THE EXETER ROAD 85 



Dettingen, and of the standard he had taken from the 

 musketeer of the French guard. Far from it. He gave 

 his httle all to the gentleman who asked for it, counselled 

 submission to his companions, and disappeared to eat 

 straw in the bottom of the coach. The highwayman 

 now asked the ladies to oblige, parenthetically observing 

 that time pressed. The words were hardly out of his 

 mouth when Mirabel, who had been biding his time, 

 obliged him with a sudden blow on that jaw which he 

 had somewhat ostentatiously intruded upon the company, 

 and at the same moment jumped from the coach and 

 seized the bridle of the chestnut mare. The highway- 

 man now said " Zounds ! " and discharged his pistol ; but 

 as the chestnut mare reared and fell back with him just 

 as he was firing it, the aim was not so true as the intention ; 

 in point of fact, instead of shooting Mirabel through the 

 head, he shot the guard through the hat, who announced 

 in stentorian tones that he was a dead man, and let off his 

 blunderbuss at the morning star. Meanwhile the high- 

 wayman and Mirabel had closed and were wrestling in the 

 mud, the ladies viewing the progress of the strife in a 

 state of pleasing suppressed excitement, and the coach- 

 man flogging his horses with a view of driving off and 

 leaving Mirabel and his antagonist to decide their 

 interesting difference in solitude and peace. This genial 

 intention was frustrated by the mud which held the 

 coach fast, and by the guard, who mounting one of the 

 leaders succeeded in waking some watchmen, who, by 

 way of performing their patrol between Kensington and 

 Knightsbridge, were lying in graceful sleep at The Half- 

 way Public House. They came upon the scene just as 

 Mirabel was binding the highwayman's hands behind his 

 back, the man having yielded himself for w^orse when he 

 felt eleven stone and a half kneeling on his chest and 

 saw that the chestnut mare had run away. The watch 

 now with great intrepidity took charge of the bound 

 prisoner, helped the Exeter Fly out of the ditch, and 

 Mirabel into the coach, who joined his companions in a 



