hat this might mean; but turning to
the servants already on the spot, he exclaimed, in a sharp tone, "Stand
forward like men, you scoundrels!" and they, seeing some help at hand,
advanced a little with a show of courage.
The gentlemen of the King's Highway, however, had heard the words which
Wilton's companion had shouted to him; and seeing themselves somewhat
overmatched in point of numbers already, they did not appear to approve
of more men coming up on the other side, before they had taken their
departure. There was, consequently, much hurrying to horse. The man who
had been knocked down by Wilton was dragged away by the heels, from the
spot where he lay somewhat too near to the other party; and the sharp
application of the gravel to his face, as one of his companions pulled
him along by the legs, proved sufficiently reviving to make him start
up, and nearly knock his rescuer down.
Wilton--not moved by the spirit of an ancient Greek--felt no
inclination to fight for the dead or the living body of his foe; and the
whole party of plunderers were speedily in the saddle and on the
retreat, with the exception of the more sedate personage on the bank.
He, indeed, was more slow to mount, calling the man who had been knocked
down "The Knight of the Bloody Nose" as he passed him; and then with a
light laugh springing into the saddle, he followed the rest at an easy
canter.
"Ha! ha! ha!" exclaimed Wilton's companion of the road, laughing, "let
me be called the master of stratagems for the rest of my life! Those
five fools have suffered themselves to be terrified from their booty,
simply by three words from my mouth and their own imaginations."
"Then you have no men coming up?" said Wilton.
"Not a man," replied the other: "all my men are busy in my own house at
this minute; most likely saying grace over roast pork and humming ale."

CHAPTER IX.
The events that happen to us in life gather themselves together in
particular groups, each group separated in some degree from that which
follows and that which goes before, but yet each united, in its own
several parts, by some strong bond of connexion, and each by a finer and
less apparent ligament attached to the other groups that surround it. In
short, if, as the great poet moralist has said, "All the world is a
stage, and all the men and women in it only players," the life of each
man is a drama, with the events thereof divided into separate scenes,
the scenes gathered into grand acts, and the acts all tending