2i8 THE EXETER ROAD 



with a sad check while attempting to rob a gentle- 

 man near Market Lavington. The traveller drew a 

 pistol and lodged a couple of slugs in his thigh, 

 leaving him l)leedijig on the highway. Some humane 

 person passing by procured assistance, and had him 

 conveyed to the village. The wound was cured, but 

 he remained a cripple ever afterwards, and being 

 unable to work was admitted into Lavington Work- 

 house. He was never prosecuted for the attempted 

 crime. 



Thomas Boulter, junior, the daring outlaw who 

 shared with Hawkes the title of the ' Flying High- 

 wayman,' and whose name for very many years 

 afterwards was used as a bogey to frighten refractory 

 children, was born in 1748. He worked with his 

 father, the miller, in the grist-mill at Poulshot until 

 1774, when, his sister having opened a millinery 

 business in the Isle of Wight, he joined her there, 

 and embarked his small capital in a grocery business. 



But the business did not flourish. Perhaps it 

 could not be expected to do so in the hands of so 

 roving a blade, for he only gave it a year's per- 

 functory trial, and then, being pressed for money, 

 set out to find it on the road. He Avent to Ports- 

 mouth, procured two brace of pistols, casting-irons 

 for slugs, and a powder-horn, and, lying by a little 

 while, started in the summer of 1775, on the pretence 

 of paying his mother a visit at Poulshot. Setting 

 out from Southampton, mounted on horseback, he 

 made for the Exeter Road, near ' Winterslow Hut.' 

 In less than a quarter of an hour the Salisbury dili- 

 gence rewarded his patience and enterprise by coming 



