mith was there; and the carpenter, Willie Losh; and
Jackers, the postman's son. And they gave him a glass of beer. And
the old man drank it up, still hugging his emeralds.

And at last they asked him what he had in his sack, the question he
clearly dreaded; and he only clasped yet tighter the sodden sack and
mumbled he had potatoes.

"Potatoes," said Yon the blacksmith.

"Potatoes," said Willie Losh.

And when he heard the doubt that was in their voices the old man
shivered and moaned.

"Potatoes, did you say?" said the postman's son. And they all three
rose and tried to peer at the sack that the rain-soaked wayfarer so
zealously sheltered.

And from the old man's fierceness I had said that, had it not been for
that foul night on the roads and the weight he had carried so far and
the fearful winds of October, he had fought with the blacksmith, the
carpenter and the postman's son, all three, till he beat them away
from his sack. And weary and wet as he was he fought them hard.

I should no doubt have interfered; and yet the three men meant no harm
to the wayfarer, but resented the reticence that he displayed to them
though they had given him beer; it was to them as though a master key
had failed to open a cupboard. And, as for me, curiosity held me down
to my chair and forbade me to interfere on behalf of the sack; for the
old man's furtive ways, and the night out of which he came, and the
hour of his coming, and the look of his sack, all made me long as much
to know what he had, as even the blacksmith, the carpenter and the
postman's son.

And then they found the emeralds. They were all bigger than hazel
nuts, hundreds and hundreds of them: and the old man screamed.

"Come, come, we're not thieves," said the blacksmith.

"We're not thieves," said the carpenter.

"We're not thieves," said the postman's son.

And with awful fear on his face the wayfarer closed his sack,
whimpering over his emeralds and furtively glancing round as though
the loss of his secret were and utterly deadly thing. And then they
asked him to give them just one each, just one huge emerald each,
because they had given him a glass of beer. Then to see the wayfarer
shrink against his sack and guard it with clutching fingers one would
have said that he was a selfish man, were it not for the terror that
was freezing his face. I have seen men look sheer at Death with far
less fear.

And they took their emerald all three, one enor