The Master Thief

As the night wore on the stable boys found it rather cold work to sit still on horseback.

`Hutetu! But it is fearfully cold!' said one, and began to beat his arms backwards and forwards across his breast.

`Yes, I am so cold that my teeth are chattering,' said another.

`If one had but a little tobacco,' said a third.

Well, one of them had a little, so they shared it among them, though there was very little for each man, but they chewed it. This was some help to them, but very soon they were just as cold as before.

`Hutetu!' said one of them, shivering again.

`Hutetu!' said the old woman, gnashing her teeth together till they chattered inside her mouth; and then she got out the flask which contained nothing but brandy, and her hands trembled so that she shook the bottle about, and when she drank it made a great gulp in her throat.

`What is that you have in your flask, old woman?' asked one of the stable boys.

`Oh, it's only a little drop of brandy, your honour,' she said.

`Brandy! What! Let me have a drop! Let me have a drop!' screamed all the twelve at once.

`Oh, but what I have is so little,' whimpered the old woman. `It will not even wet your mouths.'

But they were determined to have it, and there was nothing to be done but give it; so she took out the flask with the sleeping drink and put it to the lips of the first of them; and now she shook no more, but guided the flask so that each of them got just as much as he ought, and the twelfth had not done drinking before the first was already sitting snoring. Then the Master Thief flung off his beggar's rags, and took one stable boy after the other and gently set him astride on the partitions which divided the stalls, and then he called his eleven men who were waiting outside, and they rode off with the Governor's horses.

In the morning when the Governor came to look after his stable boys they were just beginning to come to again. They were driving their spurs into the partition till the splinters flew about, and some of the boys fell off, and some still hung on and sat looking like fools.