heir
homes at Bridgenorth.

I hoped that they would leave before daylight, without discovering
me; but just as the sparrows on the roof were twittering a greeting
to the dawn, as ill luck would have it, one of the men spied my
coat, spread on staddles against the wall to dry. He uttered a
sharp exclamation, and called to his comrades. I heard them come in
my direction, and guessed by their silence that they were looking
warily around for the owner of the coat. But they did not see me,
being completely covered by the hay; and, remarking that it looked
a "rare good coat," one of them put his hand into all the pockets
in turn, and from the inner one fetched out Cludde's crown piece.

"A silver crown, Jo," he says.

"Bite it," said another.

"Good as gold," returned the first. "This be rare luck."

Now, if I had been a few years older and more expert in dealing
with men, I should doubtless have parleyed with the fellows; but in
the heat of youth and inexperience, indignant at the freedom with
which they were handling my belongings, I sprang out of the hay,
made for the man who held the coat, and peremptorily called on him
to drop it.

His answer was a sudden well-planted blow which sent me
incontinently backward into the hay from which I had risen. I was
up in an instant, and then began a struggle, short and decisive.
The three men were all shorter than I, but thick-set and powerfully
made, and struggle as I might I soon had to own myself beaten, and
was borne to the floor, one holding my head, another my feet, and
the third discommoding me very much by sitting on my middle.

"What be you a-doing here?" says the man called Job.

"I might ask you the same question," I replied, again choosing the
wrong method of dealing with them.

"You might, but you wouldn't get no answer," was the grim retort.
"You've heard what we've a-said?" the fellow went on.

I replied that I had heard it all. The men joined in a chorus of
oaths, and then began to discuss among themselves what they should
do with me, with a freedom and a disregard of any view I might hold
on the matter which in other circumstances I might have found
amusing.

"If we lets him go," said the man called Job, "he peaches, sure
enough, and then 'tis the collar for us all," by which I understood
he meant the hangman's noose. "If we don't let him go we must
ayther take him with us or tie him up, and then belike his friends
will find him, and 'twill be the same