circumstances had, by accident, become accurately known to one or both of
the two M'Keans; and, unfortunately, at a moment of overwhelming
misfortune to themselves. They were hawkers; and, until lately, had borne
most respectable characters: but some mercantile crash had overtaken them
with utter ruin, in which their joint capital had been swallowed up to the
last shilling. This sudden prostration had made them desperate: their own
little property had been swallowed up in a large _social_ catastrophe, and
society at large they looked upon as accountable to them for a robbery. In
preying, therefore, upon society, they considered themselves as pursuing a
wild natural justice of retaliation. The money aimed at did certainly
assume the character of public money, being the product of many separate
subscriptions. They forgot, however, that in the murderous acts, which too
certainly they meditated as preliminaries to the robbery, they could plead
no such imaginary social precedent. In dealing with a family that seemed
almost helpless, if all went smoothly, they relied entirely upon their own
bodily strength. They were stout young men, twenty-eight to thirty-two
years old; somewhat undersized as to height; but squarely built, deep-
chested, broad-shouldered, and so beautifully formed, as regarded the
symmetry of their limbs and their articulations, that, after their
execution, the bodies were privately exhibited by the surgeons of the
Manchester Infirmary, as objects of statuesque interest. On the other
hand, the household which they proposed to attack consisted of the
following four persons:--1. the landlord, a stoutish farmer--but _him_ they
intended to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst robbers, and
termed _hocussing_, _i.e._, clandestinely drugging the liquor of the
victim with laudanum; 2. the landlord's wife; 3. a young servant woman; 4.
a boy, twelve or fourteen years old. The danger was, that out of four
persons, scattered by possibility over a house which had two separate
exits, one at least might escape, and by better acquaintance with the
adjacent paths, might succeed in giving an alarm to some of the houses a