, although not actually participating
in their crime. The words overheard by Mr. Thorndyke show that you were
prepared to hide their booty for them, and it is well for you that
you were captured before this was done, and that no proceeds of other
robberies were found in the house. The evidence of the Bow Street
officers show that it had for some time been suspected that these men
had an accomplice somewhere in the neighborhood of Reigate, for although
arrested several times under circumstances forming a strong assumption
of their guilt, nothing was ever found upon them. There can now be
little, doubt who their accomplice was. Had you been an older man
I should have sentenced you to transportation for life, but in
consideration of your youth, I shall take the milder course of
sentencing you to fifteen years' transportation."

The capital sentence was then passed in much fewer words upon the two
highwaymen. As they were leaving the dock Bastow turned, and in a clear
voice said to John Thorndyke, who had been accommodated with a seat in
the well of the court:

"I have to thank you, Thorndyke, for this. I will pay off my debt some
day, you make take your oath."

"A sad case, Mr. Thorndyke--a sad case," the judge, who had greatly
complimented the Squire on his conduct, said to him as he was disrobing
afterwards. "I don't know that in all my experience I ever saw such a
hardened young villain. With highwaymen it is a point of honor to assume
a gayety of demeanor on such occasions; but to see a boy of eighteen,
never before convicted, exhibiting such coolness and effrontery is quite
beyond my experience. I suppose his record is altogether bad?"

"Altogether," the Squire said. "His father has, during the last two
years, been quite broken by it; he owned to me that he was in bodily
fear of the lad, who had on several occasions assaulted him, had robbed
him of his savings by means of forgery, and was so hopelessly bad that
he himself thought with me that the only possible hope for him was
to get him to enlist. I myself recommended the East India Company's
service, thinking that he would have less opportunity for crime out
there, and that there would be a strong chance that either fever or a
bullet would carry him off, for I own that I have not the slightest hope
of reformation in such a character."

"I would have given him transportation for life if I had known all
this," the judge said. "However, it is not likely that he wi