ut a flint and steel and
light it.

HEAD'S _Rough Notes_.

Away they fly past scattered cottages, swiftly and skimmingly, like
eagles on the wing, along the Enfield highway. All were well mounted,
and the horses, now thoroughly warmed, had got into their paces, and did
their work beautifully. None of Coates's party lost ground, but they
maintained it at the expense of their steeds, which were streaming like
water-carts, while Black Bess had scarcely turned a hair.

Turpin, the reader already knows, was a crack rider; he was _the_ crack
rider of England of his time, and, perhaps, of any time. The craft and
mystery of jockeyship was not so well understood in the eighteenth as it
is in the nineteenth century; men treated their horses differently, and
few rode them as well as many ride now, when every youngster takes to
the field as naturally as if he had been bred a Guacho. Dick Turpin was
a glorious exception to the rule, and anticipated a later age. He rode
wonderfully lightly, yet sat his saddle to perfection, distributing the
weight so exquisitely that his horse scarcely felt his pressure; he
yielded to every movement made by the animal, and became, as it were,
part and parcel of itself; he took care Bess should be neither strained
nor wrung. Freely, and as lightly as a feather, was she borne along;
beautiful was it to see her action--to watch her style and temper of
covering the ground; and many a first-rate Meltonian might have got a
wrinkle from Turpin's seat and conduct.

We have before stated that it was not Dick's object to _ride away_ from
his pursuers--he could have done that at any moment. He liked the fun of
the chase, and would have been sorry to put a period to his own
excitement. Confident in his mare, he just kept her at such speed as
should put his pursuers completely _to it_, without in the slightest
degree inconveniencing himself. Some judgment of the speed at which they
went may be formed, when we state that little better than an hour had
elapsed and nearly twenty miles had been ridden over. "Not bad
travelling that," methinks we hear the reader exclaim.

"By the mother that bore me," said Titus, as they went along in this
slapping style--Titus, by-the-by, rode a big, Roman-nosed, powerful
horse, well adapted to his weight, but which required a plentiful
exercise both of leg and arm to call forth all his action, and keep his
rider alongside h