those wild hills. It wanted some force stronger, or, at all events, some
force less magnificently deliberate, than that of the law.

Frank Stokoe was that force. To him went the friends of Lowes; and next
morning saw the peel tower of Leehall besieged. Frank demanded the
surrender of Lowes, uninjured. Leehall retorted that he might take
him--if he could. But Leehall had reckoned without his retainers; they
dared not fight against Frank Stokoe. So they said. But was it not, in
reality, a sort of incipient Strike? Did they, perhaps, being wearied of
the somewhat tame sport of baiting him, think the opportunity a fitting
one to get rid of their uninvited guest for good and all? In any case,
before an hour had passed, Leehall found it convenient to hand Lowes
over to Stokoe, who safely deposited him by his own fireside at
Willimoteswick, and the feud was pursued no further.

Whether or not Leehall was content to have thus played second fiddle,
one does not know. Perhaps it was his men who, a year or two later, paid
a nocturnal visit to Stokoe's peel tower. Frank was roused from sleep
one winter night by his daughter, who told her father that some one was
attempting to force the outer door. Stokoe stole quietly downstairs, to
find that some one outside was busy with the point of a knife trying
gently to prise back the great oaken bolt which barred his door. A very
little more, a few minutes longer of work, and the beam would have been
slid back, the door would have been quietly opened, and the throats of
all the occupants of the house might have been cut. Whispering to his
daughter to stand behind the door, and softly to push back the bolt each
time the attempt was made to prise it open, Frank snatched down, and
loaded with slugs, his old musket. Then very quietly he let himself down
through the trap-door into the cow-house, which in all, or nearly all,
old peel towers formed the lower story of the building. Cautiously