Allen was overjoyed at his novice’s prowess.  ‘Did you not see,’ he cried to his companions, ‘how he robbed him with a grace?’ And well did the trooper deserve his captain’s compliment, for his art was perfect from the first.  In bravery as in gallantry he knew no rival, and he plundered with so elegant a style, that only a churlish victim could resent the extortion.  He would as soon have turned his back upon an enemy as demand a purse uncovered.  For every man he had a quip, for every woman a compliment; nor did he ever conceal the truth that the means were for him as important as the end.  Though he loved money, he still insisted that it should be yielded in freedom and good temper; and while he emptied more coaches than any man in England, he was never at a loss for admirers.

Under Allen he served a brilliant apprenticeship.  Enrolled as a servant, he speedily sat at the master’s right hand, and his nimble brains devised many a pretty campaign.  For a while success dogged the horse-hoofs of the gang; with wealth came immunity, and not one of the warriors had the misfortune to look out upon the world through a grate.  They robbed with dignity, even with splendour.  Now they would drive forth in a coach and four, carrying with them a whole armoury of offensive weapons; now they would take the road apparelled as noblemen, and attended at a discreet distance by their proper servants.  But recklessness brought the inevitable disaster; and it was no less a personage than Oliver Cromwell who overcame the hitherto invincible Allen.  A handful of the gang attacked Oliver on his way from Huntingdon, but the marauders were outmatched, and the most of them were forced to surrender.  Allen, taken red-handed, swung at Tyburn; Hind, with his better mount and defter horsemanship, rode clear away.

The loss of his friend was a lesson in caution, and henceforth Hind resolved to follow his craft in solitude.  He had embellished his native talent with all the instruction that others could impart, and he reflected that he who rode alone neither ran risk of discovery nor had any need to share his booty.  Thus he began his easy, untrammelled career, making time and space of no account by his rapid, fearless journeys.  Now he was prancing the moors of Yorkshire, now he was scouring the plain between Gloucester and Tewkesbury, but wherever he rode, he had a purse in his pocket and a jest on his tongue.  To recall his prowess is to ride with him (in fancy) under the open sky along the fair, beaten road; to put up with him at the busy, white posthouse, to drink unnumbered pints of mulled sack with the round-bellied landlord, to exchange boastful stories over the hospitable fire, and to ride forth in the morning with the joyous uncertainty of travel upon you.  Failure alone lay outside his experience, and he presently became at once the terror and the hero of England.