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Are we to take him to Miriam or to Tyrrel?" Those words told Cuthbert who were his captors. He was in the hands of the gipsies or highwaymen probably the prisoner of a mixed band who had joined together to effect his capture.
Frequent and full expectoration convinced me that his lips were as yet not sealed by the gag of highwaymen, and soothed my anxious ear. With this load lifted from my mind, and assisted by the mild presence of Diana, who left, as when she visited Endymion, much of her splendor outside my cavern I looked around the empty vehicle. On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin.
The executioner drew us up in a file within reach of his arm, and by good fortune I was placed last. He cut off the heads of the ten highwaymen, beginning at the first; and when he came to me, he stopped. The caliph perceiving that he did not strike me, grew angry: "Did not I command thee," said he, "to cut off the heads of ten highwaymen, and why hast thou cut off but nine?"
I had thought of going to take a few weeks' shooting with my friend, Sir Pierce Berrington, but I have made up my mind to go home direct, and if you will give me your company we will travel together. You will find posting pleasanter than the coach, and we shall give a good account of any highwaymen who may think fit to cry, `Halt; your money or your lives."
Once upon a time a Welshman was walking on London Bridge, staring at the traffic and wondering why there were so many kites hovering about. He had come to London, after many adventures with thieves and highwaymen, which need not be related here, in charge of a herd of black Welsh cattle.
It was related how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds; how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath; how his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men; how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights, black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the obsequies.
Yet let not thy fears be too violent for thy friend: he will not lightly desert his duty. Let me tell thee, before I proceed, that my wound is slight. We were stopped by a couple of highwaymen. Thou never wert a witness of such angelic sensibility as the divine creature discovered, when she found I had received some hurt. She alarmed me beyond description, by the excess of her feelings. Oh!
For a more disreputable, unsavory, desperate and wicked band of men it would be almost impossible to find. Repulsive in face, dirty, tattered and torn, wearing all sorts of cast off garments, a few in blankets, astride bony and broken horses, most of them, but each one armed with gun, revolver or knife, it was a crew of pirates, cut-throats, highwaymen to be carefully shunned.
The last hundred or hundred and fifty miles had to be traversed in a stage, and this form of traveling Luke found wearisome, yet not without interest. There was a spice of danger, too, which added excitement, if not pleasure, to the trip. The Black Hills stage had on more than one occasion been stopped by highwaymen and the passengers robbed.
In March 1753, when Fielding published his pamphlet on Elizabeth Canning, his life was plainly drawing to a close. His energies indeed were unabated, as may be gathered from a brief record in the Gentleman's for that month, describing his judicial raid, at four in the morning, upon a gaming-room, where he suspected certain highwaymen to be assembled.
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