276 FIELD AND HEDGEROW, 
through the very next parish inquired of a local man if 
somebody called Sydney Smith did not once live in that 
neighbourhood. ‘Yes,’ was the reply, ‘I’ve heard all 
about Sydney Smith; I can tell you. He was a high- 
wayman, and was hung on that hill there’ He would 
have shown the very stump of the gallows-tree as proof 
positive, like Jack Cade’s bricks, alive in the chimney to 
this day. , 
There really was a highwayman, however, whose 
adventures are said to have suggested one of the charac- 
ters in the romance of ‘Lorna Doone.’ This desperate 
fellow had of course his houses of call, where he could 
get refreshment safely, on the moors. One bitter 
winter’s day the robber sat down to a hearty dinner in 
aninn at Exford. Placing his pistols before him, he 
‘made himself comfortable, and ate and drank his fill. 
‘By-and-by an old woman entered, and humbly took a 
seat in a corner far from the fire. In time the highway- 
man observed the wretched, shivering creature, and of 
his princely generosity told her to come and sit by the 
hearth. The old woman gladly obeyed, and crouched 
beside him. Presently, as he sat absorbed in his meal, 
his arms were suddenly pinioned from behind. The old 
woman had him tight, so that he could not use his weapons, 
‘while at a call constables, who had been posted about, 
rushed in and secured him. The old woman was in 
fact aman in disguise. A relation of the thief-taker 
still lives and tells the tale. The highwayman’s mare, 
mentioned in the novel, had been trained to come 
at his call, and was so ungovernable that they shot 
her. 
Such tracts of open country, moors, and unenclosed 
hills were the haunts of highwaymen till a late period, 
and memories of the gallows, and of escapes from them, 
