Willie's ingenuity was instantly at work, and he concocted a scheme which fairly carried him through the enterprise. He got an old, frail-looking pony, partially lame, and with long, shaggy hair. He filled a bag of considerable dimensions with a great quantity of old buttons, and useless pieces of jingling metal. He next arrayed himself in beggarly habiliments, with clouted shoes, tattered under-garments, a cloak mended in a hundred places, and a soiled, broad-brimmed bonnet on his head. The _money_-bag he tied firmly behind the saddle; he placed a pair of pistols under his coat, and a short dagger close by his side. Thus accoutred he wended his way slowly toward the border, both he and the animal apparently in the last stage of helplessness and decrepitude. The bag behind was carefully covered by the cloak, that spread its _duddy_ folds over the hinder parts of the poor lean beast that carried him. Sitting in a crouching posture on the saddle, with a long beard and an assumed palsified shaking of the hand, nobody would have conceived for a moment that Willie was a man in the prime of life, of a well-built, athletic frame, with more power in his arm than three ordinary men, and of an intrepid and adventurous spirit, that feared nothing, but dared every thing. In this plight, our worthy went dodging over the border, and entered the neighboring kingdom, where every person that met him regarded him as a poor, doited, half-insane body, fit only to lie down at the side of a hedge, and die unheeded, beside the crazy steed. In this way, he escaped without suspicion, and advanced without an adventure to the skirts of the wood, where he expected to encounter his professional brother. When Willie entered the road that led through the dark and suspicious forest, he was all on the alert for the highwayman. Every rustling among the trees and bushes arrested his attention, not knowing but a whizzing ball might in a moment issue therefrom, or that the redoubted freebooter himself might spring upon him like a tiger. Neither of these, however, occurred; but a man on horseback was seen advancing slowly and cautiously on the road before him. This might be he, or it might not, but Willie now recollected every particular mark given of the man with whom he expected to encounter, and he was prepared for the most vigilant observation. As the horseman advanced, Willie was fully convinced that he had met with his man, and this was the critical moment, for here was the identical highwayman. "How now, old fellow?" exclaimed the robber; "what seek you in these parts? Where are you bound for, with this magnificent equipage of yours?"