P.S.—I reopen this
to say that Squire Parkyn has accepted my offer
for the chimney-piece.
Let me hear soon that you’ll come and look
at it and give me your opinion.
Extract from the Memoirs of Gabriel Foot, Highwayman.
I will say this—speaking as accurately
as a man may, so long afterwards—that when
first I spied the house it put no desire in me but
just to give thanks.
For conceive my case. It was near mid-night,
and ever since dusk I had been tramping the naked
moors, in the teeth of as vicious a nor’-wester
as ever drenched a man to the skin, and then blew the
cold home to his marrow. My clothes were sodden;
my coat-tails flapped with a noise like pistol-shots;
my boots squeaked as I went. Overhead, the October
moon was in her last quarter, and might have been
a slice of finger-nail for all the light she afforded.
Two-thirds of the time the wrack blotted her out
altogether; and I, with my stick clipped tight under
my armpit, eyes puckered up, and head bent aslant,
had to keep my wits alive to distinguish the road
from the black heath to right and left. For three
hours I had met neither man nor man’s dwelling,
and (for all I knew) was desperately lost. Indeed,
at the cross-roads, two miles back, there had been
nothing for me but to choose the way that kept the
wind on my face, and it gnawed me like a dog.
Mainly to allay the stinging of my eyes, I pulled
up at last, turned right-about-face, leant back against
the blast with a hand on my hat, and surveyed the
blackness behind. It was at this instant that,
far away to the left, a point of light caught my notice,
faint but steady; and at once I felt sure it burnt
in the window of a house. “The house,”
thought I, “is a good mile off, beside the other
road, and the light must have been an inch over my
hat-brim for the last half-hour.” This
reflection—that on so wide a moor I had
come near missing the information I wanted (and perhaps
a supper) by one inch—sent a strong thrill
down my back.
I cut straight across the heather towards the light,
risking quags and pitfalls. Nay, so heartening
was the chance to hear a fellow creature’s voice,
that I broke into a run, skipping over the stunted
gorse that cropped up here and there, and dreading
every moment to see the light quenched. “Suppose
it burns in an upper window, and the family is going
to bed, as would be likely at this hour—”
The apprehension kept my eyes fixed on the bright
spot, to the frequent scandal of my legs, that within
five minutes were stuck full of gorse prickles.
But the light did not go out, and soon a flicker of
moonlight gave me a glimpse of the house’s outline.
It proved to be a deal more imposing than I looked
for—the outline, in fact, of a tall, square
barrack, with a cluster of chimneys at either end,
like ears, and a high wall, topped by the roofs of
some outbuildings, concealing the lower windows.
There was no gate in this wall, and presently I guessed
the reason. I was approaching the place from
behind, and the light came from a back window on the
first floor.
