Their
visits were too fatal in the open day for that.'
At the table the liquor circulated freely, and as it was cognac,
twenty years old, as the robber chief swore, it soon brought up the
spirits of the gang. To his great disgust, Roland perceived that the
girls drank almost as freely as the men. After Nancy had quaffed a
couple of horns, the melancholy which the new-comer had a little
while before noticed so plainly in her face disappeared; and she
began to bestow marked attentions upon the handsome and well-bred
stranger. Not an act of hers escaped the jealous eye of Murfrey; and
as the miserable girl was in the act of passing something to Roland,
the robber gave her a violent blow upon the arm.
'You are too d--d ready with your attentions,' he growled, and then
swore a terrible oath. Nancy turned and looked upon him with flashing
eyes; and ferocious and bloody as the man was, she did not fear him.
A little later she raised her horn and looking the stranger in the
face, said:
'I pledge you welcome, sir; will you drink good-will and long
friendship with me?'
Roland, as we have seen, had from the first resolved to make the
best of the deplorable set, so with easy courtesy and good nature, he
raised his horn and said, 'I drink with pleasure.
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