hout danger of prosecution; upon which one of them devised the
following whimsical turn of revenge.

Four of these gentlemen, one dark evening, about nine o'clock, (having
previously learned where his coach would be) called him from off the
stand, and desired the coachman to drive over Westminster Bridge to
Newington. They had not long been seated, when one of them, with a
sportive tone of voice, said, "Come, boys, let us begin."

They then instantly dressed themselves in black clothes, and every
necessary befitting mourners at a funeral, (which articles they brought
with them in small parcels.) And the night was particularly favourable
for carrying their scheme into execution: for it was uncommonly dark,
and _very still_. 'Twas such a night that Apollonius Rhodius thus
describes--

"Night on the earth pour'd darkness; on the sea,
The wakesome sailor to Orion's star
And Helice turn'd heedful. Sunk to rest,
The traveller forgot his toil; his charge,
The centinel; her death-devoted babe,
The mother's painless breast. The village dog
Had ceas'd his troublous bay: each busy tumult
Was hush'd at this dread hour; and darkness slept,
Lock'd in the arms of silence."

To terrify him the more, they wore linen hat-bands and scarfs, instead
of crape. And when they had got into the loneliest part of St. George's
Fields (for at that time they were not built over as at present), they
called to him, and desired him to stop, as they wanted to get out.

They marked the side the coachman came to open the door of; and he that
sat next the other door, opened it at the same instant.

What the coachman felt on seeing the first mourner move out with the
greatest solemnity, can be better conceived than expressed: but what
were his terrors when the second approached him, a majestic spare figure
about six feet perpendicular, who passed him (as did the first) without
speaking a word.

As fast as one youth got out, he went round to the other side of the
coach, stepped in, and came out a second time at the opposite door.

In this manner they continued, till the coachman, if he had the power
of counting, might have told forty.

When they had thus passed out seemingly to the number of twenty, the
poor devil of a coachman, frightened almost to death, fell upon his
knees, and begged for mercy's sake the King of Terrors would not suffer
any more of his apparitions to appear; for, though he had a mul