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More "Highwayman" Quotes from Famous Books



... robbed of his watch and money. He begged the highwayman to let him have cash enough to carry him to town, and the fellow said, "Well, master Moody, as I know you, I'll lend you half a guinea; but, remember, honor among thieves!" A few days after, he was taken, and Moody hearing that ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... slap on her round, glossy haunches. In the meantime the horse-dealer had mounted. With his gaunt figure, his short riding-jacket under the broad-brimmed, varnished hat, his yellow breeches over his lean thighs, his high leather boots, his large, heavy spurs, and his whip, he looked like a highwayman. He rode away cursing and swearing, without saying good-by, leading the brown mare by a halter. He never once glanced back at the farm-house, but the mare several times bent her neck around and emitted a doleful neigh, as if complaining because her good days were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... of "Mary, the Maid of the Inn," is supposed, and not without foundation, to be connected with this Abbey. "Hark to Rover," the name of the house where the key is kept, was, a century ago, a retired inn or pot-house, and the haunt of many a desperate highwayman and poacher. The anecdote is so well known, that it is scarcely necessary to relate it. It, however, is ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... Police and the Governors sought him, he would flee from them and fortify himself in the mountains. Now it came to pass that a certain man journeyed along the road wherein was that robber, and this man was single-handed and knew not the sore perils besetting his way. So the highwayman came out upon him and said to him, "Bring out that which is with thee, for I mean to kill thee and no mistake. ' Quoth the traveller, "Kill me not, but annex these saddle-bags and divide that which is in them and take to thee the fourth part." And the thief answered, "I will not take aught ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... friends was little Nick-uts the Yellowthroat. He was a dainty little fellow, with an olive green back, a bright yellow breast, and a black mask across his face that made him look like a highwayman. Though he was lively and nervous, he had a gentle disposition and a sweet voice. His home was in some ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... latter years gained abundant praise for wholesome severity towards footpads, and at his death left behind him a name—which, tradition informs us, belonged to a man who in his reckless youth, and even after his call to the bar, was a cut-purse and highwayman. In mitigation of his conduct it is urged by those who credit the charge, that young gentlemen of his date were so much addicted to the lawless excitement of the road, that when he was still a beardless ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... squires observed in his mixture of Gascon and Catalan, "This captain of ours would make a better friar than highwayman; if he wants to be so generous another time, let it be with his own property ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... enemy to his country, attacking only those weaker than himself, scudding off at the advent of men-of-warsmen, and hovering where the guileless merchantman passed by. The privateersman was a gentleman adventurer, a protected pirate, a social highwayman of the waters. He throve, grew lusty, and prospered,—a robber legitimized by the laws ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... delightful! He must be some famous, dashing highwayman. I promise, of course I promise—faithfully." She was glancing constantly toward Manners, and her face was bright with smiles and ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... good ale standing by its side. His anxiety had not deprived him of his appetite; and he resolved, if his horse could hold out, to push on till nightfall. He, however, was not perfectly satisfied with the manner of his host, and could not help fancying that he suspected him of being either a highwayman or a fugitive from justice; and every time the door opened, he expected to see a bailiff or a Government official of some sort enter, to interrogate him as to what he was about and where he was going. He ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... unworkable proposal. It is a cure which to any Englishman of sense or spirit will seem tenfold worse than the disease. It is a cure in that sense only in which a traveller may be said to be relieved from the fear of robbery by a highwayman shooting him dead. The irregular interference of the Irish delegation in the formation of the British Cabinet, and other matters which indirectly concern England, is to be regularised (if I may use the term) by allowing to ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... turned round, when Mehee offered her his arm, and she exclaimed with indignation, "How dare you, infamous wretch, approach me, when I have forbidden you ever to speak to me? Had you been reduced to become a highwayman, or a housebreaker, I might have pitied your infamy; but a spy is a villain who aggravates guilt by cowardice and baseness, and can inspire no noble soul with any other sentiment but abhorrence, and the most sovereign ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Links with the Past, and here is one. The fifth Earl of Berkeley, who died in 1810, had always declared that any one might without disgrace be overcome by superior numbers, but that he would never surrender to a single highwayman. As he was crossing Hounslow Heath one night, on his way from Berkeley Castle to London, his travelling carriage was stopped by a man on horseback, who put his head in at the window and said, "I believe you are Lord Berkeley?" "I am." "I ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... commerce, that was called the "forced trade on the Spanish Main" existed under that code of elastic morals, which adapts the maxim of "your purse or your life" to modern diplomacy, as well as to the habits of the highwayman. According to divers masters in the art of ethics now flourishing among ourselves, more especially in the atmosphere of the journals of the commercial communities, the people that "can trade and won't trade, must be made to trade." At the commencement of the century, your mercantile ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... last part of their happiness, they care not how long it be deferred, having scarce any appetite toward a tasting the joys of heaven, till they are surfeited, glutted with, and can no longer relish their enjoyments on earth. By this easy way of purchasing pardons, any notorious highwayman, any plundering soldier, or any bribe-taking judge, shall disburse some part of their unjust gains, and so think all their grossest impieties sufficiently atoned for; so many perjuries, lusts, drunkenness, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... and the highwayman the resemblance is close: both are leaders of bands and each requires an opportunity to organize his band. Danton, to organize his band, needed the Revolution.—"Of low birth, without patronage," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... apparently to impress us with the conviction of her perfect happiness; for it is a great point of honor among girls similarly situated to look as cheerful and gay as possible—the same feeling, though in a different degree, which induces the gallant highwayman to jest in the presence of the multitude when the hangman's cord is within an inch of his neck; the same which makes a gallant general, whose life is forfeited, command his men to fire on him; the same which makes the Hindoo widow mount the funeral pile without a tear in ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... col. 1, we learn that a person born under the influence of Maadim, i.e., Mars, will in one way or another be a shedder of blood, such as a phlebotomist, a butcher, a highwayman, etc., etc. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... villages of Chelsea and Putney, and, topping the rise beyond, they proceeded along the old Portsmouth Road, which crosses the northern part of Putney Heath. At the top of the steep hill leading down into Kingston Vale they alighted, made their way past the gibbet where swung the corpse of a well-known highwayman, Jerry Abershaw, long the terror of travellers on that road. Did Pitt know that libellers likened him to the highwayman; for "Jerry took purses with his pistols, and Pitt with his Parliaments"? Lower down Pitt and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... this one amongst another: but it is without receiving these as the innate laws of nature. They practise them as rules of convenience within their own communities: but it is impossible to conceive that he embraces justice as a practical principle who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and at the same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with Justice and truth are the common ties of society; and therefore even outlaws and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules of equity amongst themselves; or else they ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... and, in a word, it is positive vice: for it is either a mask to deceive others, or a mist to deceive ourselves. A man that is clothed with negatives, thus argues: I am not such a drunkard as my landlord, such a thief as my tenant, such a rakish fellow, or a highwayman; No! I live a sober, regular, retired life: I am a good man, I go to church; God, I thank thee. Now, through a mans boasts of his virtue in contradiction to the vices mentioned, yet a person had ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... was, should always be out of his reach. It had been his misfortune to become a clergyman, because the way to church preferment seemed to be the readiest. He became, as we all know, a dean,—but never a bishop, and was therefore wretched. Thackeray describes him as a clerical highwayman, seizing on all he could get. But "the great prize has not yet come. The coach with the mitre and crozier in it, which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed on the way from St. James's; and ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... command in his voice that there was no resisting, especially when it was coupled with such physical strength, so the countryman heaved a sigh and took off his smock-frock and hob-nailed boots, while the supposed highwayman took off his coat ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on her mother's side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle ...
