ur.

I stayed with the Blacks in Charlwood Chase until I grew to be a sturdy
lad of twelve years of age. I went out with them and followed their
naughty courses, and have stricken down many a fat Buck in my time. Ours
was the most jovial but the most perilous of lives. The Keepers were
always on our track; and sometimes the Sheriff would call out the Posse
Comitatis, and he and half the beef-fed tenant-farmers of the
country-side would come horsing and hoofing it about the glades to catch
us. For weeks together in each year we dared not keep our rendezvous at
the Stag, but were fain to hide in Brakes and Hollow Trees, listening to
the pursuit as it grew hot and heavy around us; and often with no better
Victuals than Pig's-meat and Ditch-water. But then the search would
begin to lag; and two or three of the great Squires round about being
well terrified by letters written in a liquid designed to counterfeit
Blood, with a great Skull and Cross-bones scrawled at the bottom, the
whole signed "Captain Night," and telling them that if they dared to
meddle with the Blacks their Lives should pay for it, we were left quiet
for a season, and could return to our Haunt, there to feast and carouse
according to custom. Nor am I slow to believe that some of the tolerance
we met with was due to our being known to the County Gentry as stanch
Tories, and as stanch detesters of the House of Hanover (I speak, of
course, of my companions, for I was of years too tender to have any
politics). We never killed a Deer but on the nearest tree some one of us
out with his Jack-knife and carved on the bark of it, "Slain by King
James's order;" or, if there were no time for so long a legend, or the
Beast was stricken in the Open, a simple K. J. (which the Hanover Rats
understood well enough, whether cut in the trunk or the turf) sufficed.
The Country Gentlemen were then of a very furious way of thinking
concerning the rights of the present Illustrious House to the Throne;
but Times do alter, and so likewise do Men's Thoughts and Opinions, and
I dare swear there is no Brunswicker or Church of England man more leal
at this present writing than John Dangerous.

Captain Night, to whom I was a kind of Page or Henchman, used me with
much tenderness. Whenever at supper the tongues grew too loosened, and
wild talk, and of the wickedese, began to jingle among the bottles and
glasses, he would bid me Withdraw, and go keep company for a time with
Mistress Slyb