Highway Robbery Read Online Free PDF

goes to prove that he was no gentleman, despite his waistcoat and his boots.

    Three of the soldiers went with the men and the rest vanished back to wherever they had been hiding before. Only the captain remained behind, and he clapped me on the shoulder and said:
    ‘Back to your post, young man.’
    My heart sank at the thought of more standing around in the darkness and the cold. But what could I do? I led the mare back to our station and adjusted the cloak on her back. It was wonderfully warm beneath it, where the heavy woollen cloth trapped the heat from her body, and I envied her and wondered how it was that a beast could be so well provided for and comfortable when I was so miserable and cold. But that was my lot, sir, and I waswell accustomed to suffering it, so I pulled my tattered old coat round me as tight as I could and stamped my icy feet up and down on the ground.
    I don’t know how long we stood like that, with the mare moving her weight from one hind leg to the other and myself leaning against the wall and doing the same thing. I know there are some people who take pleasure from the hours of darkness, but I’m not one of them. It’s during the night that I remember my life at home before my mother died, and when there is nothing to look at, it’s difficult to keep your mind away from dwelling on the bad things that happen. I measure my days by the passage of the sun throughthe sky and by the length of the roads and streets I travel, but I have no way of measuring the hours of darkness, so I have no idea what time of night it was when Black Bess grew tired of standing and, very carefully, laid herself down on her belly.

    And now that she no longer towered over me, I saw a way in which we could share Dick Turpin’s cloak and both stay warm beneath it. I had never sat astride a horse before, but with her back now so close to the ground, it didn’t seem to me to be a very great risk to take when the return was the promise of such warmth.
    Very slowly and quietly, taking care not to alarm the mare, I put the reins back over her head and climbed into the saddle. She sighed in the darkness but she made no other objection. I pushed myself to the very back of the saddle, then leaned forward over her withers. The cloak came over my back and up to my neck, but a draught still came in beneath it, so I feltalong the collar until I found the buckle and strap, and I fastened them beneath my chin.
    The cloth still held a rank smell from the mare’s dried sweat, but it held the heat from her body as well, and I began to warm up so fast that I got pains in my hands and feet. But there was pleasure too, sir: the pure delight of being warm, and even before the pains had faded away I had drifted off into sleep, with my cheek resting on the mare’s thick mane.

C HAPTER E LEVEN
    I WOKE TO the alarming sensation of the mare clambering to her feet beneath me. It was so dark that I thought my eyes were gummed together, as they often are when I wake up in the mornings, but then I caught a glimpse of a few stars above the rooftops and I knew it was still the dead of night.
    ‘Off you get, lad. It’s all up.’
    It was the captain’s voice, and now I could make out his form in the street beside me. But I was looking down at him instead ofup, because I was sitting up high on the mare’s back.
    ‘What’s all up?’ I said. ‘What’s happening?’

    ‘Two constables caught Dick Turpin yesterday afternoon. The report of it has only just reached us.’
    He sounded very cross. I wondered whose fault it was that he and his men had stood for half the night in the freezing cold, waiting to catch a man who had already been caught.
    ‘So down you get, and off home with you.’
    But I wasn’t ready to get down, and in any case I had no home to go to. And there was another thing.
    ‘What about my payment?’ I said.
    ‘Oh, hang your payment,’ said the captain, and he reached up to take hold of my arm and pull me down.
    But I