"Well, and much you have made of it. Here is the brat come back at the end o' five years, to spoil our harvest!" "How could I know he'd do that? I paid the captain a goodish lump o' tin to take him on a long voyage, and I thought he was so young that he'd forget the old place." "How d'ye know that he hasn't forgot it?" inquired the woman. "'Cause, I seed him not twenty miles from this, and heerd him say he'd stop at the Blue Boar all night, and come on here in the morning--that's to-morrow--so I come straight out to ask you wot I'm to do." "Ha! that's like you. Too chicken-hearted to do any thing till I set you on, an' mean enough to saddle it on me when ye'r nabbed." "Come, that's an old story!" growled the man. "You know wot _I_ am, and I knows wot _you_ are. But if something's not done, we'll have to cut this here part o' the country in the very thick o' the season, when these southern sightseers are ranging about the hills." "That's true!" rejoined the woman, seriously. "Many a penny the bairns get from them, an there's no part so good as this. Ye couldn't _put him out o' the way_, could ye?" "No," said the man, doggedly. The woman had accompanied her question with a sidelong glance of fiendish meaning, but her eyes at once dropped, and she evinced no anger at the sharp decision of her companion's reply. "Mother!" cried the young woman, issuing from the hut at the moment, "don't you dare to go an' tempt him again like that. Our hands are black enough already; don't you try to make them _red_, else I'll blab!" The elder woman assumed an injured look as she said, "Who spoke of makin' them red? Evil dreaders are evil doers. Is there no way o' puttin' a chick out o' the way besides murderin' him?" "Hush!" exclaimed the man, starting and glancing round with a guilty look, as if he fancied the bare mention of the word "murder" would bring the strong arm of the law down on his head. "I won't hush!" cried the woman. "You're cowards, both of you. Are there no corries in the hills to hide him in--no ropes to tie him with-- that you should find it so difficult to keep a brat quiet for a week or two?" A gleam of intelligence shot across the ill-favoured face of the gypsy. "Ha! you're a wise woman. Come, out with your plan, and see if I'm not game to do it." "There's no plan worth speakin' of," rejoined the woman, somewhat mollified by her companion's complimentary remarks. "All you've to do is to go down the road to-morrow, catch him, and bring him to me. I'll see to it that he don't make his voice heard until we've done with this part of the country. Then we can slip the knot, and let the brat go free." "I'll do it!" said the man, sitting down on a stone and beginning to fill his pipe. "I thought he was dead!" said the woman. "So did I; but he's not dead yet, an' don't look as if he'd die soon." "Maybe," said the woman, "he won't remember ye. It's full five year now sin' he was took away."