gate.

The girl stopped, all in a tremble. In the shadow of the trees there
was a camp-stool, and on the camp-stool sat a savage-looking man,
dressed in a dark corduroy suit, with a blackened clay pipe stuck in the
corner of his mouth. His weather-beaten mahogany face was plentifully
covered with small-pox marks, and one of his eyes was sightless and
white from the effects of the same disease. He rose now, and interposed
himself between her and the gate.

"Sink me, if it ain't her," he said slowly, surveying her from head to
foot. "I were given to understand that she was a spanker, an' a spanker
she be." With this oracular remark he took a step back and surveyed
Kate again with his one eye.

"My good man," she said, in a trembling voice, for his appearance was
far from reassuring, "I wish to go past and to get to Bedsworth.
Here is a shilling, and I beg that you will not detain me."

Her companion stretched out a very dirty hand, took the coin, spun it up
in the air, caught it, bit it, and finally plunged it into the depths of
his trouser pockets. "No road this way, missy," he said; "I've given
my word to the guv'nor, and I can't go back from it."

"You have no right to detain me," Kate cried angrily. "I have good
friends in London who will make you suffer for this."

"She's a-goin' to flare up," said the one-eyed man; "knock me helpless,
if she ain't!"

"I shall come through!" the girl cried in desperation. She was only a
dozen yards from the lane which led to freedom, so she made a quick
little feminine rush in the hope of avoiding this dreadful sentinel who
barred her passage. He caught her round the waist, however, and hurled
her back with such violence that she staggered across the path, and
would have fallen had she not struck violently against a tree. As it
was, she was badly bruised and the breath shaken out of her body.

"She _has_ flared up," said the one-eyed man, removing his pipe from his
lips. "Blow me asunder if she bean't a rustler!" He brought his
camp-stool from the side of the pillar and, planting it right in the
centre of the gateway, sat down upon it again. "You see, missy," he
remarked, "it's no manner o' use. If you did get out it would only be
to be put in a reg'lar 'sylum."

"An asylum!" gasped Kate, sobbing with pain and anger. "Do you think I
am mad, then?"

"I don't think nowt about it," the man remarked calmly. "I knows it."

This was a new light to Kate. She w