Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/341

Rh pany of very old "salts," gossiping, yarning, singing, when up got a tough old fellow with a face the colour of mahogany, and dark, piercing eyes, and the nose of a hawk. Planting his feet wide apart, as though on deck in a rolling sea, he began to sing in stentorian tones a folk-song relative to a highway- man in the old times, when Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate at Westminster, put down highway robbery.

The ballad told of the evil deeds of this mounted robber of the highways, and of how he was captured by "Fielding's crew" and condemned to die. It concluded:—

At the conclusion of each verse the whole assembly repeated the two final lines. It was a striking scene ; their eyes flashed, their colour mounted, they hammered with their fists on the table and with their heels on the floor. Some, in the wildness of their excitement, sprang up, thrust their hands through their white or grey hair, and flourished them, roaring like bulls.

When the song was done, and composure had settled over the faces of the excited men, one of them said apologetically to me, "You see, sir, we