au three hundred guineas,
which I have not as yet been able to take to safe hands at--, and which,
by the way, will be your's to-morrow. So, you see, it would be no light
misfortune to me to be robbed."

"Hist!" said Aram, stopping short, "I think I heard steps on the other
side of the hedge."

The Squire listened, but heard nothing; the senses of his companion
were, however, remarkably acute, more especially that of hearing.

"There is certainly some one; nay, I catch the steps of two persons,"
whispered he to Lester. "Let us come round the hedge by the gap below."

They both quickened their pace, and gaining the other side of the hedge,
did indeed perceive two men in carters' frocks, strolling on towards the
village.

"They are strangers too," said the Squire suspiciously, "not Grassdale
men. Humph! could they have overheard us, think you?"

"If men whose business it is to overhear their neighbours--yes; but not
if they be honest men," answered Aram, in one of those shrewd remarks
which he often uttered, and which seemed almost incompatible with the
tenor of the quiet and abstruse pursuits that he had adopted, and that
generally deaden the mind to worldly wisdom.

They had now approached the strangers, who, however, appeared mere
rustic clowns, and who pulled off their hats with the wonted obeisance
of their tribe.

"Hollo, my men," said the Squire, assuming his magisterial air, for the
mildest Squire in Christendom can play the Bashaw, when he remembers he
is a Justice of the Peace. "Hollo! what are you doing here this time of
day? you are not after any good, I fear."

"We ax pardon, your honour," said the elder clown, in the peculiar
accent of the country, "but we be come from Gladsmuir; and be going to
work at Squire Nixon's at Mow-hall, on Monday; so as I has a brother
living on the green afore the Squire's, we be a-going to sleep there
to-night and spend the Sunday, your honour."

"Humph! humph! What's your name?"

"Joe Wood, your honour, and this here chap is, Will Hutchings."

"Well, well, go along with you," said the Squire: "And mind what you
are about. I should not be surprised if you snare one of Squire Nixon's
hares by the way."

"Oh, well and indeed, your honour."--"Go along, go along," said the
Squire, and away went the men.

"They seem honest bumpkins enough," observed Lester.

"It would have pleased me better," said Aram, "had the speaker of the
two particularized less; and you obser