I hoped that they would leave before daylight, without discovering me; but just as the sparrows on the roof were twittering a greeting to the dawn, as ill luck would have it, one of the men spied my coat, spread on staddles against the wall to dry.  He uttered a sharp exclamation, and called to his comrades.  I heard them come in my direction, and guessed by their silence that they were looking warily around for the owner of the coat.  But they did not see me, being completely covered by the hay; and, remarking that it looked a “rare good coat,” one of them put his hand into all the pockets in turn, and from the inner one fetched out Cludde’s crown piece.

“A silver crown, Jo,” he says.

“Bite it,” said another.

“Good as gold,” returned the first.  “This be rare luck.”

Now, if I had been a few years older and more expert in dealing with men, I should doubtless have parleyed with the fellows; but in the heat of youth and inexperience, indignant at the freedom with which they were handling my belongings, I sprang out of the hay, made for the man who held the coat, and peremptorily called on him to drop it.

His answer was a sudden well-planted blow which sent me incontinently backward into the hay from which I had risen.  I was up in an instant, and then began a struggle, short and decisive.  The three men were all shorter than I, but thick-set and powerfully made, and struggle as I might I soon had to own myself beaten, and was borne to the floor, one holding my head, another my feet, and the third discommoding me very much by sitting on my middle.

“What be you a-doing here?” says the man called Job.

“I might ask you the same question,” I replied, again choosing the wrong method of dealing with them.

“You might, but you wouldn’t get no answer,” was the grim retort.  “You’ve heard what we’ve a-said?” the fellow went on.

I replied that I had heard it all.  The men joined in a chorus of oaths, and then began to discuss among themselves what they should do with me, with a freedom and a disregard of any view I might hold on the matter which in other circumstances I might have found amusing.

“If we lets him go,” said the man called Job, “he peaches, sure enough, and then ’tis the collar for us all,” by which I understood he meant the hangman’s noose.  “If we don’t let him go we must ayther take him with us or tie him up, and then belike his friends will find him, and ’twill be the same end for us.”

“Rest easy on both points,” I said, having recovered somewhat of my composure.  “I won’t peach, and I have no friends within twenty miles.”

“’S truth?” said the man.

“It is quite true,” I replied.

Whereat they burst into a guffaw, and I knew that I had made another mistake.

“He bain’t over ripe,” said the man on my middle.

“True, he was born young,” said Job.  “Well, now, I’m a gemman, I am, and fair exchange is no robbery, and as I’ve took a fancy for this ’ere coat, being a trifle newer nor mine, I’ll chop with you; me being a trifle older nor you makes all square, I reckon.  Bill, what about the breeches?”