up by this time; "you won't need absolution for what's been done
to-night; and I would bet a guinea to a shilling, that if you ask any
priest in all the land, he will tell you, that you have done a good deed
instead of a bad; but let us get back to the inn as quick as we can, and
see what the purse contains."

The road which the Earl of Sunbury was pursuing passed the very inn to
which the men who had lightened him of his gold were going; but there
was a back bridle-path through some thick woods to the right of the
road, which cut off a full mile of the way, and along this the four
keepers of the King's Highway urged their horses at full speed,
endeavouring, as was natural under such circumstances, to gallop away
reflection, which, in spite of all that they assumed, was not a pleasant
companion to any of the four. It very often happens that the
exhilaration of success occupies so entirely the portion of time during
which remorse for doing a bad action is most ready to strike us, that we
are ready to commit the same error again, before the last murmurs of
conscience have time to make themselves heard. Those who wish to drown
her first loud remonstrances give full way and eager encouragement to
that exhilaration; and now, each of the men whom we have mentioned,
except Sherbrooke, went on encouraging their wild gaiety, leaping the
gates that here and there obstructed their passage, instead of opening
them; and in the end arriving at the inn a full quarter of an hour
before the carriage of the Earl passed the house on its onward way.

The vehicle stopped there for a minute or two, to give the horses hay
and water; and much was the clamour amongst the servants, the
postilions, and the ostlers, concerning the daring robbery that had been
committed; but the postilions of those days, and eke the keepers of
inns, were wise people in their generation, and discreet withal. They