to get to Bedsworth. Here is a shilling, and I beg that you will not detain me."
Her companion stretched out a very dirty hand, took the coin, spun it up in the air, caught it, bit it, and finally plunged it into the depths of his trouser pockets. "No road this way, missy," he said; "I've given my word to the guv'nor, and I can't go back from it."
"You have no right to detain me," Kate cried angrily. "I have good friends in London who will make you suffer for this."
"She's a-goin' to flare up," said the one-eyed man; "knock me helpless, if she ain't!"
"I shall come through!" the girl cried in desperation. She was only a dozen yards from the lane which led to freedom, so she made a quick little feminine rush in the hope of avoiding this dreadful sentinel who barred her passage. He caught her round the waist, however, and hurled her back with such violence that she staggered across the path, and would have fallen had she not struck violently against a tree. As it was, she was badly bruised and the breath shaken out of her body.
"She has flared up," said the one-eyed man, removing his pipe from his lips. "Blow me asunder if she bean't a rustler!" He brought his camp-stool from the side of the pillar and, planting it right in the centre of the gateway, sat down upon it again. "You see, missy," he remarked, "it's no manner o' use. If you did get out it would only be to be put in a reg'lar 'sylum."
"An asylum!" gasped Kate, sobbing with pain and anger. "Do you think I am mad, then?"
"I don't think nowt about it," the man remarked calmly. "I knows it."
This was a new light to Kate. She was so bewildered that she could hardly realize the significance of the remark.
"Who are you?" she said. "Why is it that you treat me in this cruel way?"
"Ah, now we come to business," he said, in a satisfied
