ALONG THE NORTH ROAD
On the North Road there is a small inn, rather dilapidated and not attractive to travellers. Its customers are yokels from the neighbouring village, but occasionally a gentleman may be found warming himself at the open hearth and drinking the best that the house contains. Such a gentleman invariably rides a good horse, and is the recipient of open-mouthed admiration from the yokels. No gentleman but a highwayman would be there, they believe.
Only one man remained in the bar to-night, a jovial fellow of the farmer type, a lover of horses by his talk, and he was wont to boast that he had made the fortune of more than one gentleman of the road by the animal he had sold him.
"Shut the door, landlord. I'll wait a bit, and have another tankard of ale. I'm expecting a visitor."
"Who may that be?"
"One you know well enough, but perhaps you haven't seen him for some time."
In a few minutes there was a sharp knock at the door, and, when the landlord opened it, there entered a man wearing a brown mask and carrying a shapeless parcel under his arm.
"'Galloping Hermit!'" exclaimed the landlord, and it was evident that he was pleased to see his visitor.
"So you got my message," said the highwayman to the farmer.
"Aye, but I doubt if I've got a horse to sell that you would care to ride. What's become o' that mare o' yourn?"
"She's in the stables—I've just put her there. I want you to take her."
"Buy her? Well, I'll look at her, but buying and selling are two different things."
"Do you suppose I'd sell her?" was the answer. "No; I want you to take her and keep her—keep her until she dies, and then bury her in the corner of some quiet field. You're honest, and will do it if you say you will; and here's gold to pay you well for your trouble. She's done her work, and the last few days have finished her. She had to help me save a woman in the West Country, and it's broken her."
"I'll do it," said the farmer. "And you'll be wanting another horse?"
"Not yet. When I do you shall hear from me. Will you take the mare to-night? If I looked at her again I do not think I could let her go."
"Aye, it's like that with horses, we know," said the sympathetic farmer.
"I'll take her to-night."
The landlord went to the stables with him, and when he returned found the highwayman standing in deep thought before the fire.
"I'm tired, friend. Is there a hole I can sleep in until daylight?"
"Of course."
"I must start at daybreak."
"What! Without a horse?"
"Yes, and without this," he said, taking off his brown mask, showing the landlord his features for the first time. "To-night 'Galloping Hermit' ceases to exist."
He kicked the dying embers into a blaze, and dropped the mask into the fire.
"That's the end of it. Show me this sleeping hole of mine," he said, taking up his parcel from the floor. "What clothes I leave in it you may have. I shall not want them any more."
With the dawn a man came out of the inn. He looked at the sky, and up the road, and down it. Under his arm he carried a fiddle and a bow. There fell from his lips a little cadence of notes, soft, low, not a laugh, nor yet a sigh, yet with something of content in it.
"For the love of a woman," he murmured, and then he went along the road northwards, his figure slowly lessening in the distance until it vanished over the brow of the hill which the morning sunlight had just touched.