d elated crest, the wanderer, thus transformed, sprang
from the wood into the dusty thoroughfare. He had travelled on for about
an hour, meeting but few other passengers, when he heard to the right a
loud shrill young voice, "Help! help! I will not go; I tell you, I will
not!" Just before him stood, by a high five-barred gate, a pensive gray
cob attached to a neat-looking gig. The bridle was loose on the cob's
neck. The animal was evidently accustomed to stand quietly when ordered
to do so, and glad of the opportunity.

The cries, "Help, help!" were renewed, mingled with louder tones in a
rougher voice, tones of wrath and menace. Evidently these sounds did
not come from the cob. Kenelm looked over the gate, and saw a few yards
distant in a grass field a well-dressed boy struggling violently against
a stout middle-aged man who was rudely hauling him along by the arm.

The chivalry natural to a namesake of the valiant Sir Kenelm Digby
was instantly aroused. He vaulted over the gate, seized the man by the
collar, and exclaimed, "For shame! what are you doing to that poor boy?
let him go!"

"Why the devil do you interfere?" cried the stout man, his eyes glaring
and his lips foaming with rage. "Ah, are you the villain? yes, no doubt
of it. I'll give it to you, jackanapes," and still grasping the boy with
one hand, with the other the stout man darted a blow at Kenelm, from
which nothing less than the practised pugilistic skill and natural
alertness of the youth thus suddenly assaulted could have saved his eyes
and nose. As it was, the stout man had the worst of it: the blow was
parried, returned with a dexterous manoeuvre of Kenelm's right foot in
Cornish fashion, and _procumbit humi bos_; the stout man lay sprawling
on his back. The boy, thus released, seized hold of Kenelm by the arm,
and hurrying him along up the field, cried, "Come, come before he gets
up! save me! save me!" Ere he had recovered his own surprise, the boy
had dragged Kenelm to the gate, and jumped into the gig, sobbing forth,
"Get in, get in, I can't drive; get in, and drive--you. Quick! Quick!"

"But--" began Kenelm.

"Get in, or I shall go mad." Kenelm obeyed; the boy gave him the reins,
and seizing the whip himself, applied it lustily to the cob. On sprang
the cob. "Stop, stop, stop, thief! villain! Holloa! thieves! thieves!
thieves! stop!" cried a voice behind. Kenelm involuntarily turned his
head and beheld the stout man perched upon the gate and