THE Alternate Ending

[this starts here]

..." then her fingers moved in the moonlight.
her musket shattered in the moonlight,
shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him - with her death."...

AND NOW THE EXCITING CONCLUSION...

But the highwayman never heard it.
for him, there was no reason to fear.
Even the readcoats - the filthy redcoats -
where nowhere - nowhere - near.

For the highwayman made a decoy
so he could run away with his love.
But there, with her head over the musket,
his beautiful, pure white dove.

He cried in the dawning, and at the coming of noo.
He cried before the tawny sunset and before the rising moon.
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looking the purple moor,
A redcoat troop came marching -
marching - marching -
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn door.

They cased him out on the highway, shouting a curs to the sky.
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his hands in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And je lay in his blook in the highway,
with a bunch of lace at his throat.

And in the still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor...
The highwayman comes riding -
riding - riding -
The highwayman comes riding up to the old inn door.

He takes her hand, and out to the highway they walk.
There they lie on the highway, when all is silent and dark.
And when the morning light falls upon the highway,
Blood lies on the dark dirt road to stay.