highwaymen attack one?"

"Why, my lord, the neighbourhood of Reading is, I believe, the worst
part; but they are very troublesome all the way to Salthill."

"Damnation! the very neighbourhood in which the knaves robbed me before!
You may well call them troublesome! Why the deuce don't the police clear
the country of such a movable species of trouble?"

"Indeed, my lord, I don't know; but they say as how Captain Lovett, the
famous robber, be one of the set; and nobody can catch him, I fear!"

"Because, I suppose, the dog has the sense to bribe as well as bully.
What is the general number of these ruffians?"

"Why, my lord, sometimes one, sometimes two, but seldom more than
three."

Mauleverer drew himself up. "My dear diamonds and my pretty purse!"
thought he; "I may save you yet!"

"Have you been long plagued with the fellows?" he asked, after a pause,
as he was paying his bill.

"Why, my lord, we have and we have not. I fancy as how they have a sort
of a haunt near Reading, for sometimes they are intolerable just about
there, and sometimes they are quiet for months together! For instance,
my lord, we thought them all gone some time ago; but lately they have
regularly stopped every one, though I hear as how they have cleared no
great booty as yet."

Here the waiter announced the horses, and Mauleverer slowly re-entered
his carriage, among the bows and smiles of the charmed spirits of the
hostelry.

During the daylight Mauleverer, who was naturally of a gallant and
fearless temper, thought no more of the highwaymen,--a species of danger
so common at that time that men almost considered it disgraceful to
suffer the dread of it to be a cause of delay on the road. Travellers
seldom deemed it best to lose time in order to save money; and they
carried with them a stout heart and a brace of pistols, instead of
sleeping all night on the road. Mauleverer, rather a preux chevalier,
was precisely of this order of wayfarers; and a night at an inn, when
it was possible to avoid it, was to him, as to most rich Englishmen, a
tedious torture zealously to be shunned. It never, therefore, entered
into the head of our excellent nobleman, despite his experience, that
his diamonds and his purse might be saved from all danger if he
would consent to deposit them, with his own person, at some place of
hospitable reception; nor, indeed, was it till he was within a stage of
Reading, and the twilight had entirely closed in, that he tr