token or pretext for another meeting, found no excuse for doing so. And
yet he was not without some resource.

For the maiden was giving him a farewell smile, being quite content with
the good she had done, and the luck of recovering her property; and that
sense of right which in those days formed a part of every good young
woman said to her plainly that she must be off. And she felt how unkind
it was to keep him any longer in a place where the muzzle of a gun, with
a man behind it, might appear at any moment. But he, having plentiful
breath again, was at home with himself to spend it.

"Fair young lady," he began, for he saw that Mary liked to be called
a lady, because it was a novelty, "owing more than I ever can pay you
already, may I ask a little more? Then it is that, on your way down to
the sea, you would just pick up (if you should chance to see it) the
fellow ring to this, and perhaps you will look at this to know it by.
The one that was shot away flew against a stone just on the left of the
mouth of the Dike, but I durst not stop to look for it, and I must not
go back that way now. It is more to me than a hatful of gold, though
nobody else would give a crown for it."

"And they really shot away one of your ear-rings? Careless, cruel,
wasteful men! What could they have been thinking of?"

"They were thinking of getting what is called 'blood-money.' One hundred
pounds for Robin Lyth. Dead or alive--one hundred pounds."

"It makes me shiver, with the sun upon me. Of course they must offer
money for--for people. For people who have killed other people, and bad
things--but to offer a hundred pounds for a free-trader, and fire