never since the founding of the Dale Trials had such a concourse been gathered together on the North bank of the Silver Lea. From the Highlands they came...

IN the village even the Black Killer and the murder on the Screes were forgotten in this new sensation. The mystery in which the affair was wrapped, and the ignorance as to all...

FROM that hour the fire of M'Adam's jealousy blazed into a mighty flame. The winning of the Dale Cup had become a mania with him. He had won it once, and would again despite all...

Parson Leggy Hornbut will tell you that his is the smallest church in the biggest parish north of the Derwent, and that his cure numbers more square miles than parishioners. Of...

THE spring was passing, marked throughout with the bloody trail of the Killer. The adventure in the Scoop scared him for a while into innocuousness; then he resumed his game aga...

M'ADAM--in his sober moments at least--never touched David again; instead, he devoted himself to the more congenial exercise of the whiplash of his tongue. And he was wise; for...

A coincidence it may have been, but, as a fact, for the fortnight succeeding Kirby's exploit there was a lull in the crimes. There followed, as though to make amends, the seven...

TAMMAS had but told the melancholy truth. Owd Bob was not to run for the cup. And this self-denying ordinance speaks more for James Moore's love of his lost wife than many a lor...

To David M'Adam the loss of gentle Elizabeth Moore was as real a grief as to her children. Yet he manfully smothered his own aching heart and devoted himself to comforting the m...

Down on the silvery sward beside the Stony Bottom there lay the ruffled body of a dead sheep. All about the victim the dewy ground was dark and patchy like dishevelled velvet; b...

IT was only three short weeks before Cup Day that one afternoon Jim Mason brought a letter to Kenmuir. James Moore opened it as the postman still stood in the door.

M'ADAM never forgave his son. After the scene on the evening of the funeral there could be no alternative but war for all time. The little man had attempted to humble himself, a...

Thenceforward the sour little man and the vicious puppy grew, as it were, together. The two were never apart. Where M'Adam was, there was sure to be his tiny attendant, bristlin...

THAT night a vague story was whispered In the Sylvester Arms. But Tammas, on being interrogated, pursed his lips and said: “Nay, I'm sworn to say nowt.” Which was the old man's...

The two often met. For the little man frequently returned home from the village by the footpath across Kenmuir. It was out of his way, but he preferred it in order to annoy his...

“Is he no a gran' worker, Wullie? 'Tis a pleasure to watch him, his hands in his pockets, his eyes turned heavenward!” as the boy snatched a hard-earned moment's rest. “You and...

In the dead of a long-remembered night James Moore was waked by a low moaning beneath his room. He leapt out of bed and ran to the window to see his favorite dragging about the...

Those who have not lived in a desolate country like that about the Muir Pike, where sheep are paramount and every other man engaged in the profession pastoral, can barely imagin...

AN immense sensation this affair of the Scoop created in the Daleland. It spurred the Dalesmen into fresh endeavors. James Moore and M'Adam were examined and re-examined as to t...

THE winter came and went; the lambing season was over, and spring already shyly kissing the land. And the back of the year's work broken, and her master well started on a fresh...

The squire rose hurriedly and left the room. After him, one by one, trailed the tenants. At length, two only remained--M'Adam, sitting solitary with a long array of empty chairs...

THE sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse lying, long and low in the shadow of the Muir Pike; on the ruins of peel-tower and barmkyn, relics of the time of raids, it look...

All that evening at the Sylvester Arms his imprecations against David had made even the hardest shudder. James Moore, Owd Bob, and the Dale Cup were for once forgotten as, in hi...

Saturday came, and still the two never budged. Toward the evening the little man rose, all in a tremble, and took the Cup down from the mantelpiece; then he sat down again with...

THE Black Killer still cursed the land. Sometimes there would be a cessation in the crimes; then a shepherd, going his rounds, would notice his sheep herding together, packing i...

“The best sheep-dog i' th' North--Owd Bob o' Kenmuir!” he cries. In an instant there is uproar: the merry applause of clinking pewters; the stamping of feet; the rattle of stick...

IT was Owd Bob. There could be no mistaking. In the wide world there was but one Owd Bob o' Kenmuir. The silver moon gleamed down on the dark head and rough gray coat, and lit t...

DAVID and Maggie, meanwhile, were drifting further and further apart. He now thought the girl took too much upon herself; that this assumption of the woman and the mother was ov...

M'ADAM'S pride in the great Cup that now graced his kitchen was supreme. It stood alone in the very centre of the mantelpiece, just below the old bell-mouthed blunderbuss that h...