“You be shot!” said Ned, turning one leg out of bed; “by the by, you took more than your share last night, for you owed me three guineas for our last game at cribbage! You'll please to pay me before we part to-day: short accounts make long friends!” “However true that maxim may be,” returned Tomlinson, “I know one much truer,--namely, long friends will make short accounts! You must ask Jack Ketch this day month if I'm wrong!” “That's what you call wit, I suppose!” retorted Ned, as he now, struggling into his inexpressibles, felt his way into the outer cave. “What, ho, Mac!” cried he, as he went, “stir those bobbins of thine, which thou art pleased to call legs; strike a light, and be d---d to you!” “A light for you,” said Tomlinson, profanely, as he reluctantly left his couch, “will indeed be a 'light to lighten the Gentiles!'” “Why, Mac, Mac!” shouted Ned, “why don't you answer? faith, I think the Scot's dead!” “Seize your men!--Yield, sirs!” cried a stern, sudden voice from the gloom; and at that instant two dark lanterns were turned, and their light streamed full upon the astounded forms of Tomlinson and his gaunt comrade! In the dark shade of the background four or five forms were also indistinctly visible; and the ray of the lanterns glimmered on the blades of cutlasses and the barrels of weapons still less easily resisted. Tomlinson was the first to recover his self-possession. The light just gleamed upon the first step of the stairs leading to the stables, leaving the rest in shadow. He made one stride to the place beside the cart, where, we have said, lay some of the robbers' weapons; he had been anticipated,--the weapons were gone. The next moment Tomlinson had sprung up the steps. “Lovett! Lovett! Lovett!” shouted he. The captain, who had followed his comrades into the cavern, was already in the grasp of two men. From few ordinary mortals, however, could any two be selected as fearful odds against such a man as Clifford,--a man in whom a much larger share of sinews and muscle than is usually the lot even of the strong had been hardened, by perpetual exercise, into a consistency and iron firmness which linked power and activity into a union scarcely less remarkable than that immortalized in the glorious beauty of the sculptured gladiator. His right hand is upon the throat of one assailant; his left locks, as in a vice, the wrist of the other; you have scarcely time to breathe! The former is on the ground, the pistol of the latter is wrenched from his grip, Clifford is on the step; a ball--another--whizzes by him; he is by the side of the faithful Augustus! “Open the secret door!” whispered Clifford to his friend; “I will draw up the steps alone.”