— When William Came • Saki

... Hounslow Heath Matthew Clark cutting the throat of Sarah Goldington A Prisoner Under Pressure in Newgate The Hangman arrested when attending John Meff to Tyburn Stephen Gardiner making his dying speech at Tyburn Jack Sheppard in the Stone Room in Newgate Trial of a Highwayman at the Old Bailey Jonathan Wild pelted by the mob on his way to Tyburn A Condemned Man drawn on a Sledge to Tyburn The Murder of John Hayes: Catherine Hayes, Wood and Billings cutting off the head John Hayes's Head exhibited at St. Margaret's, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... frequently necessary to translate the deposition of the witness and the defence of the prisoner. This language has many dialects. The sly dexterity of the pickpocket, the brutal ferocity of the footpad, the more elevated career of the highwayman and the deadly purpose of the midnight ruffian is each strictly appropriate in the terms which distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage pleasure over the horrid banquet; to hear and see all this, what torture would it give the soul beyond expression!****** Not only a man of humanity, of good morals, and commiseration, but likewise an highwayman, an house-breaker, or a murderer, could feel anxieties on such ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... corrupt to the core. The common people dread the policeman as they do the highwayman; for the constable rarely touches a case without making money out of the transaction; and he is expert in ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... well-formed head; full, brown beard, cropped short. He wore a deer-skin blouse, leathern breeches; broad, stiff-brimmed hat, low crown, flat top, decorated with a tasseled leather band; a fully-loaded ammunition belt—a combination make-up of cowboy, mountaineer and highwayman. ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... Mrs. Boyd, in astonishment, and then a flash of recollection passed over her countenance, and she continued, "Oh, yes, I did have one; I had an adventure with an highwayman." ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... she, "that, of the three characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... well-known tiger in the Mandla district which took possession of the road, and actually stopped the traffic. This was not the generally accepted specimen of a man-eater, old and mangy, but an exceedingly powerful beast of unexampled ferocity and audacity. It was a merciless highwayman, which infested a well-known portion of the road, and levied toll upon the drivers of the native carts, not by an attack upon their bullocks, but by seizing the driver himself, and carrying him off to be devoured in the neighbouring jungle. It had killed ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... troublous times of the Commonwealth the "Devil" was the favourite haunt of John Cottington, generally known as "Mull Sack," from his favourite beverage of spiced sherry negus. This impudent rascal, a sweep who had turned highwayman, with the most perfect impartiality rifled the pockets alternately of Cavaliers and Roundheads. Gold is of no religion; and your true cut-purse is of the broadest and most sceptical Church. He emptied the pockets of Lord Protector Cromwell ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... motive. It is no business of mine to ask that motive or to horn in on your private affairs. And I don't care to. But, from your looks, you're no fool. You know, as well as I do, that that was no panhandler or even a highwayman. It was an enemy whose motive for wanting to murder you, silently and surely, was strong enough to make him willing to risk death or capture. Now, when you say you don't need a bodyguard—Well, it's your own business, of course. Let it go at ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... that he ought to have a warrant before making the arrest, remarking, if a man should shoot another when he was about to commit a felony, such as setting fire to your house, you would not arrest him for a murder; or if a highwayman got on the train to plunder. The officer replied very courteously by the suggestion that there would have to be an inquest. Neagle at once said, "I am ready to go," thinking it better to avoid all controversy, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... given, (for it is a sad thing for good people to break their word when it is in their power to keep it,) one would not expect that she should set about deceiving again; more especially by the premeditation of writing. Thou, perhaps, wilt ask, what honest man is obliged to keep his promise with a highwayman? for well I know thy unmannerly way of making comparisons; but I say, every honest man is—and I ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... know. Rum lot they always seem to have been. Barony created by George III for some personal service. The first Polperro is said to have lived a year or two as a gipsy, and at another time as a highwayman. There's a portrait of him, Beeching tells me, in somebody's history of Cornwall, showing to perfection the ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... considering the place and the hour. Suddenly three other horsemen came galloping down upon him, and the leader presenting a pistol at his head, requested him in a stentorial voice for his money or his life. By way of reply, the stranger instantly produced a pistol of his own, and before the astonished highwayman could comprehend the possibility of such an act, discharged it full in his face. With a loud yell the robber reeled and fell from his saddle, and in a twinkling both his companions fired their pistols at the traveler, and bore, with a simultaneous cry of rage, down upon ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... regular customers. If there is any difference between the grocer and the railroad company, it lies in the fact that the former's old customers would soon find relief at a rival store, while the patrons of the railroad at non-competitive points are like the traveler in the hands of a highwayman, without immediate redress. The railway company which discriminates between competitive and non-competitive points forgets that its line is a common highway for all points tributary to it; that all have equal rights, and that the only differences in tariff which the principles of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... under. bala ball, bullet. balancear to balance. balbucear to stammer. balcon m. balcony. balde; de —— gratis, for nothing. ballena whale. ballenero whaler. bambolear vr. to totter. banco bank. banda band. bandera banner. bandido highwayman. bando faction, party, proclamation. bandolero bandit, highwayman. baqueta ramrod. baratura cheapness. barba chin, beard. barbaro barbarous. barco boat. barra crowbar. barranco ravine; barranquillo (dim.). barreno hole made with a ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... 23. If the highwayman has not been caught, the man that has been robbed shall state on oath what he has lost and the city or district governor in whose territory or district the robbery took place shall restore to him ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... the world we ought not to be hypercritical in our review of singularities, or say—"These things do not happen,"—because it is indisputable that they do happen. That combination which comprises a dark night, a highwayman armed and hatted to the teeth, and myself, may be a purely fortuitous one, but will such a criticism bring any comfort to the highwayman? And the concourse of three benevolent millionaires with the person to whom ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... drama which is to be developed, are given at once by the alarm of the passengers of the Dover coach as they walk up Shooter's Hill to ease the horses, when the furious galloping of a horseman is heard behind them—the supposed highwayman proving to be, however, Jerry Cruncher, messenger at Tellson's Bank by day, and at night an "agricooltural character" of ghoulish avocations. David Copperfield trudged the Dover road, footsore and hungry, when he left Murdstone and Grinby's blacking warehouse to throw himself ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... convict from Botany Bay, to which colony I was transported from England, for an atrocious crime. This brand upon my breast was placed there as a punishment for having attempted to murder one of my guards. I have been a pirate, a robber, a highwayman, a burglar, and (but let me whisper this word in your ear,) a murderer! Ha, ha, ha! how do you like your ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... bundle. I saw it was a collection of old plays in manuscript-prompt copies, scored, cut and interlined. The top one I noticed was "The Bloodspot: Or the Maiden, the Miser and the Murderer;" the second, "The Female Highwayman." ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... been very useful to Rofflash in disposing of some of the trophies of his exploits on the Bath Road. The highwayman never grumbled at whatever commission she chose to take and the arrangement ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... Judging it unwise to keep a half-mutinous crew too near pirate ships, M. Radisson ordered anchor up. With a deck-mop fastened in defiance to our prow, the St. Pierre slipped out of the harbour through the half-dark of those northern summer nights, and gave the heel to any highwayman waiting to ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... and two pistol-shots were fired at the new-comer. The balls whistled close to him, but Frank did not answer the fire until he arrived within three paces of the nearest highwayman, whom he shot dead; the other three fired, and Frank felt a sensation as of a hot iron crossing his cheek, while his left arm dropped useless by his side. Another of the highwaymen fell under his next shot; at the same instant Turk, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... and a harsh voice shouted back loud curses. It seemed to Ryder that other voices joined in—that there was a pursuit, an outcry—and then they were out down an open road, wildly galloping, like a mad highwayman under a pale ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... contents of his pockets to the other highwayman, who having opened the box of rufuses and smelt at the phial of plague-water, returned them to him with a look of disgust, and bade him follow his companions. As Leonard was departing, the captain of the band rode after him, and inquired whether he had heard ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... unexpected and startling was the shock that the reporter sprang from the car and in his nervous annoyance at once vented the hasty conclusion at which he arrived in the words: "I see; this is a trap, and you are a modern highwayman whose stunt will make good Sunday reading in cold print." He wore a sarcastic smile, and his sharp ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... that it is a departure, a falling; and this is a simple and clear matter. If falling were all that ever happened to a good man, all his days would be a simple matter of striving and repentance. But it is not all. There come to him certain junctures, crises, when life, like a highwayman, springs upon him, demanding that he stand and deliver his convictions in the name of some righteous cause, bidding him do evil that good may come. I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good may come. I do not. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... any. There are no highwaymen on Blackheath now, I am sorry to say. And though Oswald said half of us could be highwaymen and the other half rescue party, Dora kept on saying it would be wrong to be a highwayman—and so we had ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... said Walter, musing, "that Aram should know a man, who, if not a highwayman as we suspected, is at least of rugged manner and disreputable appearance; it is strange too, that Aram always avoided recurring to the acquaintance, though he confessed it." With this he broke into a trot, and the Corporal ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... stopping at R from discipline. And Lum, the China cook, a freak of a fellar, with coal-black hair all round his head like a girl's, and who'd out-Coe Coe till you'd split. The rest of the crew was just the usual thing—Rotumah boys, an Highwayman or two, and some Nieues—sometimes the same, sometimes ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... picaroon[obs3]; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger*, bunko man, cattle thief, chor[obs3], contrabandist[obs3], crook, hawk, holdup man, hold-up* [U.S.], jackleg* [obs3][U.S.], kidnaper, rustler , cattle rustler, sandbagger, sea king, skin*, sneak thief, spieler[obs3], strong-arm man [U.S.]. highwayman, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Macheath, footpad, sturdy beggar. cut purse, pick purse; pickpocket, light-fingered gentry; sharper; card sharper, skittle sharper; thimblerigger; rook*, Greek, blackleg, leg, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... reputation, when living, resided in Somerset. A traveller one day chancing to pass through the very next parish inquired of a local man if somebody called Sydney Smith did not once live in that neighbourhood. 'Yes,' was the reply, 'I've heard all about Sydney Smith; I can tell you. He was a highwayman, and was hung on that hill there.' He would have shown the very stump of the gallows-tree as proof positive, like Jack Cade's bricks, alive in the chimney ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... increased, with proper encouragement and rewards. Are we today evoking the necessary ability? On the contrary, it is not the Inventor, the Manager, and the Thinker who today are reaping the great rewards of industry, but rather the Gambler and the Highwayman. Rightly-organized industry might easily save the Gambler's Profit and the Monopolist's Interest and by paying a more discriminating reward in wealth and honor bring to the service of the state more ability and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... a turn up and down the room. "I don't know that Lotzen isn't justified in using every means to defeat me. I am a robber—a highwayman, if you please. I am, this instant, holding him up and trying to deprive him of his dearest inheritance. And I'm doing it with calm deliberation, while, ostensibly, I'm his friend. If I attempt to steal his watch he would be justified in shooting me on the spot—why shouldn't he do the same ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott

... which Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on Suum Cuique was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and execution of some notorious highwayman. That on Brevis esse laboro was in English, and might have represented an adventure which had befallen Lamb himself, for he stammered frequently, though he was not so grievous a Balbulus as his friend George Darley, whom I had also ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... made a slight show of resistance the assailant called to his comrades in the bush to fire upon the first man who showed fight; this threat induced a wise resignation to the inevitable. Having possessed himself in an incredibly short time of his booty, the highwayman backed into the thicket and quickly made off. The procedure from first to last occupied hardly ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... pineal; and therefore we say impudence is moral, sometimes immoral, as just now when you damned me. No more of your old junk, I say, sitting here in my cathedra, which by the way is spring-bottomed, which may account for my moral elasticity that a highwayman ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... it is difficult for a man in the Van to look to the Rear; still he need not swoop down on pedestrians quite so much like a highwayman, saying, "Your collar-bone ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various

... Issoudun under the Restoration. Upon seeing Joseph Bridau in the diligence, while the artist and his mother were on a journey in 1822, he remarked that he would not care to meet him at night in the corner of a forest—he looked so much like a highwayman. That same evening Beaussier, accompanied by his wife, came to call at Hochon's in order to get a nearer view of the painter. [A ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... me that once having betted twenty pounds on a horse at Newmarket, he won, but at the end of the race could not find the person who had lost. Returning to London the next day, his post-chaise was stopped by a highwayman, whom he immediately recognised as the loser of the day before. He addressed the highwayman as follows: "Sir, I will give you all I have about me if you will pay me the twenty pounds which I won of you yesterday at Newmarket." The man instantly spurred his horse, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... it; Richard Guy Isshaw, younger son, who went wholly to the bad—who turned highwayman—whom you saved. The only one out of the eight,—the rest were hanged at Tyburn and Kennington, poor devils,—and thought I would ride over and thank you, and see you once more. Your husband would have ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various

... lightning), I began to recall all the dismal stories of coach accidents, and of highwaymen, which I had read or heard of during my quiet village existence. Suppose, on this very moor which we were now crossing, a highwayman rode up and popped a pistol in at the window. I myself had not much to lose, though I should have been extremely reluctant to part with the new silk purse which my mother had netted for me, and in which she and father had each placed a guinea—coins ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... City police and detective organisation, and make the transit of a letter between London and Dublin a matter of from five days to nearly as many weeks, and compute how much easier it was then than now for an adventurous highwayman, an absconding debtor, or a pair of fugitive lovers, to make good their retreat. Slow, undoubtedly, was the flight—they did not run, they walked away; but so was pursuit, and altogether, without authentic lights and official helps—a matter of post-chaises ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard' say or do; that complete biographies of them are presented to the public; that report after report expatiates upon every refinement and peculiarity in their wickedness," for "the good purpose" of warning the embryo highwayman. We are something more than duberous of this. We can see no difference between the exhibition of the stage and the gloating of the broadsheet; they are both "the agents by which the exploits of the gay highwayman are realised before his eyes, amid a brilliant and evidently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various

