“You are wrong, mistress, you are quite wrong,” cried the stranger; “from your account I expect much from him. I have robbed more than one such, dressed like a scarecrow, while making for London, and bearing with him the twelvemonth’s rent of half-a-dozen of his neighbours to pay the landlord in town. I shall be at this fellow as soon as he quits your roof; I have no doubt but what he is a prize, and if he is, you of course come in for shares.”
Having learnt thus much, Twm, in some trepidation, retired to his bed, and began to consider how he should contrive, in order to preserve the property in his possession. He rose again, thinking to escape through the window, but found it too small to admit his egress, and therefore gave up the idea.
As he looked out through the miserable casement, busily plotting to hatch a scheme of deliverance, he could perceive no favourable object to aid his purpose except a large pool on the road-side, in which he thought of dropping his cash if he could reach it, and do the act unobserved, so that he might recover it at his leisure.
As nothing better offered, he determined to adopt his plan immediately; and therefore, after making a studied clattering in putting on his shoes, he went down stairs, and called for a jug of beer and toast for his breakfast. The freebooter did not show himself, but the landlady and her daughter, who seemed to be in the habit of sitting up all night to receive and entertain such guests, scrutinized our hero very closely.
The worthy hostess asked him some apparently careless questions respecting his business in travelling the country, to which he replied he was trying to overtake a brother pigman, who was driving their joint charge to London.
While at breakfast, Twm’s brain showed him another project for securing his valuables, which he considered an improvement upon the pond scheme. To give a more clownish character to his manners, the night before, he had carried the old pack-saddle up stairs, brought it down in the morning, and while at breakfast sat on it before the fire, instead of a stool.
It occurred to him that this peculiarity of his would have been attributed to other motives, and that, no doubt, the honest inmates of the place thought that he would not have exhibited such care for his pack-saddle if it were not worth more than it looked. He was ultimately convinced that they had decided that all his treasure was contained therein.
Indeed, it was not a bad idea, for he could then sit on it all day and make a pillow of it by night. He determined to encourage their suspicions; accordingly, bursting a hole in the fore end of it, he called the landlady to receive her reckoning, and in her presence, pushing his fist into the straw cushion of the pack-saddle, he drew out several pieces of gold, and asked her if she could give him change; but she answered in the negative, on which he again thrust his hand into the pack-saddle, and brought out more gold and silver intermixed; and with the latter settled his bill, and went to the stable for his horse.
Securing all his money about his person, he mounted his Rosinante. Having cut away the girths from the pack-saddle, he bade the landlady farewell, and rode with all his might towards the pool, which was about a quarter of a mile forward on the road. He soon heard the highwayman brushing forward in his rear, with many oaths calling on him to stop, a summons that increased our hero’s speed, till, being opposite the pond, his pursuer overtook him.
Twm rode to the edge of the water, and threw the pack-saddle, with all his strength, towards the centre of the pool; but in bustling to regain a steady seat as he made towards the road, he fell headlong from his horse. The free-booter cursed him for a Welsh fool, and with a thundering voice ordered him to hold his horse, or he would blow his brains out, (brandishing his pistol all the while,) that he might go into the water to recover the booty.