the third man of the party, lay his hand
upon the gig behind, than Farmer Johnson,
who was waiting for him, struck him over
the head with the sickle, to such good
purpose, that the man dropped in the road.

'I forgot,' cried the stout yeoman, as he
came up with the other two, ' I forgot, when
I met you before, sirs, to give you this,' holding
up the weapon, and leaping out upon the
left hand man: this fellow, astounded by such
an address, and really bewildered at seeing
again the same individual who he had such
excellent means for knowing was elsewhere
and in sad plight, made but a feeble resistance,
and after his fall, his comrade took to his heels
across the trackless thicket: the farmer was
at no time very well calculated to catch a
runner, and pursuit was of course, under the
circumstances, not to be thought of. The
stolen purse was luckily in the pocket of the
first man, and with that and his two captives
—most grievously mauled by the sickle—the
plucky old yeoman came into Brierly about
day–break, and covered himself, as may well
be believed, with provincial glory.

The other adventure, which I remember to
have happened upon our thicket, occurred to
my uncle Jack. He was what was called in
those good old times which I have referred to,
a red–hot radical, or as we should now say,
a moderate whig, and in the electioneering
practices of that date he was a somewhat
unscrupulous proficient: his hatred of the
noble house of Calderton, which arrogated to
itself the right of appointing the member
for the borough, was of a nature of which
we moderns, unacquainted as we are with
what political animosity really means, can
have no conception: 'all's fair at election
time,' was a favourite moral precept with
my uncle, and one up to which, whenever
Brierly was contested, lie most conscientiously
acted.

The struggle between the nominee of his
lordship, and a certain yellow candidate from
the metropolis, was, upon one occasion—the
first in which the Calderton rule was rebelled
against with any hope of success—
excessively keen, and the screw was put very
sharply upon the Brierly tenants. Uncle
Jack, the better to observe the enemy, was
stopping at the Calderton Arms itself, from
which he secretly sent forth his ukases, and
regulated liberal affairs. He saw that these
were going badly; that more money was
wanted, and that, for certain reasons, neither
in Brierly notes, nor even in those of the
Bank of England, but in good, untestifying,
unrecognisable gold sovereigns from the
Mint. There was very little time to procure
it in, and the getting it from town was a
highly important and most confidential task,
so Uncle Jack, after some consultation with
those he considered could be trusted,
determined to undertake it himself.

Nobody, reasoned he, would surely suspect
him, an inmate of the Calderton Arms, of
being the purse–bearer of the Friends of
Liberty. Robert Supple, the landlord, who
was, of course, Caldertonian to the back–bone,
and had a considerable following, was a dull
man, who thought himself shrewd, and of
the easiest possible sort to hoodwink; while
his son was a scamp, if not something even
worse, whose feelings were not likely to
be interested in any electioneering matter
whatever.

Uncle Jack was neither a dull man, nor a
scamp, ergo (so he proved it) he was more
than a match for them. He ordered out
his gig and his big brown horse in order to
go to Fussworth; there was certainly no
mistake about that; he mentioned Fussworth
twice, distinctly, to Mr. Supple, who was
smoking his pipe at the inn–door, with an
expression of countenance as though he were
personifying: human wisdom at the request of
some eminent sculptor. He spoke of Fussworth,
casually, to Supple the younger, as he
hung about the inn–yard, as usual, with both
his idle hands in his pockets; and Fussworth,
said he, nodding to the inquiring
ostler, as he snatched the horsecloth cleverly
off the brown at the moment of departure;
and yet Uncle Jack was going farther than
Fussworth that same day, nevertheless.

It was night,—midnight, by the time my
uncle got upon our thicket again upon his
way home. He had nobody with him, and
no weapon of any kind, and he had two
thousand pounds in gold under the gig–seat.
It was upon this last account that he kept
his eyes so sharply about him, and listened
so painfully with his ears, and not through
any fear upon his own account, for Uncle Jack
was bold as a lion. He was anxious lest the
cause of liberty should suffer a dire loss;
lest the Calderton clique should triumph on
this as on all other occasions, through any
misadventure of his; and it was for this
alone that he feared the chances of the dark,
and highwaymen. Blindfold, he had almost
known every inch of the way, and he drove
through the gloom as softly as he possibly
could, with his wheels low on the sand, and ,
dumb on the turf, and grating on the hard
road but rarely; sometimes he would even
pull up to listen, and he did not press the
big brown to speed at any time, but kept
him as fresh as his long journey would
permit him to be, in case it should come to a
stern chace.

Presently, in the centre of the way there
loomed a horseman, and the fatal Stand!
rang hoarsely out over the heath. My uncle
would have made a rush, and trusted to the
fellow's pistol missing fire, but he saw that
the muzzle covered him, and that the risk
was too tremendous for that. The robber,
who was masked, rode up to his side with the
weapon still levelled, and demanded his
money. My uncle offered him his watch,
and some loose sovereigns, but the other
shook his head.