... Newgate Calendar was appealed to for a hero by the author of 'Pelham,' who had already won no small distinction, and who in his 'Paul Clifford' did his best to throw a halo of romance around the highwayman's career. Not satisfied with this, Bulwer next claimed the sympathies of his readers for Eugene Aram, and exalted a very common type of murderer into a nobly minded and highly sentimental scholar. Crime and criminals became the favourite theme of a multitude of ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... he thought, but she will not. No it is impossible. It is better that she marry her French prince than to live, dishonored, the wife of a common highwayman; for though she might love me at first, the bitterness and loneliness of her life would turn her love ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... creatures of circumstances. Frederick of Prussia had no opinion of phrenology; and one day he sent for the professor, and dressing up a highwayman and a pickpocket in uniforms and orders, he desired the phrenologist to examine their heads, and give his opinion as to their qualifications. The savant did so, and turning to the king, said, "Sire, this person," pointing to the highwayman, "whatever ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... lash on the high mountain trail, And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale; For the trails are all open, the roads are all free, And the highwayman's whistle ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... the highwayman advanced upon him, and was in a moment hotly engaged. Never before had he fenced with pointed rapiers; but the swords had scarcely crossed when he felt, with the instinct of a good fencer, how different were the clumsy thrusts of his opponent to the delicate and skillful play of his grandfather ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... corrupted and perverted by greatness, rank, power, and wealth, that I am inclined to think that virtue is the compensation to the poor for the want of riches: nay, I am disposed to believe that the first footpad or highwayman has been a man of quality, or a prince, who could not bear having wasted his fortune, and was too lazy to work; for a beggar-born would think labour a more natural way of getting a livelihood than venturing his life. I have something a similar ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... come here and say, 'We demand this; or, we demand that; stand and deliver.' That is the language of the highwayman. This is a great tribunal, where men reason and judge and weigh and doubt and hesitate and talk—and we have a good deal of that. No section and no state can, because the presidential election has gone against it, say, 'We will ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... figure, and Ben was prone to believe that he had adopted a highwayman for a buddy. The amount named was nearly twice that which they had paid. And to his vast amazement the stranger accepted the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street,' published in 1607, and attributed by some to Shakespeare, tobacco-taking or tobacco-drinking (as smoking was then usually called) appears no longer in the induction, but in the play itself, Idle, the highwayman, says to the old soldier, Skirmish, 'Have you any tobacco about you?' Idle being supplied, smokes a pipe on the stage. These extracts, however, may have been cited before, together with others of like ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... unspeakably revolting spots Saletrousur-Somme, or Saint-Andre-Linfecte were. He was a wonderfully kind-hearted man. Once, whilst playing at the Court Theatre, he noticed the call-boy constantly poring over a book. Cecil, glancing over it, was surprised to find that it was not The Boy Highwayman of Hampstead, but a treatise on Algebra. The call-boy told him that he was endeavouring to educate himself, with a view to going out to India. Cecil bought him quite a library of books, paid for a series of classes for him, and eventually, thanks to Cecil, the call-boy passed second in ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... drove me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed for the night. The recollection decides me to court my own warm hearth, to challenge my right hand again to a game at the "dambrod" against my left. I do not lock the school-house door at nights; for even a highwayman (there is no such luck) would be received with open arms, and I doubt if there be a barred door in all the glen. But it is cosier to put on the shutters. The road to Thrums has lost itself miles down the valley. I wonder what they are doing out in the world. Though I am the Free Church ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... been brought out by studies is the fact that degrading ideals are practically wanting in children. You were no doubt shocked to discover that Eddy was planning to become a burglar, or a pirate chief, or a tramp, or an ordinary highwayman. But a careful analysis of the motives and experiences of the boy will show that the particular feature that Eddy admires in his hero is far removed from the ones that shock you. The boy is dreaming of travel and adventure, of the excitement of chasing ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... he was of humble origin, but rose by his talents, and figured at court. He wrote several dramas in a mock-tragic vein. Among these are What D'ye Call It? and Three Hours after Marriage; but that which gave him permanent reputation is his Beggar's Opera, of which the hero is a highwayman, and the characters are prostitutes and Newgate gentry. It is interspersed with gay and lyrical songs, and was rendered particularly effective by the fine acting of Miss Elizabeth Fenton, in the part ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... conduct of those who urge him on, not in any failure by others or by the State to do justice to him or his. He is a malefactor and nothing else. He is in no sense, in no shape or way, a "product of social conditions," save as a highwayman is "produced" by the fact than an unarmed man happens to have a purse. It is a travesty upon the great and holy names of liberty and freedom to permit them to be invoked in such a cause. No man or body of men preaching anarchistic doctrines should be allowed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... plausibility will be confirmed by attending to the apparent signification of the name Robin Hood. The natural refuge and stronghold of the outlaw was the woods. Hence he is termed by Latin writers silvatious, by the Normans forestier. The Anglo-Saxon robber or highwayman is called a woodrover wealdgenga, and the Norse word for outlaw is exactly equivalent.[11] It has often been suggested that Robin Hood is a corruption, or dialectic form, of Robin of the Wood; and when we remember that wood is pronounced hood in some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... it, I said, I know not why, or how the words came: 'A highwayman notorious for his depredations in the vicinity of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... realize, with a grim sense of humour, that he was aiding and abetting the mischievous schemes of some notorious highwayman, and that his father's two favourite young horses, by which he set such store, were destined to become the property of the gentlemen of ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... only seen as a huntsman, a falconer, and a beggar, and who confesses, without any circumstances of excuse, that he is obliged to run his country, having newly committed a murder. She ought reasonably to have supposed him, at best, a highwayman; yet the virtuous virgin resolves to run away with him, to live among the banditti, and wait upon his trollop, if she had no other way of enjoying his company. This senseless tale is, however, so well varnished with ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... thief!—a highwayman!" Not one of them was mute; And all and each that passed that way Did ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various

... it was, we had to tone down some of the naughtiest passages and songs. But it was lots of fun, and the boys enjoyed it hugely because it gave them an opportunity to wear tight satin breeches and lace ruffles.... This is my husband, Peter. He adored being the highwayman, 'Robin of Bagshot'," and she pointed out a stocky, belligerent-looking man near the end of the long row of costumed players, in a photograph ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... was at all agreeable to my nerves. I walked out into the open air to recover myself, and to reflect upon what course I should take in this awkward and dangerous dilemma. Marrying was out of the question—but how to avoid it? It was almost like being stopped by a highwayman. He says, "Your money or your life." My mistress's demand was, "Marriage or your life." There was but one hope, which was to escape that very night, and take my chance in the woods, and ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... he drawled, "sent back here from Boston to raise the country against the invasion. They say he was a highwayman once, but we Tories"—he laughed shamelessly—"say many things in these days which may not help us at the judgment day. Wait, there's that little rosebud, Claire Putnam, Sir John's flame. Take her in to table; she's a pretty little plaything. Lady Johnson, who was Polly Watts, is in Montreal, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... use, or else that they took their meals in the kitchen. The "Entrance Hall" is a singularly chaste apartment. There is no necessity for a door-mat: people with muddy boots, it is to be presumed, were sent round to the back. A riding-cloak, the relic apparently of a highwayman, hangs behind the door. It is the sort of cloak you would expect to find there—a decorative cloak. An umbrella or a waterproof cape would be fatal to the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... we next arrived, we observed, during a saunter around the village, a curious stone erected to the memory of a highwayman rejoicing in the most un-romantic name of Snooks, who its was hanged here at the beginning of the century for ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes

