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Into the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels. The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin's mind. Nearly a score of women women expensively and fashionably clothed, many beautiful and of refined appearance had been seated at little marble-topped tables.
But these little marks have all got to be crossed out by-and-by, and the time will surely come for turning all empty pockets wrong side out. The aggressors begin in a great passion, and are violent and dangerous at first; the nation or community assailed are surprised, dismayed, perhaps, like the good people in the coach, when they see Dick Turpin's pistol thrust in at the window.
Let us travel first along the old York road, or rather select our route, going by way of Ware, Tottenham, Edmonton, and Waltham Cross, Hatfield and Stevenage, or through Barnet, until we arrive at the Wheat Sheaf Inn on Alconbury Hill, past Little Stukeley, where the two roads conjoin and "the milestones are numbered agreeably to that admeasurement," viz. to that from Hicks' Hall through Barnet, as Patterson's Roads plainly informs us. Along this road you will find several of the best specimens of old coaching inns in England. The famous "George" at Huntingdon, the picturesque "Fox and Hounds" at Ware, the grand old inns at Stilton and Grantham are some of the best inns on English roads, and pleadingly invite a pleasant pilgrimage. We might follow in the wake of Dick Turpin, if his ride to York were not a myth. The real incident on which the story was founded occurred about the year 1676, long before Turpin was born. One Nicks robbed a gentleman on Gadshill at four o'clock in the morning, crossed the river with his bay mare as soon as he could get a ferry-boat at Gravesend, and then by Braintree, Huntingdon, and other places reached York that evening, went to the Bowling Green, pointedly asked the mayor the time, proved an alibi, and got off. This account was published as a broadside about the time of Turpin's execution, but it makes no allusion to him whatever. It required the romance of the nineteenth century to change Nicks to Turpin and the bay mare to Black Bess. But revenir
This seemed feasible enough, for Turpin's speeches were not many or long, the fascination of the piece lying entirely in the action; and accordingly the play began, and at the appointed time Black Bess leapt into the grassy circle amid the plaudits of the spectators.
"With all my heart," said I gayly, "and Dick Turpin's into the bargain!" "Ah, sir," said the man in green, "those are the kind of men for poetry. The Newgate kalendar, sir! the Newgate kalendar is your only reading! There's the place to look for bold deeds and dashing fellows." We were so much pleased with each other that we sat until a late hour.
While Engineer Serko is estimating the distance, Roch places himself behind the trestle. Three engines are resting on it, charged with the explosive, and which are assured a long trajectory by the fusing matter without it being necessary to impart a gyratory movement to them as in the case of Inventor Turpin's gyroscopic projectiles.
Will you tell me why "the human interest" of a legend about Dick Turpin's head festering on Newgate, England, is any greater to Americans than the truth about Black Jack of Texas, whose head flew off into the crowd, when the support was removed from his feet and he was hanged down in New Mexico? Dick Turpin was a highwayman. Black Jack was a lone-hand train robber.
But Ann, preoccupied with Dick Turpin's vagaries, was not looking at her. "Oh, he's tall," she made answer. "And has grey eyes. There's a little white scar just under one of them." The woman beside her drew a quick breath. "Ah" the sweet, trainante voice was a fraction uneven. "Then it is the man I've met."
I should have made a good film actor that day: "Dick Turpin's ride to York" in two reels. I reached the turning off the high road all right, and pursued my wild career down the lanes which led to the Colonel's headquarters. The road wound about in a most ridiculous way, making salients out of ploughed fields on either side. I decided to throw all prudence to the winds, and cut across these.
There are a few pictures, not of a high class three or four prints depicting Dick Turpin's ride to York, and a coloured sketch of some steeplechase winner, or a copy of a well-known engraving representing a feat accomplished many years ago at a farm. A flock of sheep were shorn, the wool carded and spun, and a coat made of it, and worn by the flockowner, and all in one day.
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