"Guy, you are too fierce and furious. When there's a necessity, do you see, for using teeth, you know me to be always ready; but I will not be for ever at this sort of work. If I were to let you have your way you'd bring the whole country down upon us. There will be time enough when we see a reason for it to tie up this young man's tongue." "I see--I see!--you are ever thus--ever risking our chance upon contingencies when you might build strongly upon certainties. You are perpetually trying the strength of the rope, when a like trouble would render it a sure hold-fast. Rather than have the possibility of this thing being blabbed, I would--" "Hush--hark!" said Munro, placing his hand upon the arm of his companion, and drawing him deeper into the copse, at the moment that Forrester, who had just left the chamber of Ralph, emerged from the tavern into the open air. The outlaw had not placed himself within the shadow of the trees in time sufficient to escape the searching gaze of the woodman, who, seeing the movement and only seeing one person, leaped nimbly forward with a light footstep, speaking thus as he approached: "Hello! there--who's that--the pedler, sure. Have at you, Bunce!" seizing as he spoke the arm of the retreating figure, who briefly and sternly addressed him as follows:-- "It is well, Mr. Forrester, that he you have taken in hand is almost as quiet in temper as the pedler you mistake him for else your position might prove uncomfortable. Take your fingers from my arm, if you please." "Oh, it's you, Guy Rivers--and you here too, Munro, making love to one another, I reckon, for want of better stuff. Well, who'd have thought to find you two squatting here in the bushes! Would you believe it now, I took you for the Yankee--not meaning any offence though." "As I am not the Yankee, however, Mr. Forrester, you will I suppose, withdraw your hand," said the other, with a manner sufficiently haughty for the stomach of the person addressed. "Oh, to be sure, since you wish it, and are not the pedler," returned the other, with a manner rather looking, in the country phrase, to "a squaring off for a fight"--"but you needn't be so gruff about it. You are on business, I suppose, and so I leave you." "A troublesome fool, who is disposed to be insolent," said Rivers, after Forrester's departure. "Damn him!" was the exclamation of the latter, on leaving the copse--"I feel very much like putting my fingers on his throat; and shall do it, too, before he gets better manners!" The dialogue between the original parties was resumed. "I tell you again, Munro--it is not by any means the wisest policy to reckon and guess and calculate that matters will go on smoothly, when we have it in our own power to make them certainly go on so. We must leave nothing to guess-work, and a single blow will readily teach this youth the proper way to be quiet." "Why, what do you drive at, Guy. What would you do--what should be done?"