i82 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



removed several baskets of game, which according to 

 the custom of the day were hanging underneath it. And 

 the coachman did not discover till he got to Portsmouth 

 that his generous assistants had thus earned their 

 reward ! 



And this brink's me to the second of those three 

 crimes which, as I said in the beginning of this chapter, 

 gives the Royal Road in my eyes so unenviable a 

 notoriety. 1 do not purpose to treat the atrocity known 

 as " The Murders by the vSmugglers," at any great 

 length, or with any detail, though a curious pamphlet 

 which I have by me entitled, " A full and genuine 

 History of the Inhuman and Unparalleled Murders of 

 Mr. William Galley, a custom-house officer, and Mr. 

 Daniel Chater, a shoemaker, by Fourteen notorious 

 Smugglers with the trials and Execution of Seven of 

 the Bloody Criminals at Chichester," would enable me 

 if I had the inclination to do both the one and the other. 

 I leave however the full accomplishment of so graceful a 

 literary labour to the young disciples of M. Zola in this 

 country ; assuring them that in the above pamphlet 

 (which by the way is very scarce) they will find abun- 

 dance of that precious documentary evidence concerning 

 the abysms of human depravity, the spectacle and 

 analysis of which affords them such radiant delight. 

 In my eyes the subject is totally unfit for literary 

 treatment. A bare statement however of it I feel 

 forced to make, not only because its ghastly memory 

 still haunts this part of the Portsmouth Road 

 (so poignantly did the atrocity touch the imagination 

 of a generation little given to hysteria), but because 

 the criminals formed a characteristic portion of a class 

 of desperadoes who were the terror of travellers on 

 this part of the Portsmouth Road in George the 

 Third's time, and lend therefore local colour, however 

 detestable, to this part of the Portsmouth Road's 

 history. 



All through the last century, then, it seems the 



