n?" says the fellow, with the muzzles of the pistols
within a foot of Sir Harry's cowering body. "Ah, would you? Curse me,
but I've a mind to blow the heart and liver out of you--d'ye take me?"

"I'll see you hanged for this," said Raikes, betwixt his teeth.

"Maybe aye, maybe no," says the fellow, in the same rough yet
half-jovial voice, "but for the present come down--get down, d'ye
hear?" Muttering oaths, Sir Harry perforce dismounted, and being by this
still nearer the threatening muzzles, immediately proceeded to draw out
a heavy purse, which he sullenly extended toward the highwayman, who,
shifting one pistol to his pocket, took it, weighed it in his hand a
moment, and then coolly tossed it over into the stream.

"What the devil!" gasped Raikes, "are you mad?"

"Maybe aye, maybe no," says the fellow, grinning beneath his mask, "but
that's neither here nor there, master, the question betwixt us being a
coat."

"What coat?" cries Raikes, with a bewildered stare.

"This coat," says the fellow, tapping him upon the arm with his pistol
barrel, "and a very passable coat it is--fine velvet, I swear, and as
I'm a living sinner, a flowered waistcoat!--come, take 'em off, d'ye
hear?"

Very slowly, Sir Harry obeyed, swearing frightfully, while the fellow,
sitting upon the parapet of the bridge, swung his legs and watched him.

"Humph!" says he, as if to himself, "buckskin breeches, and boots brand
new--burn me!" and then suddenly in a louder tone: "Off with them!"

"What d'ye mean?" snarled Raikes, and his face was murderous.

"What I says," returned the other, with a flourish of his pistols, "such
being my natur', d'ye take me? And if the gentleman in the muddy hat
moves a finger nearer his barkers, I'll blow his head off--curse me if
I won't." Saying which the highwayman began to whistle softly, swinging
his legs in time to himself. As for the Captain, the hand which had
crept furtively towards his pistols dropped as if it had been shot, and
he sat watching the fellow with staring eyes.

And indeed he made a strange, fantastic figure sitting there hunched up
in the fading light, with the quick gleam of his ever restless eyes
showing through the slits of his hideous half-mask, and the pout of his
whistling lips beneath; nay, there was about the whole figure, from the
rusty spurs at his heels to the crown of his battered hat, something
almost devilish, with an indefinable mockery beyond words.

"Bentley," I whis