"Still," said he, "there is a week left; surely I can contrive to bowl him out somehow." And then he walked on in deep thought.
He was crossing the highest watershed in the county by an open, low-sided valley on the southern shoulder of Cawsand.

To the left lay the mountain, and to the right tors of weathered granite, dim in the changing moonlight.

Before him was a small moor-pool, in summer a mere reedy marsh, but now a bleak tarn, standing among dangerous mosses, sending ghostly echoes across the solitude, as the water washed wearily against the black peat shores, or rustled among the sere skeleton reeds in the shallow bays.
Suddenly he stopped with a jar in his brain and a chill at his heart.
His breath came short, and raising one hand, he stood beating the ground for half a minute with his foot.

He gave a stealthy glance around, and then murmured hoarsely to himself,-- "Aye, that would do; that would do well.

And I could do it, too, when I was half-drunk." Was that the devil, chuckling joyous to himself across the bog?
No, only an innocent little snipe, getting merry over the change of weather, bleating to his companions as though breeding time were come round again.
Crowd close, little snipes, among the cup-moss and wolf's-foot, for he who stalks past you over the midnight moor, meditates a foul and treacherous murder in his heart.
Yes, it had come to that, and so quickly.