at every encounter, you never hear that he pulled a
trigger throughout his career. If his opponent jeered and rode off, he
rode off with a whole skin and a full pocket. Once even this renowned
adventurer accepted the cut of a riding-whip across his face, nor made
any attempt to avenge the insult. But his manifold shortcomings were no
hindrance to his success. Wherever he went, between London and York,
he stopped coaches and levied his tax. A threatening voice, an arched
eyebrow, an arrogant method of fingering an unloaded pistol, conspired
with the craven, indolent habit of the time to make his every journey
a procession of triumph. He was capable of performing all such feats
as the age required of him. But you miss the spirit, the bravery, the
urbanity, and the wit, which made the adventurer of the seventeenth
century a figure of romance.

One point only of the great tradition did Harry Simms remember. He was
never unwilling to restore a trinket made precious by sentiment. Once
when he took a gold ring from a gentleman's finger a gentlewoman burst
into tears, exclaiming, 'There goes your father's ring.' Whereupon Simms
threw all his booty into a hat, saying, 'For God's sake, take that or
anything else you please.' In all other respects he was a bully, with
the hesitancy of a coward, rather than the proper rival of Hind or
Duval. Apart from the exercise of his trade, he was a very Mohock for
brutality. He would ill-treat his victims, whenever their drunkenness
permitted the freedom, and he had no better gifts for the women who were
kind to him than cruelty and neglect. One of his many imprisonments was
the result of a monstrous ferocity. 'Unluckily in a quarrel,' he tells
you gravely, 'I ran a crab-stick into a woman's eye'; and well did he
deserve his sojourn in the New Prison. At another time he rewarded the
keeper of a coffee-house, who supported him for six months, by stealing
her watch; and, when she grumbled at his insolence, he reflected, with a
chuckle, that she could more easily bear the loss of her watch than the
loss of her lover. Even in his gaiety there was an unpleasant spice
of greed and truculence. Once, when he was still seen in fashionable
company, he went to a masquerade, dressed in a rich Spanish habit,
lent him by a Captain in the Guards, and he made so fine a show that
he captivated a young and beautiful Cyprian, whom, when she would have
treated him with generosity, he did but reward with the loss