amateur. They both bullied;
but, while Sixteen-String Jack was content to shout threats, and pick up
half-a-crown, Gilderoy breathed murder, and demanded a vast ransom.
Only once in his career did the 'disgraceful Scotsman' become gay and
debonair. Only once did he relax the tension of his frown, and pick
pockets with the lightness and freedom of a gentleman. It was on his
voyage to France that he forgot his old policy of arson and pillage, and
truly the Court of the Great King was not the place for his rapacious
cruelty. Jack Rann, on the other hand, would have taken life as a
prolonged jest, if Sir John Fielding and the sheriffs had not checked
his mirth. He was but a bungler on the road, with no more resource
than he might have learned from the common chap-book, or from the
dying speeches, hawked in Newgate Street. But he had a fine talent for
merriment; he loved nothing so well as a smart coat and a pretty woman.
Thieving was no passion with him, but a necessity. How could he dance at
a masquerade or court his Ellen with an empty pocket? So he took to the
road as the sole profession of an idle man, and he bullied his way from
Hounslow to Epping in sheer lightness of heart. After all, to rob Dr.
Bell of eighteenpence was the work of a simpleton. It was a very pretty
taste which expressed itself in a pea-green coat and deathless strings;
and Rann will keep posterity's respect rather for the accessories of
his art than for the art itself. On the other hand, you cannot imagine
Gilderoy habited otherwise than in black; you cannot imagine this
monstrous matricide taking pleasure in the smaller elegancies of life.
From first to last he was the stern and beetle-browed marauder, who
would have despised the frippery of Sixteen-String Jack as vehemently as
his sudden appearance would have frightened the foppish lover of Ellen
Roach.

Their conduct with women is sufficient index of their character. Jack
Rann was too general a lover for fidelity. But he was amiable, even in
his unfaithfulness; he won the undying affection of his Ellen; he never
stood in the dock without a nosegay tied up by fair and nimble fingers;
he was attended to Tyburn by a bevy of distinguished admirers. Gilderoy,
on the other hand, approached women in a spirit of violence. His Sadic
temper drove him to kill those whom he affected to love. And his cruelty
was amply repaid. While Ellen Roach perjured herself to save the lover,
to whose memory she professed