sh from the priming
pan would have taken a flash-light picture of the robber, so he could
have been identified when he rode off in the night to a roadside inn and
filled up on beer, while he counted the ten shillings he had taken from
the silk purse of the victim. Why, one of our American gangs that hold
up a train, and get an express safe full of greenbacks, and shoots up
a mess of railroad hands and passengers with Winchesters and automatic
pistols, and blows up cars with dynamite and gets away and has to have
a bookkeeper and a cashier to keep their bank accounts straight, could
give those old Claude Duvals and Sixteen-String Jacks cards and spades.

But civilization, dad says, has done much for the highway robbery
business, and he says we in America have arrived at absolute perfection.
However, I was much interested in looking over the ground where my first
heroes lived and died, and did business, and when we went to the prisons
where they were confined, and were shown where Tyburn Tree stood, that
so many of them were hung on, tears came to my eyes at the thought that
I was on the sacred ground where my heroes croaked, and went to their
deaths with smiles on their faces, and polite to the last. The guard who
showed us around thought that dad and I were relatives of the deceased
highwaymen, and when we went away he said to dad: "Call again, Mr.
Duval. Always glad to serve any of the descendants of the heroes. What
line of robbery are you in, Mr. Duval?" Dad was mad, but he told
the guard he was now on the stock exchange, and so we maintained the
reputation of the family.

[Illustration: Glad to serve any of the descendants of the heroes 126]

Then we hired horses and took a horse back ride through Rotten Row,
where everybody in London that has the price, rides a horse, and no
carriages are allowed. Dad was an old cavalry man forty years ago,
and he is stuck on his shape when he is on a horse, but he came near
breaking up the horse back parade the day we went for the ride. The
liveryman gave us two bob-tailed nags, a big one for dad and a small one
for me, but they didn't have any army saddle for dad, and he had to ride
on one of these little English saddles, such as jockeys ride races on,
and dad is so big where he sits on a saddle that you couldn't see the
saddle, and I guess they gave dad a hurdle jumper, because when we got
right amongst the riders, men and women, his horse began to act up, and
some one yelled,