any
rogues abroad that you must forgive your old mother if she grow often
affrighted that her good Jemmie has been misled." She turned to me.
"Pardon, my good gentleman," she said almost in tears. "Ye little know
what it is to be the mother of a high-spirited boy."

"I can truthfully say that I do not, Dame Bottles," said I, with one
of my father's French bows. She was immensely pleased. Any woman may
fall a victim to a limber, manly, and courteous bow.

Presently we sat down to a supper of plum-stew and bread. Bottles had
washed the blood from his face and now resembled an honest man.

"You may think it strange, sir," said Dame Bottles with some
housewifely embarrassment, "that a highwayman of such distinction that
he has had written of him in Bristol six ballads--"

"Seven," said the highwayman.

"Seven in Bristol and in Bath two."

"Three," said the highwayman.

"And three in Bath," continued the old woman. "You may think it
strange, sir, that a highwayman of such distinction that he has had
written of him in Bristol seven ballads, and in Bath three, is yet
obliged to sit down to a supper of plum-stew and bread."

"Where is the rest of that cheese I took on last Michaelmas?" demanded
Bottles suddenly.

"Jemmie," answered his mother with reproach, "you know you gave the
last of it to the crippled shepherd over on the big hill."

"So I did, mother dear," assented the highwayman, "and I regret now
that I let no less than three cheeses pass me on the highway because I
thought we had plenty at home."

"If you let anything pass on the road because you do not lack it at
the moment, you will ultimately die of starvation, Jemmie dear," quoth
the mother. "How often have I told you?"

"Aye," he answered somewhat irritably, "you also often have told me to
take snuff-boxes."

"And was I at fault," she retorted, "because the cheating avarice of
the merchants led them to make sinful, paltry snuff-boxes that were
mere pictures of the good old gold and silver? Was it my mischief? Or
was it the mischief of the plotting swineherds who now find it to
their interest to deal in base and imitative metals?"

"Peace, my mother," said the highwayman. "The gentleman here has not
the same interest in snuff-boxes which moves us to loud speech."

"True," said Dame Bottles, "and I readily wish that my Jemmie had no
reason to care if snuff-boxes were made from cabbage-leaves."

I had been turning a scheme in my mind, and here I