“Your pardon, sir; if you are armed and inclined to act a brave and generous part, you have now an opportunity of doing so.” Twm declared his readiness. The stranger dismounted, with pain; “Take this horse,” cried he, “ride forward as fast as you can, and a quarter of a mile on you will find a couple of robbers rifling a coach. Other assistance may arrive—on! on, sir! in heaven’s name! the party assaulted are of no common rank or estimation—profit and reputation will attend their liberator, and”—Twm was out of hearing before he could finish his sentence.
Never did a young medical practitioner, called on an emergency to the bedside of a wealthy patient, whom he never thought to have the honour to approach, ride forth with a more excited imagination. Fire flashed from the stones, ground to powder by his horse’s hoofs, and brief was the gallop that brought him in sight of the scene of villainy.
The first object that struck his view were three or four horses, with their harness cut, one dead, and the others struggling on the road-side, while the centre was occupied by an un-horsed coach. As he came nearer, he distinctly made out a man at each door of the vehicle, their feet resting on the steps, while their heads, and the greater portion of their bodies, were invisible, implying their activity in the work of depredation. So intently devoted were they to this grand undertaking, that Twm’s approach seemed either unnoticed or mistaken, perhaps, for the wounded and unharmed gentleman’s, who had apprised him of this nefarious business. With that happy forethought given by indulgent Providence to the self-dependent, and which forms one of the grand ingredients in the chalice of success, our hero turned his horse from the thundering road to the soundless green beside it, and silently gained upon his object.
He arrived within twenty paces of the coach, when the green altogether ceased. Dismounting with the alacrity of the occasion, silent as the mole, and swift as the greyhound, he made a rush forward, and, contrary to his expectation, he found himself, unchallenged or unnoticed, close to the coach. He heard one of the amiable threatening instant death to his “Lordship’s reverence” unless his watch accompanied his purse into the hands of his “solicitors.”
The opposite worthy was equally polite to a lady, after his own fashion, declaring that he had shot one of her sex lately for less provocation than she had shown, in withholding his fair demands, which was merely all her cash and jewels.
Twm’s instantaneous action was to catch the nearest gentleman by the ankles. With a powerful drag backwards, his feet were jerked off the coach-steps, and his full face literally scraped an ungentle acquaintance with their iron edges, in its rapid descent to the frosty road, which was flooded with his blood.
“Hollo! where are you, Bill?” enquired his active partner, thinking that he had merely lost his footing and falling accidentally.
“Here!” cried Twm, firing at the word, when the robber fell backward from his perch, a lifeless corpse. Before he could recover himself, our hero was grappled at the throat by the powerful hands of the first robber. In the struggle, Twm managed to strike him twice with his discharged pistol on his blood-covered face; but the strong ruffian’s tenacious grip tightened notwithstanding; and our tale must have terminated here, with the death of its hero, but for an unexpected relief.
The venerable and aged gentleman in the coach with his daughter, looking out on this deadly struggle with intense anxiety, snatched up a pistol which had been dropped in the carriage, seized a critical moment, and discharged it at the ear of the freebooter, whose head was perforated by the bullet, so that his grasp relaxed, and he fell backward, with his eyes glaring on his intended victim, and, with a ferocious oath in his mouth, he expired.
The aged gentleman now called to the lady, who sprang from the coach, declaring he feared that the villain had succeeded in destroying their deliverer. Well, indeed, might he have thought so, as Twm had sunk senseless on the road, the stagnant blood blackening in his face, and his eyes projecting from their sockets.