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It's fortunate we've no more Jack Sheppards, or I should stand but a poor chance. Well, I don't think they'll any of 'em nab him, that's one comfort." On quitting the Lodge, Wild repaired to his own habitation. Telling the porter that he would attend to the house himself, he bade him go in search of Jack Sheppard.
"But not when he spoke the name. Ye see I got suspicious, an' asked about him. It's this way: Jake Wentz, the trader, told me the fellow asked for the Sheppards when he got off the wagon-train. When I first seen him he was drunk, and I heard Jeff Lynn say as how the border was a bad place to come after a woman. That's what made me prick up my ears. Then the Englishman said: 'It is, eh? By God!
The Honorable Andrew William Cochran, an accomplished scholar, was its President. The Skeys, the Badgleys, the Fishers, the Sewells, the Vallières, the Stuarts, the Blacks, the Sheppards, the Morrins, the Doluglasses, the Reverend Dr. Cook, the Bishops Mountain, the Greens, the Faribaults, and indeed all the men of learning and note in the country were associated with it. But it is decaying.
They have columns headed "A Melange of Murder," "Fillicide, or a Son killing a Father," "Lust and Blood," "Fiendish Assassination," "Particulars of the Hanging of John C. Kelly," "Carving a Darky," "An Interesting Divorce Case in Boston," "A Band of Juvenile Jack Sheppards."
They started trouble immediately. The Englishman, his name is Mordaunt, hunted up the Sheppards and as near as I can make out from George's story, Helen spoke her mind very plainly. Mordaunt and Case, that's his servant, the little cuss, got drunk and raised hell down at Metzar's where they're staying. Brandt and Williams are drinking hard, too, which is something unusual for Brandt.
Seated at Wiley's table, with Hatchett and others near, and drink going about, someone drew the giant on to talk, and so deftly and with such apparent innocence did Pierre, by a word here and a nod there, encourage him, that presently he roared at Wiley and Hatchett: "Ye shameless buccaneers that push your way into the tracks of honest men, where the Company's been three hundred years by the will o' God if it wasn't for me, ye Jack Sheppards "
The world unfortunately is full of Dick Turpins and Jack Sheppards, not to mention their lady friends." "Ah," said Flamby and sat silent for some time studying the panorama of the busy London streets. "Is Liberty's dear?" she inquired presently. "Not at all; most reasonable." "I'm glad," replied Flamby. "I have got seven pounds ten saved. Will that be enough?" Don held his breath.
The streets of our cities, once reasonably secure from crimes of violence, have now become the field of operations for the foot-pad and highwayman. The days of Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard have returned, with this serious difference that the Turpins and Sheppards of our day are not dependent upon the horse, but have the powerful automobile to facilitate their crimes and make sure their escape.
There are Jack Sheppards other than those who break into houses and out of prisons, Macheaths, who deserve the gallows more than Gay's hero. Thinking of all this, as a novelist surely must do, as I certainly have done through my whole career, it becomes to him a matter of deep conscience how he shall handle those characters by whose words and doings he hopes to interest his readers.
The details of the crime are simply horrible, without one touch of even that sort of romance which sometimes gives a little dignity to murder. As such they precisely suited Mr. Thackeray's purpose at the time which was to show the real manners and customs of the Sheppards and Turpins who were then the popular heroes of fiction.
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