The stars lent them a merry light, and the spirits of two of them at least were fully in sympathy with the exhilaration of the pace and the air.

Perhaps, in the third, a certain presentiment that the present adventure would end less merrily than it had begun, conspired, with other causes of gloom, to check that exaltation of the blood which generally follows a successful exploit.
The path which the robbers took wound by the sides of long woods or across large tracts of uncultivated land; nor did they encounter anything living by the road, save now and then a solitary owl, wheeling its gray body around the skirts of the bare woods, or occasionally troops of conies, pursuing their sports and enjoying their midnight food in the fields.
"Heavens!" cried the tall robber, whose incognito we need no longer preserve, and who, as our readers are doubtless aware, answered to the name of Pepper,--"heavens!" cried he, looking upward at the starry skies in a sort of ecstasy, "what a jolly life this is! Some fellows like hunting; d---it! what hunting is like the road?
If there be sport in hunting down a nasty fox, how much more is there in hunting down a nice, clean nobleman's carriage! If there be joy in getting a brush, how much more is there in getting a purse! If it be pleasant to fly over a hedge in the broad daylight, hang me if it be not ten times finer sport to skim it by night,--here goes! Look how the hedges run away from us! and the silly old moon dances about, as if the sight of us put the good lady in spirits! Those old maids are always glad to have an eye upon such fine, dashing young fellows." "Ay," cried the more erudite and sententious Augustus Tomlinson, roused by success from his usual philosophical sobriety; "no work is so pleasant as night-work, and the witches our ancestors burned were in the right to ride out on their broomsticks with the awls and the stars.

We are their successors now, Ned.

We are your true fly-by-nights!" "Only," quoth Ned, "we are a cursed deal more clever than they were; for they played their game without being a bit the richer for it, and we--I say, Tomlinson, where the devil did you put that red morocco case ?" "Experience never enlightens the foolish," said Tomlinson, "or you would have known, without asking, that I had put it in the very safest pocket in my coat.

'Gad, how heavy it is! "Well," cried Pepper, "I can't say I wish it were lighter! Only think of our robbing my lord twice, and on the same road too!" "I say, Lovett," exclaimed Tomlinson, "was it not odd that we should have stumbled upon our Bath friend so unceremoniously?
Lucky for us that we are so strict in robbing in masks! He would not have thought the better of Bath company if he had seen our faces." Lovett, or rather Clifford, had hitherto been silent.