Little, delicate twitterings vibrated on the air--the sleepy chirrup
of awakening birds, the rustle of a fallen leaf beneath the pad of some
belated cat stealing back to the domestic hearth, the stir of a rabbit
in its burrow.

Presently these sank into insignificance beside a more definite
sound--the crackle of dry leaves and the snapping of twigs beneath a
heavier footfall than that of any marauding Tom, and through a clearing
in the woods slouched the figure of a man, gun on shoulder, the secret
of his bulging side-pockets betrayed by the protruding tail feathers of
a cock-pheasant.

He was not an attractive specimen of mankind. Beneath the peaked cap,
crammed well down on to his head, gleamed a pair of surly, watchful
eyes, and, beneath these again, the unshaven, brutal, out-thrust jaw
offered little promise of better things.

Nor did his appearance in any way belie his reputation, which was
unsavory in the extreme. Indeed, if report spoke truly, "Black Brady,"
as he was commonly called, had on one occasion only escaped the
gallows thanks to the evidence of a village girl--one who had loved him
recklessly, to her own undoing. Every one had believed her evidence to
be false, but, as she had stuck to what she said through thick and thin,
and as no amount of cross-examination had been able to shake her, Brady
had contrived to slip through the hands of the police.

Conceiving, however, that, after this episode, the air of his native
place might prove somewhat insalubrious for a time, he had migrated
thence to Fallowdene, establishing himself in a cottage on the outskirts