at least one companion. Pedlars who were
foolish enough to expose the contents of a
valuable pack at any place upon one side of
our thicket, rarely got scot–free to the other;
nay, if they made resistance, they sometimes
never crossed it afc all, for highway robbery
being then a hanging matter, murder was no
worse, and it was as well, said the thieves
with the proverb, to be hung for a sheep as
for a lamb. There was a patrol upon our
thicket, it is true, but he did not very much
deter the marauders, and simple nervous
passengers, always mistaking him for a robber,
suffered three parts of the wretchedness of
being robbed in the fright. Nevertheless
there were honest men, then as now, who
ared for never a thief living; and one of
these was Farmer Johnson of Stoat Farm,
near Brierly, and another was my Uncle
Jack.

Farmer Johnson was accustomed to cross
our thicket at all seasons and at any hour,
as often alone as in company, and unless he
walked (which, as he was fourteen stone, he
was generally loth to do), without even an
ashplant wherewith to defend himself. He
ran such risks indeed without ever coming
to harm, that it was popularly understood,
in fun, that he was himself in league with
the highwaymen, which in those times it was
not such a very uncommon thing for men of
some substance to be. Nevertheless, even
Farmer Johnson was stopped at last, upon
our thicket.

He was returning late at night from Fussworth
market in his gig alone, and with a
pretty heavy purse in his pocket, the proceeds
of a successful sale in barley: his good
fortune made him whistle as he drove, and
his good mare Salt–fish, who was almost a
thoroughbred, spanked along merrily without
touch of whip, as if she sympathised with
her master. When they had reached about
the middle of our thicket, a man sprang up
on either side the road from amid the gorse
and stood in the way, while at the same
instant a third fellow laid his hand upon the
gig behind. Farmer Johnson understood
the state of affairs at a glance, and knowing
that he could rely upon the mare, took his
measures accordingly: by a sharp pull at the
bit he caused the docile Salt–fish (who had
come to a full stop upon two legs and presented
the unusual sign in heraldry of a horse
rampant in a gig passant) to run backwards
with surprising agility, knocking down the
gentleman behind, and playfully trampling
upon him in her retreat; thus Farmer Johnson
extricated himself from the dilemma,
and had he been wise would have trotted
back to Fussworth well satisfied enough:
but he had just come from thence, and was
bound for his own residence, Stoat Farm,
nor was he a man very easily induced to
change his determination. Gathering up the
reins, therefore, and holding the mare well
together, he rushed her at the two men who
still stopped the way, and scattered them
like chaff.

'Good night, gentlemen!' he cried, satirically,
as he bowled along at some fifteen
miles an hour, but the words had scarcely
left his lips, when Salt–fish and gig, and all,
heeled completely over, and Farmer Johnson's
triumph was ended. The three thieves, it
seems, regardless of omens, were the
proprietors of a long stout rope, which was
stretched across the road on pegs, and had
thus caused his misfortune. In another
minute, and before he could rise, his enemies
were upon him; resistance from an unarmed
man was useless, for though they had no pistols
they could have beaten out his brains with
their bludgeons in a few minutes; so Farmer
Johnson submitted as patiently as he could,
and confined himself to making a particular
study of their countenances, with a view to
recognising them under more auspicious
circumstances. They took his purse, and
gave him a good drubbing, in return for the
trouble which he had given them, and they
would have doubtless taken his mare also,
but that she had in the meantime gone off
towards Stoat Farm, of her own accord, with
the resuscitated gig behind her.

Farmer Johnson, as he started homewards
on foot amid the laughter of his despoilers,
was sensible neither of his loss nor of his
bruises;. an overwhelming desire for revenge
swallowed up, like a Moses' rod, all other
feelings; he had scarce patience to get a
prudent distance away from his late
companions, before he gave the long shrill
whistle, which Salt–fish knew so well as her
master's summons; back came the high-blooded
mare at a hand–gallop, instantly, and
the farmer climbed up into the gig: he put
his hand under the driving seat and brought
out exultingly a new sharp sickle.

'Fool that I was,' cried he, 'to have forgotten
this, which I bought only this very
day.' It was a present which he had
promised to one of his men, and ten minutes
before would perhaps have been worth two
hundred pounds to him. 'What's done,
however, could be undone, 'according to the
persevering farmer, and giving the mare a
flick with the whip–lash, he turned her into
a turf–road which runs through our thicket
from that place, and presently joins the
highway again by a circumbendibus: by this
means he could come, from the same
direction as before, over the very same ground,
and if the thieves should be still there, he
was prepared for them. His only fear was
that they would have decamped with their
booty. They, however, thinking that 'old
twenty–stun' (as they had irreverently called
him) would be a long time in going afoot to
Brierly, had set their trap anew for more
game from Fussworth market, and hearing
the sound of wheels, pricked up their
ears and grasped their bludgeons. No
sooner, however, did the running footman,