Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/63

Rh they were formerly, that the mention of this offence will appear mere Bagatelle to most of our readers after all the apologies we can offer. It was a mistaken notion of Mr. Barrington, that they receive intelligence from the ostlers and other attendants at inns, or introduced themselves into the company of travellers, of whom they wormed out the secret of their property, its amount, and the hour they meant to take the road, &c. Whatever might have once been the case, I will venture to say no such thing has happened within forty years last past.

No, no, they chance it, when they do go out. Else how came Joe Haines to attack the Bow Street officers, in the Green Lanes? If he had intelligence at all of three Traps being in the postchaise he made precious bad use of it. He was shot in the thigh, and afterwards taken and hanged in chains. That took place twenty-one years ago; and since that time we have heard of about four highwaymen only; the most prominent of which was the robbery of the Leeds mail by Huffey White; and another, nearer home, of a Young City Traveller who having lost his money at Newmarket races, stopped some people on Finchley Common, was pursued by the horse