170 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



fill fact that " there was no life in the coach," which, 

 being interpreted from the dark language of stage 

 coachmen, means that they found themselves travelling 

 slowly over deep and gravelly roads. They also found 

 themselves, if in mood for such observation, in the face 

 of one of the wildest bits of scenery to be found in Eng- 

 land, and face to face with a silent memorial of murder. 

 This takes the form of a gravestone placed simply by 

 the roadside, with an inscription on it, simple enough 

 also, but which when read in so lonely a spot on the 

 closing in of a November afternoon, has been known to 

 give a chill. It sets forth its erector's and all honest 

 men's detestation of a barbarous murder committed on 

 the spot on the person of an unknown sailor (who lies 

 buried in Thursley Churchyard, a few miles off) ; and 

 airs also with some satisfaction the feeling then very 

 prevalent (before Scotland Yard was), that murderers are 

 a class who invariably fall into the hands of justice. We 

 are perhaps not so credulous as this nowadays ; but we 

 put our trust in a large detective force when our throats 

 have been cut, and hope for the best. The local police 

 of 1786 however could have given many of our shining 

 lights a lesson, it seems to me ; for on the very afternoon 

 of September the 4th in that year (which was the date of 

 the murder) they apprehended three men named Lone- 

 gon, Casey, and Marshall, twelve miles further down the 

 road, at Sheet (or in a public-house opposite to the Fly- 

 ing Bull at Rake, as some accounts say), engaged in the 

 unwise exercise of selling the murdered man's clothes. 

 For this, and previous indiscretions, they were presently 

 hanged in chains on the top of Hindhead as a warning 

 to his Majesty's liege subjects ; and not much to the 

 delectation of travellers on the Portsmouth Road I should 

 apprehend, especially when tired by a long journey, and 

 when the wind was favourable. On the site of the 

 original gibbet the late Sir William Erie, Lord Chief 

 Justice of Common Pleas, set up a beautiful granite 

 monument, with a Eatin inscription on each of the four 



