had been two," grumbled another of the
band; "I wonder if he speaks sooth."

"I warrant me he does, else where should the other be? It was a
trick of the moonlight; it often deceives us so.

"Come now, my young cockerel; you can crow lustily, it seems, and
keep a bold face where others shrink and tremble and flee. How say
you? will you follow us to our lodging place for the night? And if
we find no money concealed about you, and if your story of your
poverty be true, you can think well whether you will choose to cast
in your lot with us. Many a poor man has done so and become rich,
and the life is a better one than many."

All this was spoken in a careless, mocking way, and Cuthbert did
not know if the proposal were made in good faith or no. But it was
plain that no harm was meant to his life or person, and as he was
in no fear from any search of his clothes and bag, he was ready and
willing to accept the invitation offered, and by no means sorry to
think he should be relieved from spending the night in the saddle.

"I will gladly go with you," he answered. "I have spoken naught but
sooth, and I have no fear. My person and my goods are in your
hands. Do as you will with them; I have too little to lose to make
a moan were you to rob me of all."

"We rob not the poor; we only rob the rich--those arrogant,
purse-proud rogues who batten and fatten on what they wring from
the poor," answered, in quick, scornful accents, the man who
appeared to be the leader of this little band. "On them we have
scant pity. They have but stolen, in cunning though lawful fashion,
what we wrest from them, lawlessly it may be, yet with as good a
right in the sight of the free heavens as any they practise. But we
filch not gold nor goods from the poor, the thrifty, the sons of
toil; nay, there be times when we restore to these what has been
drained from them by injustice and tyranny. We be not the common
freebooters of the road, who set on all alike, and take human life
for pure love of killing. We have our own laws, our own ways, our
own code of right and wrong; and we recruit our ranks from bold
lads like you, upon whom fortune has not smiled, and who come to us
to see if we can help them to better things."

Cuthbert was greatly interested in this adventure. He looked into
the dark, handsome face of the man who rode beside him, and
wondered if some gipsy blood might not run in his veins. The gipsy
people of whom Kate had spoken were wel