Ruth indicated the old chest in a corner of the room. The children had turned out all its contents, which now lay in a big heap on the floor. Some of the garments were moth-eaten—all were faded and time-worn. Mrs. Compton began to replace them in the chest, whilst Ruth helped her.
Sir Richard continued to converse with the boys. He told them several anecdotes of the days when the blunderbuss had been in use, and made himself quite entertaining.
Seated on a rickety chair with the old gun across his knees, he waxed eloquent over a story of how his grandfather had been waylaid by highwaymen when journeying from Exeter, and how he, with the assistance of his coachman and postillion, had put the robbers to flight, and had reached home in safety.
"Oh, please go on!" Dick cried, when the old man paused. "We want to hear more! Were the highwaymen ever caught?"
"One was, I believe, and gibbetted. He was the last man in this neighbourhood who suffered death in that way. I remember seeing the gibbet myself, when I was a boy; it stood at the cross-roads at the top of the village, but was blown down during a December storm, and converted into fire-wood."
"What was it like?" Dick inquired.
"It was a sort of gallows with a wooden arm projecting from the top. Notorious evil-doers used to be suspended from that arm by chains, in sight of passers-by, and allowed to hang there until only their bones remained. It was a horrible mode of punishing crime."
Dick shuddered. He thought he would never pass the cross-roads again without picturing the gibbet with its awful burden.
"I am glad there are no gibbets now-a-days," he said. "I think the people living about here must have been very wicked, grandfather, so many of them seem to have been smugglers and highwaymen!"
"I do not think they were worse here than in other places," Sir Richard replied seriously. "People ought to live better lives at the present day than they did in those times, for they have not the excuse of ignorance for their misdeeds; they are taught to know right from wrong, and even the very poorest are made to learn to read and write. I suppose no one would be misguided enough to argue now that smuggling and highway robbery are not crimes."