rather than to proceed to town. The postboy was placed behind Coates, as being the lightest weight; and, thus reinforced, the party pushed forward as rapidly as heretofore.
Eighty and odd miles had now been traversed — the boundary of another county, Northampton, passed; yet no rest nor respite had Dick Turpin or his unflinching mare enjoyed. But here he deemed it fitting to make a brief halt.
Bordering the beautiful domains of Burleigh House stood a little retired hostelry of some antiquity, which bore the great Lord Treasurer’s arms. With this house Dick was not altogether unacquainted. The lad who acted as ostler was known to him. It was now midnight, but a bright and beaming night. To the door of the stable then did he ride, and knocked in a peculiar manner. Reconnoitering Dick through a broken pane of glass in the lintel, and apparently satisfied with his scrutiny, the lad thrust forth a head of hair as full of straw as Mad Tom’s is represented to be upon the stage. A chuckle of welcome followed his sleepy salutation. “Glad to see you, Captain Turpin,” said he; “can I do anything for you?”
“Get me a couple of bottles of brandy and a beefsteak,” said Dick.
“As to the brandy, you can have that in a jiffy — but the steak, Lord love you, the old ooman won’t stand it at this time; but there’s a cold round, mayhap a slice of that might do — or a knuckle of ham?”
“A pest on your knuckles, Ralph,” cried Dick; “have you any raw meat in the house?”
“Raw meat!” echoed Ralph, in surprise. “Oh, yes, there’s a rare rump of beef. You can have a cut off that, if you like.”
“That’s the thing I want,” said Dick, ungirthing his mare. “Give me the scraper. There, I can get a whisp of straw from your head. Now run and get the brandy. Better bring three bottles. Uncork ’em, and let me have half a pail of water to mix with the spirit.”
“A pail full of brandy and water to wash down a raw steak! My eyes!” exclaimed Ralph, opening wide his sleepy peepers; adding, as he went about the execution of his task, “I always thought them Rum-padders, as they call themselves, rum fellows, but now I’m sartin sure on it.”
The most sedulous groom could not have bestowed more attention upon the horse of his heart than Dick Turpin now paid to his mare. He scraped, chafed, and dried her, sounded each muscle, traced each sinew, pulled her ears, examined the state of her feet, and, ascertaining that her “withers were un-wrung,” finally washed her from head to foot in the diluted spirit, not, however, before he had conveyed a thimbleful of the liquid to his own parched throat, and replenished what Falstaff calls a “pocket-pistol,” which he had about him. While Ralph was engaged in rubbing her down after her bath, Dick occupied himself, not in dressing the raw steak in the manner the stable-boy had anticipated, but in rolling it round the bit of his bridle.
“She will now go as long as there’s breath in her body,” said he, putting the flesh-covered iron within her mouth.
The saddle being once more replaced, after champing a moment or two at the bit, Bess began to snort and paw the earth, as if impatient of delay; and, acquainted as he was with her indomitable spirit and power, her condition was a surprise even to Dick himself. Her vigor seemed inexhaustible, her vivacity was not a whit diminished, but, as she was led into the open space, her step became as light and free as when she started on her ride, and her sense of sound as quick as ever. Suddenly she pricked her ears, and uttered a low neigh. A dull tramp was audible.
“Ha!” exclaimed Dick, springing into his saddle; “they come.”
“Who come, captain?” asked Ralph.
“The road takes a turn here, don’t it?” asked Dick —“sweeps round to the right by the plantations in the hollow?”
“Ay, ay, captain,” answered Ralph; “it’s plain you knows the ground.”
“What lies behind yon shed?”
“A stiff fence, captain — a reg’lar rasper. Beyond that a hill-side steep as a house, no oss as was ever shoed can go down it.”
“Indeed!” laughed Dick.
A loud halloo from Major Mowbray, who seemed advancing upon the wings of the wind, told Dick that he was discovered. The major was a superb horseman, and took the lead of his party. Striking his spurs deeply into his horse, and giving him bridle enough, the major seemed to shoot forward like a shell through the air. The Burleigh Arms retired some hundred yards from the road, the space in front being occupied by a neat garden, with low, clipped edges. No tall timber intervened between Dick and his pursuers, so that the motions of both parties were visible to each other. Dick saw in an instant that if he now started he should come into collision with the major exactly at the angle of the road, and he was by no means desirous of hazarding such a rencontre. He looked wistfully back at the double fence.
“Come into the stable. Quick, captain, quick!” exclaimed Ralph.
“The stable!” echoed Dick, hesitating.
“Ay, the stable; it’s your only chance. Don’t you see he’s turning the corner, and they are all coming? Quick, sir, quick!”
Dick, lowering his head, rode into the tenement, the door of which was unceremoniously slapped in the major’s face, and bolted on the other side.
“Villain!” cried Major Mowbray, thundering at the door, “come forth! You are now fairly trapped at last — caught like the woodcock in your own springe. We have you. Open the door, I say, and save us the trouble of forcing it. You cannot escape us. We will burn the building down but we will have you.”
“What dun you want, measter?” cried Ralph, from the lintel, whence he reconnoitered the major, and kept the door fast. “You’re clean mista’en. There be none here.”
“We’ll soon see that,” said Paterson, who had now arrived; and, leaping from his horse, the chief constable took a short run to give himself impetus, and with his foot burst open the door. This being accomplished, in dashed the major and Paterson, but the stable was vacant. A door was open at the back; they rushed to it. The sharply sloping sides of a hill slipped abruptly downwards, within a yard of the door. It was a perilous descent to the horseman, yet the print of a horse’s heels were visible in the dislodged turf and scattered soil.
“Confusion!” cried the major, “he has escaped us.”
“He is yonder,” said Paterson, pointing out Turpin moving swiftly through the steaming meadow. “See, he makes again for the road — he clears the fence. A regular throw he has given us, by the Lord!”
“Nobly done, by Heaven!” cried the major. “With all his faults, I honor the fellow’s courage and admire his prowess. He’s already ridden to-night as I believe never man rode before. I would not have ventured to slide down that wall, for it’s nothing else, with the enemy at my heels. What say you, gentlemen, have you had enough? Shall we let him go, or ——?”
“As far as chase goes, I don’t care if we bring the matter to a conclusion,” said Titus. “I don’t think, as it is, that I shall have a sate to sit on this week to come. I’ve lost leather most confoundedly.”
“What says Mr. Coates?” asked Paterson. “I look to him.”
“Then mount, and off,” cried Coates. “Public duty requires that we should take him.”
“And
