my acres, won't you, Samuel?" asked she, tenderly, when the youug man persisted in pursuing
his journey; but Samuel pursed up his mouth,
and shook his head mysteriously.
"Not this way, dame," said he. " Not with the load I'll be taking home. There 's too many gentlemen of the road between here and Stonington for a man with a sack of silver on his nag's neck. I have planned to ride home with neighbors of mine who are visiting their kin somewhere nigh hand to Boston, and we must take another road altogether. Doubtless the loss is mine if we do not meet again, but so it is."
"Well, and you 're right, my lad," replied the widow, good-naturedly. " And I'd as lief not think of your riding these lonely roads with a bag of coin jingling a call to evil-doers. What with the Indians, and what with the swashbucklers that pretend to hunt them, the roads are far from safe. But when you ride Dedham way again, you'll stop nowhere but at Joyce Patterson's, will you, now, Samuel? "
"You'll have another goodman by then, and he'll none of me," retorted Samuel, who, safely mounted upon Lightfoot, with the herd already under escort of the accomplished Rover, found himself enough at his ease for pleasantry.
And so, a few hours later, the drove and the drover paced softly through the dust of the Dedham road, and coming to the Parting paused, the drove to snatch a last mouthful of grass,—even as
