It was not for several minutes after their flight had commenced that any
conversation passed between the robbers. Their horses flew on like wind;
and the country through which they rode presented to their speed no other
obstacle than an occasional hedge, or a short cut through the thicknesses
of some leafless beechwood. The stars lent them a merry light, and the
spirits of two of them at least were fully in sympathy with the
exhilaration of the pace and the air. Perhaps, in the third, a certain
presentiment that the present adventure would end less merrily than it
had begun, conspired, with other causes of gloom, to check that
exaltation of the blood which generally follows a successful exploit.

The path which the robbers took wound by the sides of long woods or
across large tracts of uncultivated land; nor did they encounter anything
living by the road, save now and then a solitary owl, wheeling its gray
body around the skirts of the bare woods, or occasionally troops of
conies, pursuing their sports and enjoying their midnight food in the
fields.

"Heavens!" cried the tall robber, whose incognito we need no longer
preserve, and who, as our readers are doubtless aware, answered to the
name of Pepper,--"heavens!" cried he, looking upward at the starry skies
in a sort of ecstasy, "what a jolly life this is! Some fellows like
hunting; d---it! what hunting is like the road? If there be sport in
hunting down a nasty fox, how much more is there in hunting down a nice,
clean nobleman's carriage! If there be joy in getting a brush, how much
more is there in getting a purse! If it be pleasant to fly over a hedge
in the broad daylight, hang me if it be not ten times finer sport to skim
it by night,--here goes! Look how the hedges run away from us! and the
silly old moon dances about, as if the sight of us put the good lady in