in the manner of quadrupeds educated at the public seminary of Astley's,
and disappeared within the aperture.

These steps, when drawn up,--which, however, from their extreme
clumsiness, required the united strength of two ordinary men, and was not
that instantaneous work which it should have been,--made the place above
a tolerably strong hold; for the wall was perfectly perpendicular and
level, and it was only by placing his hands upon the ledge, and so
lifting himself gymnastically upward, that an active assailant could have
reached the eminence,--a work which defenders equally active, it may
easily be supposed, would not be likely to allow.

This upper cave--for our robbers paid more attention to their horses than
themselves, as the nobler animals of the two species--was evidently
fitted up with some labour. The stalls were rudely divided, the litter
of dry fern was clean, troughs were filled with oats, and a large tub had
been supplied from a pond at a little distance. A cart-harness and some
old wagoners' frocks were fixed on pegs to the wall; while at the far end
of these singular stables was a door strongly barred, and only just large
enough to admit the body of a man. The confederates had made it an
express law never to enter their domain by this door, or to use it,
except for the purpose of escape, should the cave ever be attacked; in
which case, while one or two defended the entrance from the inner cave,
another might unbar the door, and as it opened upon the thickest part of
the wood, through which with great ingenuity a labyrinthine path had been
cut, not easily tracked by ignorant pursuers, these precautions of the
highwaymen had provided a fair hope of at least a temporary escape from
any invading enemies.

Such were the domestic arrangements of the Red Cave; and it will be