Two--three--five--seven, and Ruth, despite her chagrins, was beginning to smile at the vision she has conjured up of Mistress Sheppard's face when she should see this concourse of barge-men, coal-heavers, or whatever they might be, besieging her kitchen door. "A scurvy lot, quotha!" could not Ruth hear her grumbling over it all as plain as if she really spoke? "A scurvy lot! Each of them, of course, looking for his cup of her home-brewed cider for their invaluable aid of landing a few coals." Suddenly the lean, thread-paper body of Mistress Sheppard's husband showed among the gooseberry bushes, describing, as it neared the steps, the acute angles which always marked his fashion of welcoming distinguished guests to his hostelry. [Sidenote: Strange cargo.] "Here!" at the same moment said a voice from the barge in low tones, but of which every syllable was audible to Ruth through the utter silence around. "Lend a hand, can't you?" and then rose up another figure, habited like the rest, but with the folds of his mantle flung far back over his shoulders, leaving his arms free to encompass a load covered with a large piece of tarry canvas. This man's burden, judging by his swaying gait, must have been of no light weight, "They're not feathers," he growled, as he laboured with it to the broad top of the barge's sides. "All right!" eagerly said the voice of Rumbold as he advanced to the steps. "Come along in, quick, Colonel. We'll unload presently." "That's as you please," returned the other. "But by your leave we'll be having these under cover at once. They were tempered Venice way; and your own pretty daughter wouldn't get so much harm from the night dews, as they would. By the by,--little Mistress Ruth, she is safe indoors and abed?" "Ay," sullenly grunted Rumbold. "That's my affair, I doubt, Colonel Rumsey." "No offence," returned the other. "I just ventured to ask the question, because I had a notion that I caught a glimpse of young Farmer Lee's brown jerkin among the yew trunks yonder as we were clearing the bridge." "And what if you did? Isn't he one of us?" said the maltster, casting a careless glance round. [Sidenote: A startling accident.] "True," answered Rumsey, in rather lagging tones. "He's a necessary evil, as you explained, for the use his premises may be to us; but I'd as lief he'd been out of the bargain if't had been possible. He's but a stripling; and old heads are the only ones for our sort of work, depend upon't. There's what one may call a kind of touch-and-go slipperiness"-- The rest of what the speaker might be having to say was lost in a deafening clash of steel, while he himself disappeared totally from Ruth's range of sight, in what seemed a flash of blue lightning.