rseback, and Brinsmead and Jack Deane
trudged along by their side, considerably downcast by the adventure.
Brinsmead had never appeared so much put out.

"This comes of the way you have of talking to all the people you meet,
Mr Deane," he observed, in a tone very unlike that he usually used. "I
have a belief that the man you were riding so long by the side of has
had something to do with this day's business. I marked him when he
passed me, and I told you then that I did not like his looks."

"You mean Master Pearson, I suppose," answered Jack. "I cannot make out
how he can have had any thing to do with the thieves. He told me all
about himself; and if he was not an honest man, he would not have done
that. He is a Yorkshireman, a dealer in wool and drapery, and is on his
way to Stourbridge Fair and Newmarket. If he had had any sinister
motive, he would not have spoken as frankly as he did."

"Then who stole your powder-flask, and drew the bullets out of your
pistols?" asked Brinsmead.

"Not the man you speak of, certainly," said Jack. "I looked at the
priming of my pistols this morning, and they were all right, though to
be sure, not thinking that they might have been tampered with, I did not
examine the charges. However, he could not have done it while riding
alongside of me. In what state did you find your pistols, Brinsmead?"

"I must own, Jack, they would not go off either; and yet I did this
morning what I always do, examine them before starting, when I have my
master's property to defend upon the road."

"But did you never lose sight of them after you had examined them?"
asked Deane.

Brinsmead thought a few moments.

"Yes, I remember now, for once I did; and now I think of it, I remember
seeing a man, very like the fellow who has just left us, watching me as
I went out. That's it, depend on it."

While Brinsmead was speaking, he pulled out his pistols and examined
them with his ramrod. The charge of both had been withdrawn. He put
them back into his holsters with a look of annoyance.

"Ah! these are old tricks, and more shame to me I was not up to them;
but now, for the sake of the poor fellows we have got here, we must push
on as fast as we can get the drove over this mud and these mortally bad
roads. There's a house called Winn's Farm about three miles off from
here, where we shall be able to get good pasturage, and the men will be
well looked after."

Pushing on, in the course of anoth