Page:David Alden's Daughter.djvu/32

12 pair of pistols in the holsters of his saddle, he rode through, adding distinctly:

"I shall hardly reach Wrentham to-night."

"Wrentham, says he! "ejaculated a rough-looking horseman, who had dismounted at the gate a few moments before, and now hastily mounted again; "why, it's a matter of five-and-twenty mile to Wrentham, and none too good a road. He'll never get beyond Dedham, sure."

"If that chap has his will, the drover'll never reach Wrentham with that bag o' coin at's saddle-bow," remarked the warder, gazing after the horse-man, and his subordinate slowly shook his head and filled his pipe, as who should say it was no affair of his.

But arriving at Roxbury Line, the canny drover suddenly put spurs to his horse, and turning to the left pushed down Eustis Street, as we now should say, a proceeding which so bewildered his follower that he drew rein, and sat staring stupidly after him, until, a brilliant idea penetrating bis brain, he muttered an oath or two, and putting spurs to his horse galloped off down the Dedham Turnpike, to wait in ambush at a point where a cross-road connected the southern and southwestern highways.

"He thinks to cheat me by making a roundabout turn, does he? Well, he'll find I'm upsides with him, I fancy," muttered he.

Meanwhile Samuel Cheeseboro, unconscious that he was "wanted" by this knight of the road, passed quietly by the turning that would have led