'Tis not the first face of a predicament that is always the right aspect, and men may, as often as not by holding their peace, come at the heart of the matter, always provided there is naught in the case to make the blood sing. Now in a pretty lively turn of life on the road I have met many types, and some of these such characters as you would scarce credit; but 'tis not always that they are conjoined thus in their odd individualities with a stirring episode; and hence I pass them by in these accounts of my career. Nevertheless there was in the meeting with Sir Damon Boll that which pleased me mightily, at least in the end. Indeed, 'twas a rare piece of chicanery from the outset, what time I left the Boar's Head in a chaise and two horses of my own for Epsom, like any gentleman with an important journey of his own before him. And so in truth I had, for I was to set up for my lord, if you please, with a lackey and all; but the affair, though 'twas humorous beyond fancy, enters not into this adventure. It was enough that the thought tickled me on my road out of Southwark, going by Camberwell and Newington, and I was in a fair good humour as we rocked along the ruts that sharp November evening.
When the postilion was come out by Streatham and was for making across the heath, the moon, that was half and bright, struck into the lowering clouds, and the open waste glowed of a sudden swiftness. The window of the chaise was open and the air streamed in, but I could make out little with my peepers because of the blackness. And here there was a savage rocking of the body of the chaise, and a cracking as of a wheel against something. So popped I forth my head and roared to the postilion, cursing him for his clumsiness, and he cursing back at the horses; and between us there was a pretty commotion. For here was a nobleman (save me!) upon his travels with a damned dung-fork of a rascal on whom he might let loose his tongue and be not questioned. That was how I phrased it to myself, being not as wroth as I seemed, but indeed enjoying to feign it; when withdrawing my head, as we were got back again upon the track, I espied a blacker shadow in the blackness about the heath.
It held my eye a moment, for I knew it well enough to be the figure of a man, and then it darted into nearer view; and the light, bettering at the same instant, showed me a fellow with a hat askew on the back of his head, a heavy pistol at the stand-and-deliver, and a face under a dark mask at the chaise's edge.
"Hold!" says he loudly to the postilion, and catches at the horse nearest. The frightened fellow pulled in, and says this night-bat, as boldly as you will, and as cheerfully, poking his barker through the window, "now, my good sir, pray do not dally, but hand out forthwith. Dalliance, my dear sir, is the spirit of my lady's chamber, not of snapping sharp winter nights like this. Disgorge, my buck, disgorge!"
Now you will conceive it was an odd situation for Galloping Dick to be thus waylaid and handled after the manner of his own craft, though this was not the first occasion that it had happened. But to that you will add this, that there was that in his air, as in his voice, and in the very swagger of his challenge, which showed me here was no ordinary tobyman. So says I to myself, silently gazing in his pistol: "What have we here?" And then aloud said I: "Sirrah, what do you?" in a lordly tone.
"Faith," says he, not lowering his pistol, but speaking in a rollicking way, "be not my words plain, brave knight, or must I make 'em bark? I require of you all that you have in the chaise, barring what I will spare you out of charity, your clothes and cock-hat for the sake of shame."
"Oh!" said I, in a hesitating way, "then are you a gentleman of the road, rascal?"
"You honour me to put a name upon me," said he, with an inclination of his head. "For myself, I should desire to go unnamed, so as to escape the perils of the law."
"I will tell you this," I broke out in seeming indignation, "you shall be well hanged—that's your destiny."
"Maybe," said he, carelessly. "As well be picked by crows on a gallows as in a ditch. Deliver, my lord."