He knew well enough that he might trust Mary; but he never could be sure that the bold "coast-riders," despairing by this time of catching him at sea, and longing for the weight of gold put upon his head, might not be setting privy snares to catch him in his walks abroad.

They had done so when they pursued him up the Dike; and though he was inclined to doubt the strict legality of that proceeding, he could not see his way to a fair discussion of it, in case of their putting a bullet through him.

And this consideration made him careful.
The brother and sister went on well by the foot-path over the uplands of the farm, and crossing the neck of the Flamburn peninsula, tripped away merrily northward.

The wheat looked healthy, and the barley also, and a four-acre patch of potatoes smelled sweetly (for the breeze of them was pleasant in their wholesome days), and Willie, having overworked his brain, according to his own account of it, strode along loftily before his sister, casting over his shoulder an eddy of some large ideas with which he had been visited before she interrupted him.

But as nothing ever came of them, they need not here be stated.