... horses, alarmed by the report, got beyond control of the driver and dashed forward impetuously. The highwayman had hardly time to realize his danger when his horse was overthrown and pushed over the precipice along with its rider, while the stage dashed on. The last that the passengers saw of Dick Hawley was a panic-stricken ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger

... occasionally replenishing his coffers by seizing upon treasure as it was being transported on the road; that there was a self-abandonment and a courtesy in the way in which he proceeded, which distinguishes him from the ordinary highwayman; that he laid down the principle, that he would take from none but those who could afford to lose, and that, if he met with poor persons, he would bestow upon them some part of what he had taken from the rich: in short, that in this respect he was the supporter of the rights or supposed reasonable ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... Diary, alludes with awe to his having passed safely "the great common where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the highwayman," and he also makes special mention of Stonegate Hole, "a notorious robbing place" near Grantham. Like every other traveller, that good man carried loaded pistols in his bags, and on one occasion he ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... abandoned cab at 18th and Massachusetts Avenue early this morning, and instead of coming like a respectable man and asking if I have it and proving your property—do you hear, proving your property—you play the burglar and highwayman. Evidently the letter isn't yours, and you haven't any right or claim to it. I have been injected into this matter; and having been injected I intend to ascertain what can be found from your papers. Who you are; what your object; who are concerned beside yourself; and ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... Express Company of a cool $53,000, cannot help but excite a feeling akin to admiration. As this was his first attempt, it would take subsequent years to measure the height which he might attain as a highwayman. It may be that the modern Jack Sheppard had his career nipped in the bud by the Pinkerton Detective Agency. That "eye that never sleeps" must have winked pretty often, when it learned of the various and narrow escapes Jim Cummings ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... oath nothing to you, then?" she cried, impetuously, still addressing Jack Grimsby. "You've sworn to do all in your power to save this highwayman. Now is your chance! Gain me but five minutes and I'll have Lord Farquhart freed from, this absurd charge ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... it,—who better qualified than these to decide on the measures by which the hideous nuisances of that time should be abated; by which that axe, that sword, that rack, that stake, and all those burglar's tools, and highwayman's weapons, should be taken out of the hands of the mad licentious crew with which an evil time had armed them against the common-weal—those weapons of lawless power, which the people had vainly, for want of leaders, refused before-hand ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... gentlemen of the road began to favour the gardens with their presence, chief among their number being that notorious highwayman John Rann, otherwise known as Sixteen-String Jack from his habit of wearing a bunch of eight ribbons on each knee. But he came to Bagnigge once too often, for, after insisting on paying unwelcome attentions to a lady in the ball-room, he was seized by some ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... unbounded. At first he deemed the man mad, then drunk, then gradually it dawned upon him this was not an officer at all, but a highwayman in disguise, seeking to take advantage of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... armed and completely organized, who within the space of a single hour had captured every strategic point in the capital, and to its utter amazement held it up in the name of a new "Republic," in much the same way as a highwayman of old used to hold up ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... metropolis—like islands in a sea of vice and destitution. There were numerous places of savage amusement and small gambling houses; and young men of family, hanging loose on the world, not unfrequently became amateur adventurers in crime. The populace felt no aversion to a highwayman of spirit. The pursuit of criminals became a voluntary and profitable calling, and offenders against the laws were encouraged and sheltered, until they were ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... marriage vows yourself,' said he, indignantly rising and pacing to and fro. 'You promised to honour and obey me, and now you attempt to hector over me, and threaten and accuse me, and call me worse than a highwayman. If it were not for your situation, Helen, I would not submit to it so tamely. I won't be dictated to by a woman, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... the trial of the two peers and the three commoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement in the town. The prints and News Letters were full of them. The three gentlemen in Newgate were almost as much crowded as the bishops in the Tower, or a highwayman before execution. We were allowed to live in the governor's house, as hath been said, both before trial and after condemnation, waiting the king's pleasure; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrel known, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Cheese,' Or at the 'Mitre' of renown, Spreading his wit throughout the Town. Garrick When Garrick as the 'Moody Dane' Drew the Town to Drury Lane, Mrs. Siddons Sarah Siddons was all the rage Tragedy Queen of every age. Highwaymen armed to the teeth Waited for prey on Hounslow Heath; Per contra the Highwayman's pate Was oft strung up at Tyburn Gate. Capt. Cook It's only right a History book 1728-1779 Should mark the feats of Captain Cook; So jot it down in these our Rhymes That round the World he sailed three times. Inventions These ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison

... the highway that you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you to some fat, red-faced soldier's daughter; after which your harness and team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you welcome death ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... has been chief purveyor of comic opera to his generation, and for so ideal a work as "Robin Hood," and such pleasing constructions as parts of his other operas ("Don Quixote," "The Fencing Master," "The Highwayman," for instance), one ought to be grateful, especially as his music has always a certain elegance and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... "No chance is offered us to judge the propriety of the measure or our ability to pay. These grants are demanded under a claimed right to tax us at pleasure and compel payments by armed force. Your Lordship, it is like the proposition of a highwayman who presents a pistol at the window of your coach and demands enough to satisfy his greed—no specific sum being ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... not. Bravery doesn't count for much if a fellow is crooked. A highwayman is brave if it ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... or traverses the bush, far and wide; an Australian highwayman; in the early days usually an escaped convict. Shakspeare uses the verb ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... I started up Ar-rchey Road afther th' meetin', forgettin' about Brennan's ordhers, whin a man jumps out fr'm behind a tree near th' gas-house. 'Melia murther!' says I to mesilf. ''Tis a highwayman!' Thin, puttin' on a darin' front an' reachin' f'r me handkerchief, I says, 'Stand back, robber!' I says. 'Stand back, robber!' I says. 