"I be right zure thou be'st the party," said he, muttering to himself, "but thou shouldst ha zaid BEANS, thou knawest." "Ay, ay," said Wayland, speaking at a venture; "and thou BACON, thou knowest." "Noa, noa," said the lad; "bide ye--bide ye--it was PEAS a should ha said." "Well, well," answered Wayland, "Peas be it, a God's name! though Bacon were the better password." And being by this time mounted on his own horse, he caught the rein of the palfrey from the uncertain hold of the hesitating young boor, flung him a small piece of money, and made amends for lost time by riding briskly off without further parley.

The lad was still visible from the hill up which they were riding, and Wayland, as he looked back, beheld him standing with his fingers in his hair as immovable as a guide-post, and his head turned in the direction in which they were escaping from him.

At length, just as they topped the hill, he saw the clown stoop to lift up the silver groat which his benevolence had imparted.

"Now this is what I call a Godsend," said Wayland; "this is a bonny, well-ridden bit of a going thing, and it will carry us so far till we get you as well mounted, and then we will send it back time enough to satisfy the Hue and Cry." But he was deceived in his expectations; and fate, which seemed at first to promise so fairly, soon threatened to turn the incident which he thus gloried in into the cause of their utter ruin.
They had not ridden a short mile from the place where they left the lad before they heard a man's voice shouting on the wind behind them, "Robbery! robbery!--Stop thief!" and similar exclamations, which Wayland's conscience readily assured him must arise out of the transaction to which he had been just accessory.
"I had better have gone barefoot all my life," he said; "it is the Hue and Cry, and I am a lost man.

Ah! Wayland, Wayland, many a time thy father said horse-flesh would be the death of thee.