HIND ROBS DR. PETERS.
The old Puritan shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably before he proceeded to uncloak them, but on Hind assuring him he must needs be obeyed, he surrendered the garment, and off went the highwayman with it.
The next Sunday, ascending his pulpit, Peters held forth, with a natural warmth of feeling, upon the crime of highway robbery, taking as his text, "I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on?" when an honest plain man present, who had heard of the incident, exclaimed, "Upon my word, sir, I believe there is nobody here can tell you, unless Captain Hind were here." The which put the congregation into such an excessive fit of laughter that the parson was made to blush, and descended from his prattling-box without further prosecuting the subject.
It was upon the road between Sherborne and Shaftesbury that Hind fell in with Serjeant Bradshaw, prominent among those who had sat in judgment upon the King. Bradshaw was in his travelling chariot, and, progressing with a considerable degree of state, declined to be robbed; mentioning his name.
"Pooh!" exclaimed Hind, "I fear neither you nor any king-killing villain alive. I have now as much power over you as you lately had over the King, and I should do God and my country good service if I made the same use of it; but live, villain, to suffer the pangs of thine own conscience, till Justice shall lay her iron hand upon thee, and require an answer for thy crimes, who are unworthy to die by any hands but those of the common hangman, or at any other place than Tyburn. Nevertheless, though I spare thy life, deliver up thy money, or die for thine obstinacy."
To save a miserable life, he put his trembling hand into his pocket, and drew out about forty shillings in silver, which he presented to the Captain, who swore he would that minute shoot him through the heart, unless he found him coin of another species. The Serjeant was then compelled to present Hind with a purse full of Jacobuses.
What a devil of talk possessed Hind. To be robbed and insulted, that was perhaps endurable; but to be lectured—oh, horrible!
"This, sir," says he, receiving the purse, "is the metal that wins my heart for ever! O precious gold! I admire and adore thee, as much as either Bradshaw, Prynne, or any other villain of the same stamp. This is that incomparable medicament which the republican physicians call the wonder-working plaster. It is truly Catholic in operation, and somewhat akin to the Jesuit's powder, but more effectual. The virtues of it are strange and various; it maketh justice deaf, as well as blind; and takes out spots of the deepest treasons, as easily as Castile soap does common stains. It alters a man's constitution in two or three days, more than the virtuoso's transfusion of blood can do in seven years. 'Tis a great alexiopharmick, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and those that use them. It miraculously exalts and purifies the eyesight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors. It is a mighty cordial for a declining cause: it stifles faction and schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone. In a word, it makes fools wise men, and wise men fools, and both of them knaves. The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If it be properly applied to the fist, that is, in a decent manner, and in a competent dose, it infallibly performs all the above-mentioned cures, and many others, too numerous to be here mentioned."