ing me across the breast as Covenant
trotted under it, it had swept me off and dashed me with great force to
the ground. Either the fall or the blows which I had received had cut me
badly, for I could feel the blood trickling in a warm stream past my
ear and down my neck. I made no attempt to move, however, but waited in
silence to find out who these men were into whose hands I had fallen.
My one fear was lest my letters should be taken away from me, and my
mission rendered of no avail. That in this, my first trust, I should be
disarmed without a blow and lose the papers which had been confided to
me, was a chance which made me flush and tingle with shame at the very
thought.

The gang who had seized me were rough-bearded fellows in fur caps and
fustian jackets, with buff belts round their waists, from which hung
short straight whinyards. Their dark sun-dried faces and their great
boots marked them as fishermen or seamen, as might be guessed from their
rude sailor speech. A pair knelt on either side with their hands upon
my arms, a third stood behind with a cocked pistol pointed at my head,
while the others, seven or eight in number, were helping to his feet the
man whom I had struck, who was bleeding freely from a cut over the eye.

'Take the horse up to Daddy Mycroft's,' said a stout, black-bearded man,
who seemed to be their leader. 'It is no mere dragooner hack,(Note
I. Appendix) but a comely, full-blooded brute, which will fetch sixty
pieces at the least. Your share of that, Peter, will buy salve and
plaster for your cut.'

'Ha, houndsfoot!' cried the Dutchman, shaking his fist at me. 'You
would strike Peter, would you? You would draw Peter's blood, would you?
Tausend Teufel, man! if you and I were together upon the hillside we
should see vich vas the petter man.'

'Slack your jaw tackle, Pete,' growled one of his comrades. 'This fellow
is a limb of Satan for sure, and doth follow a calling that none but a
mean, snivelling, baseborn son of a gun would take to. Yet I warrant,
from the look of him, that he could truss you like a woodcock if he had
his great hands upon you. And you would howl for help as you did last
Martinmas, when you did mistake Cooper Dick's wife for a gauger.'

'Truss me, would he? Todt und Holle!' cried the other, whom the blow
and the brandy had driven to madness. 'We shall see. Take that, thou
deyvil's spawn, take that!' He ran at me, and kicked me as hard as he
could with his heavy sea-b