Page:Celebrated Trials - Volume 2.djvu/137

Rh men going to drink together, after their confinement, they contracted a friendship which was the ruin of them both, as the reader will observe in the perusal of these pages.

Their first adventure was at Shooter's-hill, where they met with a gentleman and his servant. Hind being perfectly raw and inexperienced, his companion was willing to have a proof of his courage; and therefore staid at some distance while the captain rode up, and singly took from them fifteen pounds; but returned the gentleman twenty shillings to bear his expences on the road, with such a pleasant air, that the gentleman protested he would never hurt a hair of his head, if it should at any time be in his power. Allen was prodigiously pleased both with the bravery and generosity of his new comrade, and they mutually swore to stand by one another to the utmost of their power.

It was much about the time that the murder of King Charles I. was perpetrated at his own palace gate by the fanatics of that time, when our two adventurers began their progress on the road. One part of their engagement together was never to spare any of the regicides that came in their way. It was not long before they met the grand usurper Cromwell, as he was coming from Huntingdon, the place of his nativity, to London. Oliver had no less than seven men in his train, who all came immediately upon their stopping the coach, and overpowered our two heroes; so that Allen was taken on the spot, and soon after executed, and it was with a great deal of difficulty that Hind made his escape, who resolved from this time to act with a little more caution. He could not, however, think of quitting a course of life which he had just begun to taste, and which he found so profitable.

The captain rode so hard to get out of danger after this adventure with Cromwell, that he killed his horse, and he had not at that time money enough to buy another. He resolved, therefore, to procure one as soon as possible, and to this purpose tramped along the road on foot. It was not long before he saw a horse hung to a hedge with a brace of pistols before him; and looking round him, he observed on the other side of the hedge a gentleman untrussing a point. "This is my horse,"