'Stand ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... you Money enough to carry on the daily Quarrels of Man and Wife about who shall squander most? There are not many Husbands and Wives, who can bear the Charges of plaguing one another in a handsom way. If you must be married, could you introduce no body into our Family but a Highwayman? Why, thou foolish Jade, thou wilt be as ill-us'd, and as much neglected, as if thou hadst married ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... Jack Williams, had the common reputation of being a burglar, a highwayman and a desperado. It was said that he had several times drawn his revolver and levied money contributions on citizens at dead of night in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... which was handed to him when he had mounted his box by one of the two old ladies who acted as the post-mistresses of Pickering. It is not much more than ten years since the death of Francis Gibson, a butcher of East Ayton, who was over a hundred years old and remembered the capture of the last highwayman who was known to carry on the old-time profession in the neighbourhood. He was tracked to an inn at East Ayton where he was found sleeping. Soon afterwards he found himself on the road to York, where ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... ours would be if there were no gibbets!" said one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. "Tut, you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." Just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... the constable at his heels, and calculations of the chances of robbing the Dover mail, would have given him his fill of activity and anxiety. On the whole, if Jesse Trefusis, M.P., who died a millionaire in his palace at Kensington, had been a highwayman, I could not more heartily loathe the social arrangements that rendered such a career as his not only possible, but eminently creditable to himself in the eyes of his fellows. Most men make it their business to imitate ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... without any one being able to pick him out as one of the wealthiest landowners in England. It was an age of eccentricity, but he had carried his peculiarities to a length which surprised even the out- and-outers by marrying the sweetheart of a famous highwayman when the gallows had come between her and her lover. She was perched by his side, looking very smart in a flowered bonnet and grey travelling-dress, while in front of them the four splendid coal- black horses, with a flickering touch of gold upon ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the humour turns on Polly falling in love with a highwayman. Peachum gives an amusing account of the gang. Among them is Harry Paddington—"a poor, petty-larceny rascal, without the least genius; that fellow, though he were to live these six months would never come to the gallows ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... perversity, and admits his capacity for criticising England with a certain slight malicious taste for taking the conceit out of her. Seemingly he belongs to that numerous class who think that to admit a fault is to excuse it. As a highwayman might say before taking your purse, "Now, I admit, I have a certain slight taste for thieving," and expect you to smile forgiveness of his depredation, Shaw's bias is evident wherever he discusses the action and qualities of Great Britain. Thus he contrasts Bernhardi's brilliant ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... fearing that the Major's pistols would settle a third of their gang, rode off, leaving us to proceed unmolested. Mine host of the 'Green Dragon,' where we had stopped, seemed greatly surprised at seeing us arrive safely, and pulled a long face at hearing of the highwayman whom the Major had shot, for he owed a long score, he acknowledged, which he had now no chance of getting paid. At Salisbury I found my nag and servants, and, leaving the coach, proceeded on to this place by such roads as I could discover. It was one comfort ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... are too powerful on the highway; beating and hanging are terrors to me] The resistance which a highwayman encounters in the fact, and the punishment which he suffers on detection, withold me from daring robbery, and determine me to the silly cheat ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... Porson had called upon him to ask for one of his men to accompany him to the dealer's, had told him that White bore a very bad reputation. He was suspected of being the medium through whom stolen goods in that part of Yorkshire were sent up to London for disposal. A highwayman who had been caught and executed at York, had in his confession stated that this man had acted as his go between for the disposal of the watches and other articles he took from travelers, and White's premises ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... like all of them as comes here!" answered the dame,—"'specially for Paul's sake; but what can a lone 'oman do? Many's the gentleman highwayman wot comes here, whose money is as good as the clerk's of the parish. And when a bob [shilling] is in my hand, what does it sinnify whose hand it ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Eventually the masked head-highwayman led two of his men aside. He recognized that having compacted with Jase they could not ignore him. In a whisper he ventured the suggestion, "Mebby Jase hes done come ter grief. Mebby we'd better kill ther gal atter all an' git away. But if we does we've ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... brave, and would have cared very little for a highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then in circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to his memory. He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... profession and associates, and a temperament somewhat pessimistic for a highwayman, he is not really a bad sort of fellow. His idiosyncrasies are due, doubtless, to an early disappointment in love, on account of which allowances are to be made, particularly as he retains his courtly manners, a careful regard for the misfortunes of others, so far as his occupation permits, a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... of every highwayman, I believe," charged Gresham. "You will excuse me for a few moments, please?" And he hurried away in pursuit of a man whom ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester

... got him, too? Are you a horse thief as well as highwayman? Well, poor fellow, it's lucky your lot is cast in this peaceful valley instead of on ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... used generally for remote rural areas ("the bush") and scrubby forest. bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires. bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush". (today: a "bushy") bushranger: an Australian "highwayman", who lived in the 'bush'— scrub—and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures—cf. Ned ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... believed Christ to be a myth; Controversy with the Quakers who, at their outset, disbelieved in his Divinity and in the inspiration of the Scriptures. Envy at his rapidly acquired reputation brought him baser enemies. He was called a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman. It was reported that he had 'his misses,' that he had two wives, &c. 'My foes have missed their mark in this,' he said with honest warmth: 'I am not the man. If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were hanged by the neck, John Bunyan, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... early eighties "held up" the Yosemite stage time and again. In fact, he terrorized the whole Sierra country from Redding to Sacramento. He was finally captured in San Francisco through a clew obtained from a laundry mark on a pair of white cuffs. For years, Mr. Donner cherished a boot left by the highwayman in the hurry of departure, which, much to his annoyance, was finally abstracted by some person unknown. To dispose of Black Bart; he served his term and was never seen again in the Sierras. There is a rumor that Wells Fargo & Company, the chief sufferers by his activities, made it worth his while ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering putrefaction? What heart could endure the groan of agony? Drunkenness! Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician reeling into the sick-room; and the minister with his tongue thick into the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very top of his fame, fall a gibbering sot, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... if they drilled badly, yet abhorred mutiny. But the half dozen I had taken off Argall's hands; the Dutchmen who might have been own brothers to those two Judases, Adam and Francis; the thief and the highwayman I had bought from the precious crew sent us by the King the year before; the negro and the Indians—small wonder that she shrank and cowered. It was but for a moment. I was yet seeking for words sufficiently reassuring when ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... station where they take in water, when he dismounted slowly from the little box in which he sits in ghastly mockery of his old condition with pistol and blunderbuss beside him, ready to shoot the first highwayman (or railwayman) who shall attempt to stop the horses, which now travel (when they travel at all) inside and in a portable stable invented for the purpose,—he dismounted, I say, slowly and sadly, from his post, and looking mournfully about ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... existence of peril; yet there is something exhilarating and romantic in his dashing career of incessant peril: he is ever on the wing, and ever amid novelty; there is something about his life that smacks of genuine warfare, and his existence becomes as much more respectable as the old-fashioned highwayman on his mettlesome steed was superior to the sneaking footpad, who leaped from behind a thicket and bade the unarmed pedestrian stand and deliver. But the wrecker-pirate takes his victim at a disadvantage, for he is not a genuine freebooter of the sea. He shuns an able foe and strikes ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... ease. To add to the discomfort of the evening, there was some chance of meeting highwaymen; but Major Stanley felt no uneasiness on that score, as, just before leaving his friend's house, he had examined his holster pistols, and freshly primed them. A brush with a highwayman would enhance the romance of ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... ships, M. Radisson ordered anchor up. With a deck-mop fastened in defiance to our prow, the St. Pierre slipped out of the harbour through the half-dark of those northern summer nights, and gave the heel to any highwayman waiting to