"Well," said the stranger, after two or three minutes more had passed,
"as my conversation seems disagreeable to you, sir, I shall ride on."

"Goodnight, sir," replied Sherbrooke, and the other appeared to put
spurs to his horse. At the first step, however, he seized the
traveller's rein, uttering a whistle: two more horsemen instantly darted
out from one side of the road, and in an instant the well-known words,
"Stand and deliver!" were audibly pronounced in the ears of the
traveller.

Now it is a very different thing, and a much more difficult thing, to
deal in such a sort with three gentlemen of the road, than with one; but
nevertheless, as we have before shown, Lennard Sherbrooke was a stout
man, nor was he at all a faint-hearted one. A pistol was instantly out
of one of the holsters, pointed, and fired, and one of his assailants
rolled over upon the ground, horse and man together. His heavy sword was
free from the sheath the moment after; and exclaiming, "Now there's but
two of you, I can manage you," he pushed on his horse against the man
who had seized his bridle, aiming a very unpleasant sort of oblique cut
at the worthy personage's head, which, had it taken effect, would
probably have left him with a considerable portion less of skull than
that with which he entered into the conflict.

Three things, however, happened almost simultaneously, which gave a new
aspect altogether to affairs. The man upon Sherbrooke's left hand fired
a pistol at his head, but missed him in the darkness of night. At the
same moment the other man at whom he was aiming the blow, and who being
nearer to him of course saw better, parried it successfully, but
abstained from returning it, exclaiming, "By Heavens! I believe it is
Leonard Sherbrooke!"