150 MANAGEMENT OF HOUNDS. 



squire, " keep to your good resolutions, and here's a 

 plaster to heal your wounds this time." 



Those were troublesome times, and we did not stick 

 at trifles; being obliged sometimes to take the law into 

 our own hands. As a boy, I never went to bed without 

 having a gun loaded under my pillow, and a terrier 

 sleeping in the room. We lived in a solitary house, far 

 away from any village ; and, as highway robberies were 

 frequent, and housebreaking going on pretty extensively, 

 we were always prepared with dogs, guns, and pistols 

 for an attack. A man was stopped and murdered not a 

 mile from our house, on the high road, and a regular 

 footpad (as they were then called) took up his quarters in 

 a wood, not a hundred yards from the lodge gates. This 

 fellow actually stopped my cousin, who was taking a 

 walk with her maid, close by the wood, in open day ; 

 but his behaviour was so gentleman -like (so she ex- 

 pressed it), that she begged he might not be prosecuted 

 on her account, if even caught. Her account was, that 

 as she was walking along the lane, by the wood hedge, 

 this man made his appearance, took off his hat on ap- 

 proaching her, and, politely apologizing for his intrusion, 

 said he was in sore distress, and obliged to live upon 

 what he could get, he acknowledged disJionestly ^ but that 

 he had a wife and children nearly starving. My cousin, 

 possessing a good deal of presence of mind, said to him, 

 " Then you mean to rob me." " No, madam," he re- 

 plied, " I never robbed a lady, and never will ; but if 

 you will give me any money 1 shall feel obliged." 

 ** Well," she said, there is my purse, and I suppose I 

 must give up my watch and rings as well — here they 

 arc." Taking the purse, he appropriated the silver to 



