United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It must, however, be pointed out in justice to the editors, whom his story failed to impress, that his previous work had revealed little of the dramatic sense that contributed so materially to his success in presenting the careers of his highwaymen.
Gay amidst general applause set the statesmen of his day on the public stage in the guise of highwaymen and pickpockets. "It is difficult to determine," said the witty playwright, "whether the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen."
A few seconds elapsed, and then Kenneth's ears caught the sound of footsteps in the soft dirt road, and presently the subdued murmur of voices. "Women," observed Stain, laconically, lowering his voice. "Let 'em pass. If we show ourselves now, they'll think we're highwaymen or something, an' begin screechin' fer dear life."
In the mean time, Alnaschar obeyed without murmuring, and left that town to go to another. By the way, he met with highwaymen, who stripped him naked; and when the ill news was brought to me, I carried him a suit, and brought him secretly into the town, where I took the like care of him as I did of his other brothers. The Story of the Barber's Sixth Brother.
But I was reassured when informed that the crowd was simply composed of curious idlers, who were following their usual habits in coming down to see the travellers land. The sun was going down. I at once hired a three-horse chaise, and made off forthwith, for I was not without apprehensions, seeing I had been told I might very likely encounter highwaymen.
Martin's couple of lances had expanded into a corps of free companions, the most truculent, the most obedient, the most rapacious in Christendom. Never were freebooters more formidable to the world at large, or more docile to their chief, than were the followers of General Schenk. Never was a more finished captain of highwaymen. He was a man who was never sober, yet who never smiled.
Obviously he must be near the Gap itself as the station wire followed the railroad. Then he remembered a device that he had seen used about mining properties and laughed at his own stupidity in remaining as long baffled. The few telephones hereabouts were party lines where all conversation could be overheard and so, for the use of highwaymen, they were unavailable.
The highwayman's mare, mentioned in the novel, had been trained to come at his call, and was so ungovernable that they shot her. Such tracts of open country, moors, and unenclosed hills were the haunts of highwaymen till a late period, and memories of the gallows, and of escapes from them, are common.
"A traveller left it there about a year and a half ago, and has not yet come for it," was the reply; to judge from which it might remain till Doomsday a fact which spoke well for the honesty of the country folk in that respect at least, although I learned that they were notorious highwaymen.
Certainly at that moment, what with the fresh air, the fitful moonlight now breaking broadly out, now lost in a rolling cloud, the exciting exercise, and that racy and dancing stir of the blood, which all action, whether evil or noble in its nature, raises in our veins; what with all this, we cannot but allow the fascination of that lawless life, a fascination so great that one of the most noted gentlemen highwaymen of the day, one too who had received an excellent education and mixed in no inferior society, is reported to have said, when the rope was about his neck, and the good Ordinary was exhorting him to repent of his ill-spent life, "Ill-spent, you dog!
Word Of The Day