This command I reluctantly obeyed, bringing to light my ten guineas, which were as yet intact, and which he pocketed forthwith, and two pennies--which he bade me keep.

"For," said he, "'t will buy you a draught of ale, sir, and there's good stuff to be had at 'The White Hart' yonder, and there's nothin' like a draught of good ale to comfort a man in any such small adversity like this here. As to that knapsack now," he pursued, eyeing it thoughtfully, "it looks heavy and might hold valleybels, but then, on the other hand, it might not, and those there straps takes time to unbuckle and--" He broke off suddenly, for from somewhere on the hill below us came the unmistakable sound of wheels. Hereupon the fellow very nimbly ran across the road, turned, nodded, and vanished among the trees and underbrush that clothed the steep slope down to the valley below.

CHAPTER V

THE BAGMAN

I was yet standing there, half stunned by my loss and the suddenness of it all, when a tilbury came slowly round a bend in the road, the driver of which nodded lazily in his seat while his horse, a sorry, jaded animal, plodded wearily up the steep slope of the hill. As he approached I hailed him loudly, upon which he suddenly dived down between his knees and produced a brass-bound blunderbuss.

"What's to do?" cried he, a thick-set, round-faced fellow, "what's to do, eh?" and he covered me with the wide mouth of the blunderbuss.

"Thieves!" said I, "I've been robbed, and not three minutes since."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, in a tone of great relief, and with the color returning to his plump cheeks, "is that the way of it?"

"It is," said I, "and a very bad way; the fellow has left me but twopence in the world."

"Twopence--ah?"

"Come," I went on, "you are armed, I see; the thief took to the brushwood, here, not three minutes ago; we may catch him yet--"

"Catch him?" repeated the fellow, staring.

"Yes, don't I tell you he has stolen all the money I possess?"

"Except twopence," said the fellow.

"Yes--"

"Well, twopence ain't to be sneezed at, and if I was you--"

"Come, we're losing time," said I, cutting him short.

"But--my mare, what about my mare?"

"She'll stand," I answered; "she's tired enough."

The Bagman, for such I took him to be, sighed, and, blunderbuss in hand, prepared to alight, but, in the act of doing so, paused:

"Was the rascal armed?" he inquired, over his shoulder

"To be sure he was," said I.

The Bagman got back into his seat and took up the reins.

"What now?" I inquired.

"It's this accursed mare of mine," he answered; "she'll bolt again, d'ye see--twice yesterday and once the day before, she bolted, sir, and on a road like this--"

"Then lend me your blunderbuss."

"I can't do that," he replied, shaking his head.

"But why not?" said I impatiently.

"Because this is a dangerous road, and I don't intend to be left unarmed on a dangerous road; I never have been and I never will, and there's an end of it, d'ye see!"

"Then do you mean to say that you refuse your aid to a fellow-traveler--that you will sit there and let the rogue get away with all the money I possess in the world--"