attack ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... the commonest things in the world we ought not to be hypercritical in our review of singularities, or say—"These things do not happen,"—because it is indisputable that they do happen. That combination which comprises a dark night, a highwayman armed and hatted to the teeth, and myself, may be a purely fortuitous one, but will such a criticism bring any comfort to the highwayman? And the concourse of three benevolent millionaires with the person to whom poverty can do no more is ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... very well be old enough to have lived in the days of the highwaymen. Do you feel disposed, from fact, fancy, or both, to do a good winter-hearth story of a highwayman? If you do, I embrace you (per post), and throw up a cap I have purchased for ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... city officer, Jack Williams, had the common reputation of being a burglar, a highwayman and a desperado. It was said that he had several times drawn his revolver and levied money contributions on citizens at dead of night in the public streets ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... stated that the prince frequently formed one of the party which indulged in these illegal practices; that he was as lawless and desperate as the worst of them; and that he was known to boast among his boon companions of his exploits as a common highwayman, and to exhibit proudly the plunder ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... it is not, sir. You are simply the bearers of it. Permit me to ask you, however, if it is your recommendation that I yield to the demand of this crude highwayman of ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... and clear matter. If falling were all that ever happened to a good man, all his days would be a simple matter of striving and repentance. But it is not all. There come to him certain junctures, crises, when life, like a highwayman, springs upon him, demanding that he stand and deliver his convictions in the name of some righteous cause, bidding him do evil that good may come. I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good may come. I do not. I think ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... dreamy eyes through the office window, while Dave was turning over the hopelessness of his position, and inwardly cursing a system which made such conditions possible. Society protects the physically weak from the physically strong; the physical highwayman usually gets his deserts; but the mental highwayman preys upon the weak and the inexperienced and the unorganized, and Society votes him a ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey—I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... off, or what the bog-bean and wood-sage are good for. And as for the country legends, the stories of the old gable-ended farmhouses, the place where the last skirmish was fought in the civil wars, where the parish butts stood, where the last highwayman turned to bay, where the last ghost was laid by the parson, they're gone ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... or M'Clean, the fashionable highwayman, was a frequent visitor at Button's. Mr. John Taylor, of the Sun newspaper, describes Maclaine as a tall, showy, good-looking man. A Mr. Donaldson told Taylor that, observing Maclaine paid particular attention to the barmaid of the Coffee-house, the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Peveril, "this is no time for dallying. I am no highwayman, but a man of honour. Give me back that packet which you stole from me the other night; or, by all that is good, I will send a brace of balls through you, and search for ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... break their word when it is in their power to keep it,) one would not expect that she should set about deceiving again; more especially by the premeditation of writing. Thou, perhaps, wilt ask, what honest man is obliged to keep his promise with a highwayman? for well I know thy unmannerly way of making comparisons; but I say, every honest man is—and I ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... is large enough, in all conscience. Alas, young outlander, who call yourself a king! you carry the bludgeon of a highwayman, and I am afraid ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... If the highwayman has not been caught, the man that has been robbed shall state on oath what he has lost and the city or district governor in whose territory or district the robbery took place shall restore to him ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... Thereupon the highwayman departed, and Mrs. Porter whipped up her horse. In her excitement she must have used the lash too freely, for the animal started to run, the chaise was overturned, and the actress dislocated her thigh bone. When she had in part recovered from ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... before railways whirled you along like lightning), I began to recall all the dismal stories of coach accidents, and of highwaymen, which I had read or heard of during my quiet village existence. Suppose, on this very moor which we were now crossing, a highwayman rode up and popped a pistol in at the window. I myself had not much to lose, though I should have been extremely reluctant to part with the new silk purse which my mother had netted for me, and in which she and father had each placed a guinea—coins not too plentiful ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... about her mother and poetry, so I say, "Well, uh—last week we read 'The Highwayman' and 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.' They're about—I mean, we were studying metaphors and similes. Looking at the ocean today, I sure can see what Longfellow meant ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... found dead with a bullet through his head in a secluded part of the road over Heavy Tree Hill in Sonora County. Near him lay two other bodies, one afterwards identified as John Stubbs, a resident of the Hill, and probably a traveling companion of Wade's, and the other a noted desperado and highwayman, still masked, as at the moment of the attack. Wade and his companion had probably sold their lives dearly, and against odds, for another mask was found on the ground, indicating that the attack was not single-handed, and as Wade's body had not yet been ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... at the end of an elongated bunch of pines where he had been invisible until the heads of the horses appeared stood the highwayman, with menacing gun covering ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... how I'll be roasted by the Portuguese inquisition; and how I'll be impaled by the Turks; and how I'll be eaten by Cannibals; and how I'll be drowned on a voyage to the East Indies; and how I'll be robbed and murdered by a highwayman; and how I'll lose my senses; and how very mad I'll be; and how my body will be thrown out to dogs to devour; and how I'll be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and how my friend Boswell will neglect me; and how I'll be despised by the whole world; and how I will meet with ten thousand ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... like you? Scandalous! No, for, after all, you look nineteen or twenty. And who is the highwayman that thinks to rob me of my ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... arrival of the train at its destination, he invites the unwelcome intruder to drive home with him and, reaching a lonely road, shoots him through the head and gives information to the nearest magistrate that he has rid society of a dangerous highwayman. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... will be confirmed by attending to the apparent signification of the name Robin Hood. The natural refuge and stronghold of the outlaw was the woods. Hence he is termed by Latin writers silvatious, by the Normans forestier. The Anglo-Saxon robber or highwayman is called a woodrover wealdgenga, and the Norse word for outlaw is exactly equivalent.[11] It has often been suggested that Robin Hood is a corruption, or dialectic form, of Robin of the Wood; and when we remember that wood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... stage-coaches for the train and the rail, disband your City police and detective organisation, and make the transit of a letter between London and Dublin a matter of from five days to nearly as many weeks, and compute how much easier it was then than now for an adventurous highwayman, an absconding debtor, or a pair of fugitive lovers, to make good their retreat. Slow, undoubtedly, was the flight—they did not run, they walked away; but so was pursuit, and altogether, without authentic lights and official helps—a matter of post-chaises and perplexity, cross-roads and rumour, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... rapacity of a highwayman, but it was singularly blended with French politeness. He had not always been a privateersman—a calling that implies an undue love of gold; and he was quite capable of distinguishing between right ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... service is to roam over your native State, killing, robbing, plundering your fellow-citizens; a highwayman, a thief, and a murderer," continued the lieutenant very severely. "This is the second time you have visited this mansion for plunder; but you don't come out of it so well as you expected," said Deck with a sneer, evident in his tones as well as ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... any, by chance, to accost the wearer on the King's highway. Although few were abroad on account of the extreme cold, and those few would not have marveled that a gentleman should be closely muffled even as a secret assassin, or highwayman, or noticed that the three went not together to the outer door of the house, still each came separately, knocking thrice upon the panel, whereupon Sir Percy himself opened to him, that he might ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... our regular duties, the neglect of already engrossing relations in our business or profession, the surrender of body and soul, they require for the prey of idlers and strangers! Had our correspondents drawn upon us for a sum of money, had a highwayman bid us stand and deliver our purse, we should not have been so much out of pocket. But we cannot help yielding; there is no excuse or escape. We are under the operation of that most delicate and resistless of powers no successor of Euclid ever explained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... Restoration. Upon seeing Joseph Bridau in the diligence, while the artist and his mother were on a journey in 1822, he remarked that he would not care to meet him at night in the corner of a forest—he looked so much like a highwayman. That same evening Beaussier, accompanied by his wife, came to call at Hochon's in order to get a nearer view of the painter. