excessively difficult, however, to account for the strange nature of the
transaction so far as it had gone; and the language of the robber seemed
so inconsistent with his pursuit, that, at intervals, he was almost led
to doubt whether the whole was not the clever jest of some country
sportsman, who, in the guise of a levyer of contributions upon the
traveller, would make an acquaintance, such as is frequent in the South,
terminating usually in a ride to a neighboring plantation, and pleasant
accommodations so long as the stranger might think proper to avail
himself of them.

If, on the other hand, the stranger was in reality the ruffian he
represented himself, he knew not how to account for his delay in the
assault--a delay, to the youth's mind, without an object--unless
attributable to a temper of mind like that of Robin Hood, and coupled in
the person before him, as in that of the renowned king of the outlaws,
with a peculiar freedom and generosity of habit, and a gallantry and
adroitness which, in a different field, had made him a knight worthy to
follow and fight for Baldwin and the Holy Cross. Our young traveller was
a _romanticist_, and all of these notions came severally into his
thoughts. Whatever might have been the motives of conduct in the robber,
who thus audaciously announced himself the member of a club notorious on
the frontiers of Georgia and among the Cherokees for its daring
outlawries, the youth determined to keep up the game so long as it
continued such. After a brief pause, he replied to the above
politely-expressed demand in the following language:--

"Your request, most unequivocal sir, would seem but reasonable; and so
considering it, I have bestowed due reflection upon it. Unhappily,
however, for the Pony Club and its worthy representative, I am quite too
poorly provided with worldly wealth at this moment to part with much of