"Then there was Mistress Haddakin, from whom you extracted fifty shillings for a new gate, which you don’t intend to put up for her: and this, although she has only just buried her husband, and had a baby sick at home. You put on finer airs with the poor people than you do with me, eh?" "’Tis not our money, sir," protested Master Mittachip, humbly. "Some of it goes into your own pockets. Hush money, blood money, I call it. That’s what I want from you, and then a bit over for the poor box on behalf of your employers." He weighed the leather bag which he had taken out of Master Duffy’s pocket. "This’ll do for the poor box. Now I want the five pounds you extorted from Widow Coggins and Mistress Haddakin. The poor women’ll be glad of it on the morrow." "I haven’t a penny more than that bagful, sir," protested Master Mittachip. "My employers took all the money from me. ’Twere their rents I was collecting. I swear it, sir, kind sir! on my word of honour! And I am an honest man!" "Come here!" And Beau Brocade reined his horse back a few paces. "Come here!" he repeated. Mittachip was too frightened to disobey. He came forward, limping very perceptibly. "Why do you walk like that?" asked Beau Brocade. "I’m a feeble old man and rheumatic," whined Mittachip, despondently. "Then ’twere better to ease the load out of your boot, friend. Sit down here and take it off." And he pointed to a piece of boulder projecting through the shallow earth. But this Master Mittachip seemed very loth to do. "Kind sir..." he protested again. "Sit down and take off the right boot!" repeated Beau Brocade more peremptorily, and with a gay laugh and mock threatening gesture he pointed the muzzle of his pistol at the terror-stricken attorney. There was naught to do but to obey: and quickly too. Master Mittachip cursed the rascally highwayman under his breath, and even consigned him to eternal damnation, before he finally handed him up his boot. Beau Brocade turned it over, shook it, and a bag of jingling guineas fell at Jack o’ Lantern’s feet. "Give me that bag!" "Sir! kind sir!" moaned Master Mittachip, as he obediently handed up the bag of gold to his merciless assailant. "Have pity! I am a ruined man! ’Tis Sir Humphrey Challoner’s money. I’ve been collecting it for him ... and he’s a hard man!" "Oh!" said Beau Brocade, "’tis Sir Humphrey Challoner’s money, is it? Nay! you old scarecrow, but ’tis his Honour himself sent me on the Heath to-night. Oho!" he added, whilst his merry, boyish laugh went echoing through the evening air, "methinks Sir Humphrey will enjoy the joke. Do you tell him, friend—an you see him in the morn—that you’ve met Beau Brocade and that he’ll do his Honour’s bidding." He counted some of the money out of the bag and put it in his pocket: the remainder he handed back to the astonished lawyer.