shes and brambles. From this station they used
to issue, etc.---Memoirs of Richard Turpin.

It was not for several minutes after their flight had commenced that any
conversation passed between the robbers. Their horses flew on like wind;
and the country through which they rode presented to their speed no
other obstacle than an occasional hedge, or a short cut through the
thicknesses of some leafless beechwood. The stars lent them a merry
light, and the spirits of two of them at least were fully in sympathy
with the exhilaration of the pace and the air. Perhaps, in the third, a
certain presentiment that the present adventure would end less merrily
than it had begun, conspired, with other causes of gloom, to check that
exaltation of the blood which generally follows a successful exploit.

The path which the robbers took wound by the sides of long woods
or across large tracts of uncultivated land; nor did they encounter
anything living by the road, save now and then a solitary owl, wheeling
its gray body around the skirts of the bare woods, or occasionally
troops of conies, pursuing their sports and enjoying their midnight food
in the fields.

"Heavens!" cried the tall robber, whose incognito we need no longer
preserve, and who, as our readers are doubtless aware, answered to the
name of Pepper,--"heavens!" cried he, looking upward at the starry skies
in a sort of ecstasy, "what a jolly life this is! Some fellows like
hunting; d---it! what hunting is like the road? If there be sport in
hunting down a nasty fox, how much more is there in hunting down a nice,
clean nobleman's carriage! If there be joy in getting a brush, how much
more is there in getting a purse! If it be pleasant to fly over a hedge
in the broad daylight, hang me if it be not ten times finer sport to
skim it by night,--here goes! Look how the hedges run away from us! and
the silly old moon dances about, as if the sight of us put the good lady
in spirits! Those old maids are always glad to have an eye upon such
fine, dashing young fellows."

"Ay," cried the more erudite and sententious Augustus Tomlinson,
roused by success from his usual philosophical sobriety; "no work is so
pleasant as night-work, and the witches our ancestors burned were in the
right to ride out on their broomsticks with the awls and the stars. We
are their successors now, Ned. We are your true fly-by-nights!"

"Only," quoth Ned, "we are a cursed deal more clever than they were;