No Defense by Gilbert Parker, Fiction, Action & Adventure

"I'm a damned dangerous fellow, there's no doubt about that. Perhaps I'll kill a rebel some day, and then they'll take me to the sessions and the assizes. Well, there's many a worse fate than that, there is! But if I ever kill, I'd like it to be in open fight on the hills like this -- like this, under the bright sun, in the soft morning, with all the moor and valleys still, and the larks singing!"

Speaking to himself is young Irishman Dyck Calhoun, as open-hearted, generous and spirited as they come -- but also as intemperate and undisciplined as youth can be. From somewhere within, though, he feels the touch of a wind of change -- something that tells him he may yet make something of himself. As he has this feeling, he hears a voice singing.

A girl appears who has been tramping over the hills for hours -- and she looks beautiful, and utterly content in being alone. She wears a gown of dark gold, with little green ribbons here and there. All her beauty has the slender fullness of a quail.

And Dyck looks upon her as if lost in a dream.