新小说

第3章（第3页）

failure of his ammunition”: after which the mail was robbed in

peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was

made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one

highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all

his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their

turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among

them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off

diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawingrooms;

musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to search for contraband

goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers

fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences

much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman,

ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant

requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous

criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had

been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at