Page:The strange story book.djvu/119

 could not see any other means of keeping himself from starving.

He was slowly getting accustomed to the idea of seeking for a servant's place, when one day he met in the streets an apothecary named Plunket, whom he had known in Monaghan.

'How now?' asked Plunket. 'Is anything the matter? You look as if you were on the road to be hung at Tyburn.'

'The matter is that to-morrow I shall not have a penny in the world,' answered Maclean, gloomily.

'Oh, things are never so bad as they seem,' said Plunket. 'Cheer up. Perhaps I can find a way to supply you with more pennies. It only wants a little pluck and spirit! If we haven't got any money, there are plenty of other people who have.'

Maclean was silent. He understood at once what Plunket meant, and that he was being offered a partnership in a scheme of highway robbery. He had, as we know, stolen small sums before, but that felt to him a very different thing from stopping travellers along the road, and demanding 'their money or their life.' However, he soon shook off his scruples, and was ready to take his part in any scheme that Plunket should arrange.

'You are in luck just now,' said his tempter, who all this time had been watching his face and read the thoughts that were passing through his mind. 'I heard only this morning of a farmer who has sold a dozen fat oxen at the Smithfield Market, and will be riding home this evening with the money in his saddle-bags. If he had any sense he would have started early and ridden in company, but I know my gentleman well, and dare swear he will not leave the tavern outside the market till dusk is falling. So if we lie in wait for him on Hounslow Heath, he cannot escape us.'

It was autumn, and dark at seven o'clock, when the farmer, not as sober as he might have been, came jogging along. He was more than half-way across, and was already thinking how best to spend the sixty pounds his beasts had brought him, when out of a hollow by the roadside sprang two men with masks and pistols, which were pointed straight at his horse's head.