emanship of the rider.

Looking after his chief with a long and an admiring gaze, the robber
said to the hostler of the inn, an aged and withered man, who had seen
nine generations of highwaymen rise and vanish,--

"There, Joe, when did you ever look on a hero like that? The bravest
heart, the frankest hand, the best judge of a horse, and the handsomest
man that ever did honour to Hounslow!"

"For all that," returned the hostler, shaking his palsied head, and
turning back to the tap-room,--"for all that, master, his time be up.
Mark my whids, Captain Lovett will not be over the year,--no, nor mayhap
the month!"

"Why, you old rascal, what makes you so wise? You will not peach, I
suppose!"

"I peach! Devil a bit! But there never was the gemman of the road, great
or small, knowing or stupid, as outlived his seventh year. And this will
be the captain's seventh, come the 21st of next month; but he be a fine
chap, and I'll go to his hanging!"

"Fish!" said the robber, peevishly,--he himself was verging towards the
end of his sixth year,--"pish!"

"Mind, I tells it you, master; and somehow or other I thinks--and I has
experience in these things--by the fey, of his eye and the drop of his
lip, that the captain's time will be up to-day!"

[Fey--A word difficult to translate; but the closest interpretation
of which is, perhaps, "the ill omen."]

Here the robber lost all patience, and pushing the hoary boder of evil
against the wall, he turned on his heel, and sought some more agreeable
companion to share his stirrup-cup.

It was in the morning of the day following that in which the above
conversations occurred, that the sagacious Augustus Tomlinson and the
valorous Edward Pepper, handcuffed and fettered, were jogging along the
road in a postchaise, with Mr. Nabbem squeezed in by the side of the
former, and two other gentlemen in Mr. Nabbem's confidence mounted on
the box of the chaise, and interfering sadly, as Long Ned growlingly
remarked, with "the beauty of the prospect."

"Ah, well!" quoth Nabbem, unavoidably thrusting his elbow into
Tomlinson's side, while he drew out his snuffbox, and helped himself
largely to the intoxicating dust; "you had best prepare yourself, Mr.
Pepper, for a change of prospects. I believes as how there is little to
please you in guod [prison]."

"Nothing makes men so facetious as misfortune to others!" said Augustus,
moralizing, and turning himself, as well as he was able, i