"No matter, I cannot live on your money." "Aye, but you can, for this money is yourn as much as mine, seeing as I prigs it." "What do you mean?" "Lord, what should I mean except as I takes it, nabs it--steals it from yon dirty beast while he struggled wi' me. Look!" And taking out a ragged belcher neckerchief she unknotted one corner and showed me three bright, new guineas. "Ah, throw them away!" I cried. "The man was so vile--" "He was!" she nodded. "But his money is clean enough and will be useful to us--" "But you are--a thief!" I exclaimed, aghast. "And you are a fool!" she retorted, thrusting the money into a small leathern bag she carried at her girdle. "And he was a dirty rogue and his money shall feed us until I can earn more. And now let us hurry afore the storm ketches us." "Where to?" "There's a place I know where we can be warm and sheltered and nothing to pay." And so, because of her persistence and my sickness, I suffered her to lead me where she would, though more than once I tripped and should have fallen but for her ready arm. Presently turning out of the road we came to a meadow and here, half-blinded by the pain of my head and scarcely able to drag one foot after the other, I earnestly besought her to leave me, storm or no storm; to which she merely bade me not to be a fool, with the further assurance that she would leave me when she wished and not before. I remember stumbling down a grassy slope and through a tangle of bushes and dense-growing trees, amid whose whispering leafage shadows were deepening, and so at last to a half-ruined barn, very remote and desolate, into which she conducted me. Here, from amid a pile of mouldy hay, she dragged a ladder which she reared to a small hatch or trap in the floor above and bade me mount. This I did, though very clumsily and presently found myself in an upper chamber or loft, illuminated by a small, unglazed window that opened beneath the eaves at one end. Scarcely was I here than she was beside me and brought me to an adjacent corner where was a great pile of hay that made the place sweet with its fragrance, whereon, at her behest, I sank down and would have expressed my gratitude, but she checked me, frowning. "Are ye hungry?" she demanded ungraciously. "Indeed, no, I thank you," I answered, lying back upon my fragrant couch. "Well, I am!" she retorted sullenly. "And you will be, sooner or later, so I'll go afore the storm ketches me." "Go where, and for what?" "To buy supper with money as I stole, for you an' me to eat--" "I'd rather starve!" quoth I, sitting up the better to say it. "Starve!" she repeated, with a scornful flash of her great eyes. "You? d'ye know what starvation means? Ha' you ever tried it?" "No," I admitted, "but none the less--"