“I have heard it.  I expected you,” answered Captain Jack in the friendly fashion in which he had spoken before to Tom.  “I have had news from Lord Claud.  It is not the first time he has sent his pupils to me.”

“Have I been his pupil?” asked Tom with a half laugh; “in sooth, methinks I have been rather his dupe!”

“A little of both,” was the answer.  “But we must all pay the penalty of friendship with great men.  Yet I think the price is worth the paying.  And now, Tom, if that grand horse of yours is as little weary as she looks, let us forth together to some place where none may follow us.  And let me tell you that it is not to every one Lord Claud would present his favourite mare, trained like a human creature for her trade.”

“You know her?” asked Tom eagerly.

“Nell Gwynne and I have been acquainted this many a day.  There be some of her fierce tricks that have been learned from my hand.  I have been teaching the same to Wildfire and Wildgoose.  We shall not be taken or overcome through lack of good beasts to bear us, Tom.”

“You have Wildgoose, too?”

“Yes, I sent after him shortly.  He was too grand a beast to be wasted upon a varlet of a serving man.  If you have more of the same stock at home, Tom, we might make shift to get at them anon; but for the present we are well enough mounted.”

They rode side by side through the forest tracks, Nell Gwynne and Wildfire making acquaintance with apparent mutual satisfaction as they stepped pace for pace together, their riders talking in quiet fashion over their heads.

Tom told the whole story of his adventures since arriving in London in October; and hard indeed was it to believe that months and not years had rolled over his head during that time.

“Not bad, not bad!  Well done for a young cockerel!  Ah, we shall make a man of you, Tom!  It is in your blood, I can see well!”

Such were the comments of Captain Jack as he heard the tale; and Tom spoke with an unconscious pride in his own daring, which plainly betokened an undaunted spirit and a thirst after more adventure and distinction.

Angry and hot against those who had “driven him forth,” as he called it, reckless of consequences, with boundless self confidence, he was just the tool fit for the hand of Captain Jack, who patted him upon the back in a friendly fashion, and said: 

“Yes, yes, Tom, you shall learn how to take toll.  We will have another story of Tom Tufton’s Toll ere we part company.  There are good men enough amid the bands that infest these forest glades—­men suffering unjustly, men falsely accused, men who have broken from those noisome prisons, which breed disease and death, and who would sooner put a bullet through their head than return to the filth and degradation of such a life.  Ah, it is the hardness of the laws which drives men to be freebooters on the road!  The rich may fatten and batten, rob, cheat, bleed