not a crown's
worth of them. I tell you plainly, to save us both trouble, that there's
nothing to be got from me but a pretty stout arm considering my years,
and this tool, which, mayhap from long acquaintance with, I can use
pretty briskly. You shall not have it all your own way, I promise you,
if you play at that game. With these words he stood upon the defensive.

'I am not what you take me for, Gabriel Varden,' replied the other.

'Then what and who are you?' returned the locksmith. 'You know my name,
it seems. Let me know yours.'

'I have not gained the information from any confidence of yours, but
from the inscription on your cart which tells it to all the town,'
replied the traveller.

'You have better eyes for that than you had for your horse, then,' said
Varden, descending nimbly from his chaise; 'who are you? Let me see your
face.'

While the locksmith alighted, the traveller had regained his saddle,
from which he now confronted the old man, who, moving as the horse moved
in chafing under the tightened rein, kept close beside him.

'Let me see your face, I say.'

'Stand off!'

'No masquerading tricks,' said the locksmith, 'and tales at the club
to-morrow, how Gabriel Varden was frightened by a surly voice and a dark
night. Stand--let me see your face.'

Finding that further resistance would only involve him in a personal
struggle with an antagonist by no means to be despised, the traveller
threw back his coat, and stooping down looked steadily at the locksmith.

Perhaps two men more powerfully contrasted, never opposed each other
face to face. The ruddy features of the locksmith so set off and
heightened the excessive paleness of the man on horseback, that he
looked like a bloodless ghost, while the moisture, which hard riding had
brought out upon his skin, hung there in dark and heavy drops, like dews
of agony and death. The countenance of the old locksmith lighted up with
the smile of one expecting to detect in this unpromising stranger some
latent roguery of eye or lip, which should reveal a familiar person in
that arch disguise, and spoil his jest. The face of the other, sullen
and fierce, but shrinking too, was that of a man who stood at bay; while
his firmly closed jaws, his puckered mouth, and more than all a certain
stealthy motion of the hand within his breast, seemed to announce a
desperate purpose very foreign to acting, or child's play.

Thus they regarded each other for some time, in