from the customs of his manhood.

He felt his pistols, and his hands trembled a little as he did so,--not
the least from fear, but from that restlessness and eagerness peculiar to
nervous persons placed in a new situation.

"In this country," said he to himself, "I have been only once robbed in
the course of my life. It was then a little my fault; for before I took
to my pistols, I should have been certain they were loaded. To-night I
shall be sure to avoid a similar blunder; and my pistols have an
eloquence in their barrels which is exceedingly moving. Humph, another
milestone! These fellows drive well; but we are entering a pretty-
looking spot for Messieurs the disciples of Robin Hood!"

It was, indeed, a picturesque spot by which the carriage was now rapidly
whirling. A few miles from Maidenhead, on the Henley Road, our readers
will probably remember a small tract of forest-like land, lying on either
side of the road. To the left the green waste bears away among the trees
and bushes; and one skilled in the country may pass from that spot,
through a landscape as little tenanted as green Sherwood was formerly,
into the chains of wild common and deep beech-woods which border a
certain portion of Oxfordshire, and contrast so beautifully the general
characteristics of that county.

At the time we speak of, the country was even far wilder than it is now;
and just on that point where the Henley and the Reading roads unite was a
spot (communicating then with the waste land we have described), than
which, perhaps, few places could be more adapted to the purposes of such
true men as have recourse to the primary law of nature. Certain it was
that at this part of the road Mauleverer looked more anxiously from his