The boisterous traveller continued his conversation for a while with the landlord, and then, re-entering his post-chaise, bade the postboy drive fast, and holloa when a suspicious person approached. He threw himself upon the seat after he had closed the door, stretched his legs as wide as possible, and, planting his feet firmly, cocked his pistols, holding them at arm's length with their barrels resting on the open windows. The horses went on for about a mile, when the chaise entered upon a heath--a very desolate-looking place, with never a house visible in any direction: with nothing, indeed, to enliven the perspective save a gallows, if such an object, with a rattling skeleton swinging in chains from the cross-beam, can be so considered. The traveller gazed with a grim satisfaction at this spectacle, for it seemed to him, as to the shipwrecked sailor in the old story--an earnest of civilization. But while he was musing on the long arm of the law, the rapid sounds of horse's hoofs, sounding over the ragged turf of the heath, were heard, and a voice was presently raised, commanding the postboy to stop. The chaise was stopped suddenly, with a jolt and a crash, and a face, black-masked, mysterious, horrible, appeared at the window, together with the still more alarming apparition of the grinning muzzle of a horse-pistol. Then followed the inevitable, "Your money or your life!" The traveller had his weapons ready. Raising the muzzle of one to the highwayman's head, he pulled the trigger, while his unexpected assailant stood and laughed. Beyond a snap and some sparks from the bruised flint, nothing happened. With a curse, he levelled the other pistol, and with the same result. The man in the mask laughed louder. "No good, friend Bounce, trying that game," said he, coolly; "the powder was carefully blown out of each of thy pans, almost under thy nose. If thou dost not want a bullet through thy head, just hand me over the repeater in thy boot, the purse in thy hat, the bank-notes in thy fob, the gold snuffbox in thy breast, and the diamond ring up thy sleeve. Out with them," he added, "in less time than thee took when I saw thee put 'em there, or I'll send thee to Davy Jones, and take 'em myself."