five fools have suffered themselves to be terrified from their booty,
simply by three words from my mouth and their own imaginations."

"Then you have no men coming up?" said Wilton.

"Not a man," replied the other: "all my men are busy in my own house at
this minute; most likely saying grace over roast pork and humming ale."



CHAPTER IX.

The events that happen to us in life gather themselves together in
particular groups, each group separated in some degree from that which
follows and that which goes before, but yet each united, in its own
several parts, by some strong bond of connexion, and each by a finer and
less apparent ligament attached to the other groups that surround it. In
short, if, as the great poet moralist has said, "All the world is a
stage, and all the men and women in it only players," the life of each
man is a drama, with the events thereof divided into separate scenes,
the scenes gathered into grand acts, and the acts all tending to the
great tragic conclusion of the whole. Happy were it for man if he, like
a great dramatist, would keep the ultimate conclusion still in view.

In the life of Wilton Brown, the scene of the robbers ended with the
words which we have just said were spoken by his travelling companion,
and a new scene was about to begin.

The elderly gentleman to whom the carriage apparently belonged, took a
step forward as the stranger spoke the last sentence, exclaiming,