shouted ribald ballads when they sang Sternhold
and Hopkins's psalms.  He would not
suffer any one to read or pray, or even look
serious, and especially tormented poor Spiggott,
his friend, by beating out his candles and rattling
his irons when he went to prayers. The
more devout the others got, the worse he
became, beating and kicking them up and down
the condemned cell. The prisoners at last
entreated that he might be removed from them.
He remained obstinate to the last, saying
under the very gallows "that, he did not
fear to die, for he was in no doubt of going to
heaven."

Spiggott owned to about a hundred highway
robberies, chiefly on Hounslow-heath and the
Kingston and Ware roads. He said he did
not desire to live; for since his punishment
he could hardly breathe, and he should only
drag through life a weak and unhealthy man.
Both men wore executed at Tyburn on the 8th
of February, 1723.

IV. GALLOPING DICK.

The chief interest about this man is, that his
career exemplifies the system of confederation
between highwaymen and postboys that, led to
so many of the robberies on the road. Richard
Ferguson, alias Galloping Dick, was the son
of a gentleman's servant in Hertfordshire,
and was brought up as a stable-boy, and
subsequently as postilion at an inn in Piccadilly.
There he become drunken, dissolute, and
abandoned. Getting acquainted with highwaymen
they soon began to bribe him to give
information at Abershaw's rendezvous of the
times of chaises' starting, and when travellers
with money were likely to pass. When driving
post-chaise between Hounslow and London, he
had afterwards daily to drive past the gibbet
where his old companion, Abershaw, hung jingling
in chains. He seems to have lived for some
years partly as a driver and spy, and partly as a
highwayman. One of his greatest robberies
was the stopping of the East Grinstead waggon
at Brixton-causeway—he and six others. Dick's
skill in managing horses led him always to
choose a nag fit for a quick retreat; for Dick
was prudent as well as brave. On one occasion
he and two others stopped and robbed two
gentlemen on the Edgeware-road, but three
other gentlemen riding up soon after, the five
together gave hot pursuit, and Dick's two
companions were run down, and soon afterwards
tried and executed. When his associates
complimented Dick on this rapid retrograde
movement, he boasted that he could gallop a horse
with any man in the kingdom. Henceforward
he acquired the nickname of "Galloping Dick."
He was repeatedly at Bow-street, but always
succeeded in getting clear; at last some Bow-
street patrols caught him in 1800, and sent him
to Aylesbury for trial.

When left for execution, Dick decorously
prepared himself for death, and made his ending
with considerable resolution and penitence.

V.   ROBBING THE MAIL.

We have already shown that there was little
romance and less chivalry about these vermin
of the roads. They were not at all like that
gallant gentleman in square-cut scarlet coat,
gold-lace hat cocked awry, high black boots,
and little light fetters that tinkle playfully
like watch-chains all over him, who sits on
the edge of a table in the Beggar's Opera,
and sings about the "heart of a man" in
that jaunty devil-may-care way that only
stage tenors can assume. They were much
more like that grim, broken-down old rogue in
Hogarth's picture of the gambling-house, who
mopes over his losses by the fire, unconscious
even of the glass of strong waters proffered him
by the blackguard boy of the house. You see
the brass butt of a horse-pistol peeping out of
his pocket. Well, its owner, before midnight,
will be stopping a coach at Hounslow or Finchley,
and perhaps in a week more will be swinging
on a gibbet somewhere down the great north road.

The fact is, the life was a degraded, hopeless
bad, and scurvy one. There was no room
for brave men in it. A coach was seldom
stopped unless the assailants preponderated in
force. These thieves were greedy, cruel, and
heartless. They stripped the poor carrier and
frightened country-woman as soon as the rich
grazier or the portly country squire. Half the
bag of guineas they got was spent on Jew dealers,
who charged three hundred per cent for bartering
stolen plate, which the highwaymen
could not otherwise turn into money. The
thief-taker always knew where to have these
poor rascals when they refused to pay their
black mail, or became worth a good reward.
Not one man among them, not one, from 1660 to
1800, ever earned a name for remarkable courage.
Let us sketch two more of these pests of the
eighteenth century, and then leave them.

On the 16th of April, 1722, the Bristol mail
boy was stopped near Colnbrook by two
mounted highwaymen named Hawkins and
Simpson. The boy had been joined by a friend
as he rode past the Pied Horse at Slough,
blowing his horn. The robbers had handkerchiefs
in their mouths, and had pulled their
wigs forward over their faces. A rogue on a
chestnut horse held a pistol to the boy's head,
saying to him, "You must go along with
me." He then took the boy's bridle, and Ied
him down a narrow lane. The other man led
the other postboy. He then asked Green,
the first boy, if he was the lad who swore
against Child (a highwayman who had been
hung the year before for robbing the same
mail). He said he was not; he'd only been
postboy a little while yet, and had never been
robbed. The two men with the pistols then
swore horribly, and said:

"Why then you must be robbed now, and
pay your beverage; we will be revenged upon
somebody, for poor Child's sake."

They cut the bridles, turned one horse
adrift, and rode off on the Bristol boy's black
gelding, leaving the lads bound back to back,