no rain; and as the men who had
waded the river lower down, climbed the steep cliff road, they kicked up
the white limestone dust, and caked their wet high boots, which, in
several instances, had opened holes in which toes could be seen, looking
like curious reptiles deep in gnarled and crumpled shells.

"Beggars! What a gang!" said Ralph Darley, a dark, swarthy lad of
perhaps seventeen, but looking older, from having an appearance of
something downy beginning to come up that spring about his chin, and a
couple of streaks, like eyebrows out of place, upon his upper lip. He
was well dressed, in the fashion of Solomon King James's day; and he
wore a sword, as he sat half up the rugged slope, on a huge block of
limestone, which had fallen perhaps a hundred years before, from the
cliff above, and was mossy now, and half hidden by the ivy which covered
its side.

"Beggars," he said again; "and what a savage looking lot."

As they came on, it began to dawn upon him that they could not be
beggars, for if so, they would have been the most truculent-looking
party that ever asked for the contributions of the charitable. One, who
seemed to be their leader, was a fierce, grizzled, red-nosed fellow,
wearing a rusty morion, in which, for want of a feather, a tuft of
heather was stuck; he wore a long cloak, as rusty-looking as his helmet;
and that he carried a sword was plain enough, for the well-worn scabbard
had found a very convenient hole in the cloak, through which it had
thrust itself in the most obtrusive manner, and looked like a tail with
a vicious sting, for the cap of the leathern scabbard had been lost, and
about three inches of steel blade and point were visible.

Ralph Darley was quick at observation, and took in quickly the fact that
all the men were armed, and looked shabbier than their leader, though
not so stout; for he was rubicund and portly, where he ought not to have
been, for activity, though in a barrel a tubby space does indicate
strength. Neither were the noses of the other men so red as their
leader's, albeit they were a villainous-looking lot.

"Not beggars, but soldiers," thought Ralph; "and they've been in the
wars."

He was quite right, but he did not stop to think that there had been no
wars for some years. Still, as aforesaid, he was right, but the war the
party had been in was with poverty.

"What in the world do they want in this out-of-the-way place--on the
road to nowhere?" thought Ral