Rookwood. A Romance By W. HARRISON AINSWORTH

Beyond dispute he ruled as master of the road. His hands were, as yet, unstained with blood; he was ever prompt to check the disposition to outrage, and to prevent, as much as lay in his power, the commission of violence by his associates. Of late, since he had possessed himself of his favourite mare, Black Bess, his robberies had been perpetrated with a suddenness of succession, and at distances so apparently impracticable, that the idea of all having been executed by one man, was rejected as an impossibility; and the only way of reconciling the description of the horse and rider, which tallied in each instance, was the supposition, that these attacks were performed by confederates similarly mounted and similarly accoutred.

There was, in all this, as much of the “famœ sacra fames” as of the “auri”; of the hungering after distinction, as well as of the appetite of gain. Enamoured of his vocation, Turpin delighted to hear himself designated as the Flying Highwayman; and it was with rapturous triumph that he found his single-handed feats attributed to a band of marauders. But this state of things could not long endure; his secret was blown; the vigilance of the police was aroused; he was tracked to his haunts; and after a number of hair-breadth ‘scapes, which he only affected by miracle, or by the aid of his wonder-working mare, he reluctantly quitted the healthy hills of Bagshot, the Pampas plains of Hounslow (over which, like an archetype of the galloping Sir Francis Head, he had so often scoured), the gorsy commons of Highgate, Hampstead, and Finchley, the marshy fields of Battersea, almost all of which he had been known to visit in a single night, and, leaving these beaten tracks to the occupation of younger and less practised hands, he bequeathed to them, at the same time, his own reversionary interest in the gibbets thereupon erected, and betook himself to the country.

After a journey of more or less success, our adventurer found himself at Rookwood, whither he had been invited after a grand field-day by its hospitable and by no means inquisitive owner. Breach of faith and good fellowship formed no part of Turpin’s character; he had his lights as well as his shades; and as long as Sir Piers lived, his purse and coffers would have been free from molestation, except “so far,” Dick said, “as a cog or two of dice went. My dice, you know, are longs for odd and even, a bale of bar’d cinque deuces,” a pattern of which he always carried with him; beyond this, excepting a take-in at a steeplechase, Rookwood church being the mark, a “do” at a leap, or some such trifle to which the most scrupulous could not raise an objection, Dick was all fair and above board. But when poor Sir Piers had “put on his wooden surtout,” to use Dick’s own expressive metaphor, his conscientious scruples evaporated into thin air. Lady Rookwood was nothing to him; there was excellent booty to be appropriated. He began to look about for hands; and having accidentally encountered his old comrades, Rust and Wilder, they were let into the business, which was imperfectly accomplished in the manner heretofore described.

To return from this digression. When Turpin presented himself at the threshold of the door, on his way to enquire after his mare, to his astonishment he found it closely invested. A cheering shout from the tawny throng, succeeded by a general clapping of hands, and attended by a buzzing susurration of applause, such as welcomes the entrance of a popular actor upon the stage, greeted the appearance of the highwayman. At the first sight of the crowd he was a little startled, and involuntarily sought for his pistols. But the demonstrations of admiration were too unequivocal to be for a moment mistaken; his hand was drawn from his pocket to raise his hat from his brow.

Thunders of applause.

Turpin’s external man, we have before said, was singularly prepossessing. It was especially so in the eyes of the sex (fair we certainly cannot say upon the present occasion), amongst whom not a single dissentient voice was to be heard. All concurred in thinking him a fine fellow; could plainly read his high courage in his bearing; his good breeding in his débonnaire deportment; and his manly beauty in his extravagant red whiskers. Dick saw the effect that he produced. He was at home in a moment. Your true highwayman has ever a passion for effect. This does not desert him at the gallows; it rises superior to death itself, and has been known to influence the manner of his dangling from the gibbet! To hear some one cry, “There goes a proper handsome man,” saith our previously quoted authority, Jack Hall, “somewhat ameliorates the terrible thoughts of the meagre tyrant death; and to go in a dirty shirt, were enough to save the hangman a labour, and make a man die with grief and shame at being in that deplorable condition.” With a gracious smile of condescension, like a popular orator—with a look of blarney like that of O’Connell, and of assurance like that of Hume—he surveyed the male portion of the spectators, tipped a knowing wink at the prettiest brunettes he could select, and finally cut a sort of fling with his well-booted legs that brought down another peal of rapturous applause.