"You've no expayrience, sir," said Casey. "It's I'm the boy for the babbies. Ye must rig up a bottle and fill it with milk, and just a whisk of a drop of the craytur to prevent it curdling, and then stuff the mouth with a rag—and the darlin'll suck, and suck, and be still as the evenin' star as I sees yonder glimmering at the window."
"You'll have to start pretty sharp if you want to get on a stage before dark," said the man by the fire.
"It's a lone road," threw in the boy shyly.
"What's the odds when we are four of us?" asked the man whose name was Lonegon.
"And all of us pertecting the little cherub from ketching cold," threw in Casey.
"We ain't afraid—not we," said the ragged man.
"Not of bogies, at any rate."
"Oh, you need not fear bogies," observed the man at the fire, dryly.
"What is it, then?" asked Michael Casey. "Sure It's not highwaymen?"
The man by the fire warmed his palms, laughed, and said: "It would take two to rob you, I guess, one to put the money into your pocket and the second to take it out."