Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/124

116 admiring gaze, the robber said to the ostler of the inn, an aged and withered man, who had seen nine generations of highwaymen rise and vanish;—

"There, Joe, when did you ever look on a hero like that? The bravest heart, the frankest hand, the best judge of a horse, and the handsomest man that ever did honour to Hounslow!"

"For all that," returned the ostler, shaking his palsied head, and turning back to the tap-room,—"for all that, master, his time be up. Mark my whids, Captain Lovett will not be over the year,—no! nor mayhap the month!"

"Why, you old rascal, what makes you so wise? you will not peach, I suppose!"

"I peach! devil a bit! But there never was the gemman of the road, great or small, knowing or stupid, as outlived his seventh year. And this will be the Captain's seventh, come the 21st of next month; but he be a fine chap, and I'll go to his hanging!"

"Pish!" said the robber peevishly,—he himself was verging towards the end of his sixth year,—"pish!"

"Mind, I tells it you, master; and somehow