Storm

Hardcastle, Master of Logie, came swinging up the last of the stiff miles that climbed from Norbrigg market-town to the high uplands. October’s mists had lain heavy on the lowla...

A red sun was going down behind the rim of the far-off hills as Pedlar Donald came to the road-top overlooking Logie Woods, and beyond them the leagues of moorland roving up int...

When Hardcastle had opened the door to Causleen and her father, and had thrown his gun and brace of partridge down on the long-settle in the hall, his hardness left him. These t...

Hardcastle had got to bed somewhere near midnight. There had been a farm-lad riding for the doctor, the galloping return of both, the verdict that Donald, with care, might live...

Hardcastle found no partridge in the long pasture that led to Draycott’s farm; but a hare got up under his feet as he neared the gate. Most shots came easily to Hardcastle, but...

They were gathering their sheep from the fells under Pengables, to bring them down into the warmer lands below. To a stranger it would have seemed odd that so many shepherds, an...

Michael Draycott rubbed his hands together as he saw the five shrink back. They were not used to such frank and instant challenge. Hardcastle had reminded them, moreover, of wha...

Causleen was restless about the house of Logie. Her father dozed and roused himself by turns. Always in his waking moments he glanced at the pike that had gone to Flodden Field...

As the hours passed, the tempest gained in speed. Stout-built as it was, the foresters’ hut shook with the gale’s mishandling, and the din out of doors was as full of cries as i...

Before the storm broke that drove Causleen and Hardcastle into shelter of the foresters’ hut, Long Murgatroyd had been poaching up the moor. He knew all about the uses of a wire...

Nita Langrish, later in the day of Hardcastle’s home-coming with the pedlar’s girl, took her way up to Logie between the melting drifts. Straight and slim she went, and an old t...

For a week the days went at Logie as if Garsykes had no feud with it. That was the way of the Wilderness Folk, and the nameless dreads that came at such waiting times began to p...

Long Murgatroyd was in one of his better moods, and gave as much as he took in the way of banter before settling himself in the corner by the ingle-nook. Then he glanced at the...

Garsykes was stirred to grim and crafty mirth during the next weeks. November had brought its little spell of summer between fall of the leaves and winter’s onset. Primroses blo...

“Now, I willun’t have that old joke thrown at me,” chuckled the farmer. “Maybe I have my fancies, like one here and there; but I do get up from my death-bed wonderful regular.”

Hardcastle fretted during the next days, because the hurt to his knee yielded slowly even to Rebecca’s skill with peat and simples and the right way of handling bandages. The fe...

That night they waited in Garsykes village till the moon dipped over Scummer Rigg and grey-black gloom shrouded heath and pasture-land. Then every man who had strength to carry...

need pressed. The fleeing mob, not far down the road as yet, was making noise enough to rouse dead men on their gibbets, and Brant’s blunderbuss bellowed like a stag gone mad at...

As they stood there, a stifled bark sounded from the doorway. Storm, his grizzled hide quivering with eagerness, came sidling in. Fire and gunshot and the night’s swift happenin...

Nita made sport of the Garsykes Men when they returned from Logie in the spitting rain of dawn. Slim, and fresh as if she came out of the new day’s heart, she waited for them in...

Causleen, when she left Hardcastle asleep in the hooded chair at Logie, wandered nearer and nearer to the Garsykes country, till she halted at last on Trolls Hill and stood look...

Hardcastle had gone into the black jaws of the cave without pause or thought of what ambushes might lie in wait. Causleen was here, and nothing mattered till he reached her. Wha...

By her silence, by the sob that followed, Hardcastle learned the measure of Causleen’s dread of what lay behind them. He learned, too, the depth of his fear for her—a terror tha...

The Garsykes Folk had grown tired of guarding the cave mouth. For a night, and half the next day, Nita’s tongue had whipped them into watchfulness; and when they were growing ou...

The Wilderness Folk were aghast, in the days that followed, to see dead Hardcastle riding with Causleen, man and wife, across the uplands. Flesh and blood they could not be, for...

Hardcastle had sent his challenge to Garsykes by the tramping man who met them on the Norbrigg road, and was quick to follow the new venture. The next day he rode with Causleen...

The weather broke that year in the middle of the hay-harvest, and Hardcastle, riding with Causleen to see what the past night’s rain had done with the biggest of the upland mead...