“What is it, good woman?” asked Dale, curiously.
“That I can’t tell, sir,” replied the hostess. “It would be as much as my life would be worth, perhaps.”
“Don’t take the saddle off,” directed the newcomer in a deep voice, “and stand ready to bring him out immediately when I give the word.” He tossed the groom a crown piece, then raised his voice to a shout. “Ho, the house,” he cried. “Mistress Parsons, why do you not come out to welcome an old patron?”
“A patron whom I wish I’d never laid eyes upon,” said the landlady. But, nevertheless, she bustled out at once, and they could hear her greeting the man in the cocked hat with well assumed effusiveness. There was a slow-moving, chuckle-headed fellow employed at the inn in some capacity, who happened to be in the room at the time. He shook his head from side to side, and grinned widely.
“Mistress Parsons don’t like Dirk Hatfield to come here,” he volunteered, to Ethan and Dale. “But she daren’t order him away.”
“Why not?” asked Ethan for want of something better to say. The man opened his round eyes still wider and exclaimed in tones of wonder,
“What, drive off Dirk Hatfield! Why he’d kill us all in our beds. Don’t you know him, sirs? He’s a highwayman,” in a low voice of terror; “they say that once he stopped the Lord Mayor of London himself and made him deliver. Oh, he’s a daring rogue, indeed.”
Before they had time to comment upon this the landlady ushered Master Hatfield into the room. He was a large man with wide shoulders and deep chest, and he walked with the swagger of a bravo. At sight of Dale’s scarlet coat he started; but he recovered himself immediately, hitched one of his heavy pistols nearer to his hand, and took a seat at a table near the window.
“Now, Mistress Parsons,” said he, “I’ll have some food; and make all the speed you can, for I must hurry on.”
“Very well, sir,” said the landlady with a bow, “I’ll attend to it myself, sir.”