The two men turned and eyed each other; the one grim, the other sardonic: both dishevelled and suspicious.
Together they walked hack into the little moonlit hollow. There lay the murdered sheep in a pool of blood. Plain it was to see whence the marks on their coats came. M'Adam touched the victim's head with his foot. The movement exposed its throat. With a shudder he replaced it as it was.
The two men stood back and eyed one another.
"Up this path," pointing to the one behind him. "Hoo did you?"
"Where's yer gray dog?" This time the challenge was unmistakable.
"I sent him after the Killer. Wheer's your Red Wull?"
"Yo' mean yo' left him there?" M'Adam's fingers twitched.
James Moore shrugged his shoulders. And the other began:
"Ye say he went after the Killer. Noo the Killer was here," pointing to the dead sheep. "Was your dog here, too?"
"There was only _one_ beneath me. I felt him."
"Just so," said M'Adam, and laughed. The other's brow contracted.
"An' that was a big un," he said slowly. The little man stopped his cackling.
"There ye lie," he said, smoothly. "He was small."
They looked one another full in the eyes.
"That's a matter of opinion," said the Master.
The two stared at one another, silent and stern, each trying to fathom the other's soul; then they turned again to the brink of the Fall. Beneath them, plain to see, was the splash and furrow in the shingle marking the Killer's line of retreat. They looked at one another again, and then each departed the way he had come to give his version of the story.
"'If Th' Owd Un had kept wi' me, I should ha' had him."
"I tell ye I did have him, but James Moore pulled me aff. Strange, too, his dog not bein' wi' him!"
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 the minutest details of the matter. The whole country-side was placarded with huge bills, offering 100 pounds reward for the capture of the criminal dead or alive. While the vigilance of the watchers was such that in a single week they bagged a donkey, an old woman, and two amateur detectives.
In Wastrel-dale the near escape of the Killer, the collision between James Moore and Adam, and Owd Bob's unsuccess, who was not wont to fail, aroused intense excitement, with which was mingled a certain anxiety as to their favorite.