A Puritans Wife

t we were watched. Yet for what purpose, if it were not for robbery, I could not conceive; and I knew too well with what manner of men we had to deal to think of any overt act which would bring them out upon us. If, I said, we were to get to the high-road at all, then must we push on while these fellows yet hesitated to show themselves. And so thinking I led the way down the bridle-path towards the warren, meaning thus to strike upon Crown Hill and so upon the great road to Waltham. We were an odd company, I vow. As for myself, I was a hybrid thing in my tattered suit of homespun and my new finery which had cometextit{to me of my lady's bounty?to say naught of the vixenish mare which would go neither straight forward nor straight back, but only sideways and that ill-temperedly. I had bidden Master Ford ride at my heels, that his great black horse might not trip him in the rough of the path; but Gideon, whose feet brushed the ground while he rode, lagged some way behind us, and we could tell where he was only by the doleful singing and swearing with which he ever cheered himself. It was in this order that we rode, it may be for the third of a league. The others, I was sure, had seen nothing of the rogues in the thickets, their eyes being set on the path before them; but I, who watched the woods unrestingly, felt my heart grow colder and colder when I observed that newcomers were added to the number of those who followed us, and that all the glades about were n...