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"Faith!" answered Sir John, finishing the sack and grinning in a somewhat ghastly fashion; "unless the Providence that watches over the fall of a sparrow hath an eye to the career of Sir John Falstaff, Knight, and so comes to my aid shortly, I must needs convert my last doublet into a mask, and turn highwayman in my shirt.
He resolved, if the tramp showed a disposition to attack him, to push the machine over on him, and this would give Tom a chance to attack the thief to better advantage. However, the "hobo" showed no evidence of wanting to resort to highwayman methods. He paused a short distance from the machine, and said admiringly: "Dat's a pretty shebang youse has."
The liquid revived him, and he drew himself painfully into a sitting posture. "'Galloping Hermit' the brown mask last night," he said. "The brown mask!" exclaimed the man in a low tone, looking round as if he expected to see the famous highwayman. "Your horse gone too." "It was a coach. I want a horse. Where can I get one?" "Lor', master, you couldn't get into the saddle." "Where can I get one?"
Tom Faggus, the great highwayman, and his young blood-mare, the strawberry! Already her fame was noised abroad, nearly as much as her master's; and my longing to ride her grew tenfold, but fear came at the back of it.
True enough, as Shelby had said, the cab was still pounding along toward Washington, though the poor horse was nearly done up. Shelby came abreast the poor panting beast, leaned quietly over, caught the bridle and cried, "Whoa!" The horse was only too delighted to oblige him. Not so "Cabby." With wrath and ire he rose to mete out justice to this highwayman.
He staggered to his feet and leaned against the bank. The extent of his loss the hopelessness of its recovery the impotence of his burning desire to avenge the outrage overwhelmed him. The highwayman still stood, a few paces off, watching him with a grim curiosity. With a desperate effort, Gilbert turned towards him. "Sandy Flash," he cried, "do you know what you are doing?"
He declared also, to prevent any aspersions on some young men who had been his companions, that no person was ever present with, or privy to any of the robberies he had committed; and having thus far discharged his conscience, he suffered on the 28th of July, 1721, in the twenty-fourth year of his age. The Life of JOHN WINSHIP, Highwayman and Footpad
Why, sir, it would not be more preposterous on the part of the traveler, after having, at the peril of his life, succeeded in disarming a highwayman by whom he was assailed, to immediately turn round and restore to the robber his weapons with which to make a new assault. "And yet this is what some gentlemen would have this nation do with the worse than robbers who have assailed its life.
"No, officer, I am neither a burglar nor a highwayman, nor anything else worth bothering; I'm just a poet, and I'm crazy, to all practical purposes, so please get used to me and let me wander about the streets at these strange hours of the night without worrying!" Poor, perplexed policeman! Poor, perplexed world! Poor, perplexed mothers and fathers, sisters and cousins and aunts of poets!
He seems to have been a most mysterious person, by all accounts, and he rode a white horse surely a very foolish colour for a highwayman to choose and he kept the countryside in a state of terror. He was caught at last it would take too long to tell you the story of his final escapade and capture and hung upon that pine-tree.
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