safe--safe. Remember, Corbet, that our family have been kind
friends to yours. I, therefore, have trusted you all along in this
matter, and calculate upon your confidence as a grateful and honest man,
as well as upon your implicit obedience to every order I have given you.
I myself shall drive home the carriage; and when we get near Red Hall,
Gillespie can ride forward, have his horse put up, and the stable and
coachhouse doors open, so that everything tomorrow morning may look as
if no such expedition had taken place."

They then separated; Corbet to conduct poor Fenton to his dreary cell
in a mad-house, and Sir Thomas to seek that upon which, despite his most
ambitious projects, he had been doomed all his life to seek after in
vain--rest on an uneasy pillow.

CHAPTER XVII. A Scene in Jemmy Trailcudgel's

--Retributive Justice, or the Robber robbed.

In the days of which we write, travelling was a very different process
from what it is at present. Mail-coaches and chaises were the only
vehicles then in requisition, with the exception of the awkward gingles,
buggies, and other gear of that nondescript class which were peculiar
to the times, and principally confined to the metropolis. The result of
this was, that travellers, in consequence of the slow jog-trot motion
of those curious and inconvenient machines, were obliged, in order to
transact their business with something like due dispatch, to travel both
by night and day. In this case, as in others, the cause produced the
effect; or rather, we should say, the temptation occasioned the crime.
Highway-robbery was frequent; and many a worthy man--fat farmer and
wealthy commoner--was eased of his purse in despite of all his armed
precautions and the most sturdy resistance. The poorer classes, in every
part of the country, were, with scarcely an exception, the friends
of those depredators; by whom, it is true, they were aided against
oppression, and assisted in their destitution, as a compensation for
connivance and shelter whenever the executive authorities were in
pursuit of them. Most of these robberies, it is true, were the result of
a loose and disorganized state of society, and had their direct origin
from oppressive and unequal laws, badly or partially administered.
Robbery, therefore, in its general character, was caused, not so much
by poverty, as from a desperate hatred of those penal statutes which
operated for punishment but not for protection. Our r