It must have been three or four hours later that Paul heard what he thought were mysterious noises and stealthy footsteps downstairs. He had been lying restless and wakeful, haunted by a dread of he knew not what, his mind continually dwelling on the runaway convicts out on the moor, the clank of the iron as he had heard it that night sounding plainly in his ears. He remembered, too, how deserted the house had been when his mother and Mike had come into it, and how easily any one could have walked in, had he or she been so inclined.

Then in on his thoughts broke those sounds. A dreadful certainty of harm to come came to him, but he had plenty of pluck, and the memory of his promise to his father was strong in his mind. He got out of bed softly and opened his door; then he crept to his mother's door and listened; no sound came from there, and he hoped she was fast asleep, and Michael, too, whose cot had been moved in there for the time. Paul felt sincerely thankful. But though it was plain that the sounds had not come from there, he was certain they came from somewhere within the house. He crept softly along the passage and stood at the head of the stairs listening. At first all was quiet, but just as he was thinking of creeping back to his bed again, telling himself he had made a mistake, there came from below a faint sound of scraping, and of stealthy movements. At the sounds, so unmistakably those of a person bent on concealment, his heart thumped madly, a cold sweat broke out on his brow; his heart indeed thumped so loudly he was afraid it would be heard by the person below, but he went bravely down a few steps further and listened again. Yes, there was no doubt there was someone down there.

What could he, a small boy, do against a desperate man? Farmer Minards slept on the other side of the house, and his room could only be reached by a flight of stairs running up from the kitchen. To get at him Paul must go right down, and through the house, close to, if not actually passing by the burglar, or whoever it might be who was acting so stealthily. But Farmer Minards must be roused somehow. This was the one thing Paul was certain of. Without making a sound he crept down another stair or two. Whoever it was down below, he had a light, for Paul could see a faint glimmer, and it came, he imagined, from the little room the farmer called his 'office.'

Scarcely knowing to what his thoughts led, Paul thought he might possibly creep down and pass the office unnoticed, then fly softly through the kitchen and up to the farmer's room. All chance of success would depend, though, on the man not being near the office door, or facing that way. But before his thoughts were really formed Paul had put them into action. He was too much alarmed and too full of the responsibility of his position to dawdle. Suppose any harm should come to his mother or the children! He grew sick with terror at the thought, and flew on faster.

There was only a faint swish in the air to indicate that anyone had moved, a sound so faint that the thief in the office did not hear it. He was busily engaged on the lock of the farmer's safe.

The kitchen reached, Paul flew up the back stairs, and burst like a hurricane into the first room he came to. Luckily it was the right one. It took him some time to rouse the old farmer and to make him understand what was happening, and when that was accomplished nothing would satisfy him but that he must dress as fully as on every other morning, and then rouse the household in that part of the house.

Paul quivered with impatience. "Quick! quick!" he groaned. "He may go up and murder mother or Stella while we are here." But the farmer had never been quick in his life, and did not know the meaning of the word.

"Plenty of time," he said, and Paul groaned with anguish. "Plenty of time, sir. That there lock'll keep un quiet for a brave bit, and I ain't going to trust myself in that place without plenty to back me up."

"I must go back alone, then," said Paul at last, in an agony of impatience; "I promised father I'd take care of them." And he began to descend the stairs, hoping by his departure to accelerate the movements of the others. But his hope was a forlorn one, and he went back by himself, in spite of the farmer's repeated injunctions to "wait a bit."

He hoped by being equally swift and silent to escape the notice of the thief again, but the man was no longer in the office. Whether he had succeeded in robbing the safe or not Paul did not know, but he soon gathered that he had gone upstairs; in fact, as Paul himself reached the landing, he heard him raise the latch of Stella's door and creep into the room.

"Who are you—what do you want?" gasped Paul. He was rendered well-nigh speechless at coming suddenly face to face with the burglar.

The man turned on him like a hunted animal at bay. "If you make a sound I'll shoot you!" he snarled, and with the same he whipped a revolver from his pocket. "If you'll hold your tongue and say nothing no harm'll come to anybody, but if you give the alarm I'll—"

But he did not complete his sentence, for their voices had wakened Stella, and at the sight of the stranger she started up in bed with a scream.

Frantic and desperate, the man turned from Paul to her. "Stop that noise, will you?" he hissed, "or I'll—" But at that moment Paul rushed past him, sprang on the bed, and placed his own body in front of his sister's. "No, you don't," he half sobbed, half screamed, "you—you coward, you'll hit me first!"

It is doubtful if the man would have fired at little Stella; probably he meant only to frighten the children, but at that instant he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and with a frenzied look around him for a means of escape, he saw the doorway filled by the burly form of Farmer Minards.

Now Farmer Minards was not accustomed to the capturing of desperate men. A better man with a kicking horse, or a savage bull, could not perhaps, be found on Dartmoor, and if the convict had stood and allowed himself to be pinioned with only a moderate amount of struggling and kicking, the farmer's presence of mind would have been sufficient, but, as it was, when the man made one bold rush, with pistol cocked, for the very spot where he stood, he gave way before the rush; but for an instant there was a struggle and a fight, for Muggridge and the man who slept at the farm were close behind the farmer, little expecting their master to give way so soon, and leave them to grapple with their visitor, and it may have been that he intended to shoot down one of them, or that in the struggle the pistol accidentally went off, but in another second a bullet whistled through the air, and, passing clean through the fleshy part of Paul's arm, became embedded in the wall behind.

Certain it is that if Paul had not dragged his sister flat down behind him on the bed poor Stella's life would have been ended then and there. But Paul had expiated his sin nobly, and he had nearly laid down his life for hers. Stella really thought he had laid it down in very truth when he fell forward on his face with blood pouring from him, and, overcome with grief and horror, she fainted dead away beside him.

Farmer Minards saw the children fall, and he, too, thought Paul was killed. In fact, for the moment he thought they both were, and with the horror of it, forgetting the convict and everything else, he rushed to the bedside, leaving Muggridge and Davey to manage as best they could. But the convict had the best of it, and the two had never a chance to close with him. By the force and unexpectedness with which he came he burst through them, and dealing Davey a blow on the head with his pistol, and Muggridge one in the face with his fist, which left them both stunned and bleeding, he flew down the stairs and out of the house by the very window through which he had entered.

When Stella and Paul at last awoke again to life, and to a recollection of what had taken place, it seemed to be everybody's aim to banish from their minds the painful past, and the memory of that terrible night, and to fill their lives with everything that could brighten and cheer them and help them to forget. Paul was quite a hero in all their eyes; to Stella he seemed the very ideal of all that was splendid and brave, and to Paul's credit it must be said that the opinion he had of himself was far lower and more contemptuous than he deserved, and he would not listen to one word of praise.