"I will try to recover it, sir," said Dick, bowing to the girl while he addressed the brother. Hearing a derisive "Huh!" behind him, Dick turned and saw Blagdon viewing him with a contemptuous smile, which was assumed to cover the chagrin caused by Dick's undertaking a task the officer himself had shirked. Dick reddened more deeply, with anger, but said nothing and went to the coach for his rifle and baggage. MacAlister, always accepting whatever enterprise turned up for him, promptly got out, with his own belongings, as also did the reverend gentleman, who explained that he had intended leaving the coach at the next village, to go thence by horse to his home at Shrewsbury. The vacant places were taken by the Canadians, accounts were settled with the driver, Gerard de St. Valier courteously thanked Dick again, giving him a New York address but begging him to reconsider so desperate a project, Catherine sent back one grateful but hopeless look, the driver cracked his whip, the coach rolled off, and the three men were left alone in the forest-bordered road. After a brief consultation, in which it came out that the clerical gentleman was the Reverend Mr. McKnight, the Presbyterian pastor of Shrewsbury, it was decided that the three should go back to the last village passed, which was nearer than the next one ahead, hire horses there, then return, and make for Shrewsbury by way, first, of the lane down which the robbers were said to have fled. They would stop at Freehold, report the robbery to the county authorities, and call for the services of sheriff and constable in hunting down the malefactors. "If the loss were merely of money and horses," said the pastor, as the three trudged along with their baggage on their backs, "I should not stir far in the matter, seeing that the losers are apparently well supplied with this world's goods. But the young lady's sorrow at the loss of the keepsake was too much for me. It will be a kind of miracle if we get it back. The man Fagan is a desperate rascal, and so, for that matter, are Jonathan West and all the others. The man whom those young people heard giving orders to the rest was doubtless Fenton, who learned the blacksmith's trade at Freehold and was an excellent workman at it before he took to crime. These men will stop at nothing. When they are not at refuge in their sand-caves on the edges of swamps, among the brush, they are plundering, burning, and killing, by night, or spending their ill-gotten money at some low groggery in the pines. They will rob anything, from a poor tailor's shop to a wagon carrying grain to mill, and, though it doesn't sound like Christian charity to say so, they ought to be hanging now in chains from trees, as they probably will be some day."