"Sink me!" says he in my presence once to the landlord of the King's Head, who spoke of his score there, "I will pay you to-morrow, and be hanged to you!" The which he did, sure enough, by a visit to Finchley and not so much as a charged pistol. That was never my way. I never could abide such sport. Give me a creditable fellow that shows fight and gives your wits some exercise. There's the true spirit in which to take the life of the road. I would not give a pint of mulled ale for it else.
But the West is after my heart, being big and populous and swarming with squires and comfortable warm folk. I know the North Road, and was once very well known there myself, and celebrated on the Yorkshire moors, a confounded cold, uncivil place. Indeed, there are few parts of the kingdom I have not traversed in my time. Well, I was newly out of the West that May night, but on this occasion in no very good humour, as you may imagine, when I say that I had been forced to leave a belt of guineas behind at Devizes—so close upon me were the traps. Indeed, I was very nearly taken in the night, all owing to the treachery of an innkeeper, roast him! 'Twas a fine, mild night, and I was for lying in Clerkenwell at a house I knew, but I had reached no further than Roehampton Lane, when of a sudden I reined in, for I remembered an inn there that I had sometimes used, and, to say the truth, I was thirsty.
"Well," thinks I, "maybe I will lie here and maybe not. I will let fortune decide," and I was turning the mare into the lane, when something comes up quick in the thick of the darkness, and rushes upon Calypso's rump.
The mare started and backed into the hedge, and I raised my voice and cursed, as you may guess.
"Why," says I, "you toad, you muckrake, you dung-fork—" and the Lord knows where I should ha' gotten to if a gleam of white in the blackness had not in that instant disclosed to me the blunderer. 'Twas a woman, or, at least, a slip so young and silly that maybe she should not be so styled; and I had no sooner made that out and ceased in the middle of my objurgations, than I made another discovery. It was her voice that did it, for no doubt she was mightily in terror, seeing me so wrathful and the night being so black and lonely.
"Oh, sir," she calls in a trembling voice, "I did not see—I—" and here she broke a-weeping.
Well, Dick Ryder is not the man to stand by while a pretty woman weeps (for I could have sworn she was pretty enough), and so down I popped off Calypso and approached her.
"Why," said I, "I love not to see a miss like you in tears, and as for my words, pray forget them. I thought you was some blundering, hulking bully that was meat for my bodkin, or my whip, if no more. But as it is," says I, "there's no more ado. So dry your eyes, my dear, for I am no ogre to eat pretty children."
"Oh," she says, with a gulp, "I was not afraid of you. I only feared I had angered you justly."
"Oh!" I said, trying for a look at her face in the darkness. "Why, I see you are a very brave girl, for sure. That I'll swear you are. And if those pearly drops be not for me, why, I should like to know what opened the wells, my dear? and then I will see if you have broken the mare's leg with your onset, and get on to bed like any honest, sober man that leaves the witching hours to maids and misses and innocent children, as is only right and proper."