34 Silk and Scarlet, 



when they were hung ; I stood on my father's pony, 

 and looked over his shoulder ; I wasn't ten yards off 

 them. The youngest of them, Bill, father had hired 

 him to be a shepherd ; he had been at our place 

 only a week before he was took, to settle about 

 coming. Poor fellow, he cried sadly ; his brother 

 Dick, he was a regular hardened one — you know what 

 he said about not dying in his shoes : I heard him say 

 it distinct. He could see Appleton, the village he 

 lived at, from the gallows, and he turns his face right 

 towards it, and he says, " Now^ I'll prove iny mother a 

 liar ; she always said Fd die in my shoes ;' them were 

 his very words ; and away he kicks them among the 

 crowd. I think I see him a-doing it. Father went 

 quite white, and fairly trembled in his saddle. They 

 had chains from the waist down between their legs, 

 and they hung on the gibbet that way. That was a 

 great plum year, but there was no sale for them round 

 Oakham ; people wouldn't buy them if a fly had been 

 at them ; they had a notion they'd been at the gibbet, 

 and sucked the flesh. I took no notice of it : I always 

 ate plums when I could get them. They hung till 

 they fell down ; the good one lasted the longest ; 

 people watched for that. I never heard of any one 

 finding bits of their bones ; I've seen part of their 

 clothes lying about when we've been drawing the 

 gorse, but never no bones ; they say they're not to be 

 seen. That green field on the left where the sheep's 

 feeding, just on this side the windmill, is where they 

 were hung ; that house is where the doctress lady 

 lives ; her that makes the wind pills. I've heard she's 

 got as many as 150 patients ; she takes two or three 

 days to get once through 'em. I'll just call and speak 

 to my old friend Tookey, in Oakham here, while the 

 horse is getting his gruel. 



Daniel Lambert We must have Wilcox, of Luffenham 



and Wilcox. {^ ; he kept the Fox-and-Hounds ; he 



was a five-and-twenty stone man, and very reg'lar with 



