says I. Obediently he raised his hands and, taking his
pistols, I opened the pan of each one and, having blown out the
primings, tossed them back.

"Snake sting me!" says he, laughing ruefully as he re-pocketed his
weapons. "This comes o' harbouring a lousy rogue as balks good liquor.
The man as won't take good rum hath the head of a chicken, the heart of
a yellow dog, and the bowels of a w-worm, and bone-rot him, says I.
Lord love me, but I've seen many a better throat than yours slit ere
now, my buxom lad!"

"And aided too, belike?" says I.

"Why, here's a leading question--but mum! Here's a hand that knoweth
not what doth its fellow--mum, boy, mum!" And tilting back his head he
brake forth anew into his villainous song:

"Two on a knife did end their life
And three the bullet took O,
But three times three died plaguily
A-wriggling on a hook O.
Sing cheerly O and cheerly O,
They died by gash o' hook O."

"And look'ee, my ben cull, if I was to offer ye all Bartlemy's
treasure--which I can't, mark me--still you'd never gather just what
manner o' hook that was. Anan, says you--mum, boy, says I. Howbeit, I
say, 'tis a good song," quoth he, blinking drowsily at the fire,
"here's battle in't, murder and sudden death and wha--what more could
ye expect of any song--aye, and there's women in't too!" Here he fell
to singing certain lewd ribaldry that I will not here set down, until
what with the rum and the drowsy heat of the fire that I had
replenished, he yawned, stretched, and laying himself down, very soon
fell a-snoring, to my no small comfort. As for me, I sat there waiting
for the dayspring; the fire sank lower and lower, filling the little
cave with a rosy glow falling athwart the sprawling form of the sleeper
and making his red face seem purplish and suffused like the face of one
I had once seen dead of strangulation; howbeit, he slept well enough,
judging from his lusty snoring. Now presently in the surrounding dark
beyond the smouldering fire was a glimmer, a vague blur of sloping,
trampled bank backed by misty trees; so came the dawn, very chill and
full of eddying mists that crawled phantom-like, filling the little
dingle brimful and blotting out the surrounding trees. In a little I
arose and, coming without the cave, shivered in the colder air, shaken
with raging hunger. And now remembering my utter destitution, I stooped
to peer down at the sleeper, half minded to go through his pocke