swung smartly across country to Chelmsford, and thence on, with only necessary halts to bait his horse, by way of Cambridge, through Huntingdon, and so on to the Great North Road.  Without ever changing his mount, he reached York early that evening, having taken only fifteen hours for a journey of two hundred miles.  If the time is correct, she must have been a great mare, and he a consummate horse-master.  At his subsequent trial, as it was proved beyond question that in the evening of the day on which the robbery took place he had played bowls in York with well-known citizens, the jury, holding it to be impossible that any person could have been on the same day in two places so far apart as Gadshill and York, on that ground acquitted the prisoner.

But if Nevison, nor Nicks, nor Turpin, ever crossed into Scotland, there were others, less known to fame, who occasionally tried their fortune in that country.  In the early part of the year 1664, robberies, highway and otherwise, were of extraordinary frequency in Scotland, and this was attributed to the great poverty then prevalent amongst the people, owing to “the haill money of the kingdom being spent by the frequent resort of our Scotsmen at the Court of England.”

In 1692-3 there seems to have been what one might almost call an epidemic of highway robbery over the southern part of Scotland, and he was quite a picturesque ruffian who robbed William M’Fadyen near Dumfries on 10th December 1692.  Or, rather, there were two ruffians engaged in the affair.  M’Fadyen was a drover who had been paid at Dumfries a sum of L150 for cattle sold.  Sleeping overnight in the town, the drover started for home next morning before daylight.  Possibly he had seen at the inn the previous evening some one whose appearance or manner made him uneasy, and being a cautious man, with a good deal of money in his possession, he had hoped by an early start to give this suspected person the slip.

A clear, cold December morning, stars winking frostily in a cloudless sky, and a waning moon casting sharp black shadows over the whitened ground, saw him out of Dumfries, and well on his homeward road.  And, as he blew on his fingers, and beat his unoccupied hand briskly against his thigh, to warm himself withal, M’Fadyen chuckled to think how cleverly and quietly he had slipped unnoticed from the inn and through the town.  They must be up early indeed who would weather on him!  And so, ruminating somewhat vain-gloriously, he pushed on over the ringing ground, his horse snorting frosty breaths on the chill air, and inclined to hump his back and squeal on the smallest excuse.  Mile after mile slipped easily behind him, and the sun began to show a blood-red face over the hill; a “hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,” and crows cawed hungrily as they flew past on sluggish, blue-black wing, questing for food.  The world was awake now, and M’Fadyen reckoned that by a couple of hours after noon he should