held up a coach on the highway. A
mass of black hair curled over a low forehead, and a glittering eye
intensified his villainous aspect; nor did a deep scar, furrowing his
cheek from end to end, soften the horror of his sudden apparition.
Valiant men shuddered at his approach; women shrank from the distant
echo of his name; for fifteen years he terrorised Scotland from
Caithness to the border; and the most partial chronicler never insulted
his memory with the record of a good deed.

He was born to a gentle family in the Calendar of Monteith, and was
celebrated even in boyhood for his feats of strength and daring. While
still at school he could hold a hundredweight at arm's-length, and
crumple up a horseshoe like a wisp of hay. The fleetest runner, the most
desperate fighter in the country, he was already famous before his name
was besmirched with crime, and he might have been immortalised as the
Hercules of the seventeenth century, had not his ambition been otherwise
flattered. At the outset, though the inclination was never lacking,
he knew small temptation to break the sterner laws of conduct. His
pleasures were abundantly supplied by his father's generosity, and he
had no need to refrain from such vices as became a gentleman. If he was
no drunkard, it was because his head was equal to the severest strain,
and, despite his forbidding expression, he was always a successful
breaker of hearts. His very masterfulness overcame the most stubborn
resistance; and more than once the pressure of his dishonourable suit
converted hatred into love. At the very time that he was denounced for
Scotland's disgrace, his praises were chanted in many a dejected ballad.
'Gilderoy was a bonny boy,' sang one heart-broken maiden:

Had roses till his shoon,
His stockings were of silken soy,
Wi' garters hanging doon.

But in truth he was admired less for his amiability than for that
quality of governance which, when once he had torn the decalogue to
pieces, made him a veritable emperor of crime.

His father's death was the true beginning of his career. A modest
patrimony was squandered in six months, and Gilderoy had no penny
left wherewith to satisfy the vices which insisted upon indulgence. He
demanded money at all hazards, and money without toil. For a while his
more loudly clamant needs were fulfilled by the amiable simplicity of
his mother, whom he blackmailed with insolence and contempt. And w