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... of overwhelming contempt, which she could not forget and which still scorched her skin like a brand of infamy? Was he too proud to bow to a sentence which put his crime on a level with that of any highwayman? No doubt he did not recognize his judges. She could, then, draw him down to herself, make him dependent upon the breath of her lips; and she forgot the iron alternatives that confront one's destiny here, and let herself go like a child that knows ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... is a good-natured, amiable person, but her conduct on the very day after that heavenly season on the shore was worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. She has lacerated the heart in my bosom, and torn me away from this place like a ruthless highwayman. That is ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... where we next arrived, we observed, during a saunter around the village, a curious stone erected to the memory of a highwayman rejoicing in the most un-romantic name of Snooks, who its was hanged here at the beginning of the century for ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes

... after this, one named Dubut, of Caen, sent an emissary to the chateau of Saint-Savin named Hiley—commonly called "The Laborer," long known as a highwayman, a robber of diligences—to give information as to the men who could safely ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... out into the road this minute, and stop those ladies like a peaceable highwayman, and tell them you have promised to marry me, and that their anxiety as to our intimacy may be at rest? Give me but leave and I will do it. It will make Mrs. Barton comfortable. Then you and I can walk away into those beckoning woods, and I can have ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell

... couldn't think of any. There are no highwaymen on Blackheath now, I am sorry to say. And though Oswald said half of us could be highwaymen and the other half rescue party, Dora kept on saying it would be wrong to be a highwayman—and so we had ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... at least I mean a buggy—to fetch you, as soon as you are off duty, and return you the same way on Monday. Come, girls, 'twill be dark before we are home; and since the patrols were withdrawn, I hear there's a highwayman down this road again. That is one of the blessings of peace, Scudamore; even as Latin and Greek are. 'Apertis otia portis'—Open the gates for laziness. Ah, I should have done well at old Winton, they tell me, if I had not happened to run away ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... and that we should have a scene, and began to regard myself in the light of an avenger of an insulted Welsh beauty, when my heroine paused, and I believe actually deliberated whether or not to comply before two spectators! Certain it is that she yielded the highwayman her hand, and, bidding him a gentle good-night in Welsh, smilingly and blushingly left the car. "Ah," said the villain, "these Welsh girls are capital; I know them like a book, and have had many a ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... old highwayman's song are very corrupt. We are indebted for the following version, which contains several emendations, to Mr. W. H. Ainsworth. The song, which may probably be referred to the age of Charles II., is a spirited ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... more than one local chronicler that John Whitfield, of Coathill, a notorious north country highwayman, about 1777, was gibbeted alive on Barrock, a hill a few miles from Wetherell, near Carlisle. He kept the countryside in a state of terror, and few would venture out after nightfall for fear of encountering him. He shot a man on horseback in open daylight; a boy saw him commit ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... I am neither a burglar nor a highwayman, nor anything else worth bothering; I'm just a poet, and I'm crazy, to all practical purposes, so please get used to me and let me wander about the streets at these strange hours of ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... one of the highwaymen fell. All this was so sudden that Edward had hardly time to draw his pistol and put spurs to his horse before the parties were upon him, and were passing him. Edward levelled at the second highwayman as he passed him, and the man fell. The third highwayman, perceiving this, turned his horse to the side of the road, cleared a ditch, and galloped away across the heath. The man who had been attacked had pulled up his horse when Edward came to his assistance, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... suspicion) with highwaymen outside, to ascertain if the traveler carried any valuables; so that when he left the hospitable inn he was quite likely to be stopped on the highway and relieved of his money. The highwayman was a conspicuous character. One of the most romantic of these gentry at one time was a woman named Mary Frith, born in 1585, and known as Moll Cut-Purse. She dressed in male attire, was an adroit fencer, a bold ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... from his leafy covert (one of the numerous places found in this region, overlooking the road) peered the treacherous eyes of this bold highwayman. Here he awaited the coming of the twilight, patiently, silently, for he knew that the old man was alone, and like a fierce wild beast, he did not stir from his retreat until the gleam of light from the cabin door announced his hour ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... drawled, "sent back here from Boston to raise the country against the invasion. They say he was a highwayman once, but we Tories"—he laughed shamelessly—"say many things in these days which may not help us at the judgment day. Wait, there's that little rosebud, Claire Putnam, Sir John's flame. Take her in to table; she's a pretty little plaything. Lady Johnson, who was ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you'll ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... was all done in a minute, and with jolting tread I stalked away before any one came up. Of course there was a great scandal. My poor mother was grieved and humiliated, ashamed to meet any of the neighbors; and my father swore that instead of becoming a school teacher I ought to turn out as a highwayman. My brothers thought to have some fun with me, but I frightened them with a roar, and for a time they were afraid to smile in my presence. I was almost heartbroken over my disgrace. Without undue praise I can say that I was generous and kindhearted; even as a child I ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... notable highwayman, upon whose head a price has long been set, has this night taken Cuthbert Trevlyn prisoner, hoping to win from him the secret of the hidden treasure which now lies in his keeping. Cuthbert has refused to tell him aught; and now he purposes to strive to turn this to good account for himself ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... London was perfectly direct, so that there was no further risk of his losing his way. The solitude and the dismal appearance of the country, together with its ill repute, made him quicken his pace, though he had no fear of molestation; having nothing to lose, he would be but poor prey for a highwayman, and he trusted to his cudgel to protect him from the attentions of any single footpad ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... found in his own evil passions and in the evil conduct of those who urge him on, not in any failure by others or by the State to do justice to him or his. He is a malefactor and nothing else. He is in no sense, in no shape or way, a "product of social conditions," save as a highwayman is "produced" by the fact than an unarmed man happens to have a purse. It is a travesty upon the great and holy names of liberty and freedom to permit them to be invoked in such a cause. No man or body of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... there is any difference between the grocer and the railroad company, it lies in the fact that the former's old customers would soon find relief at a rival store, while the patrons of the railroad at non-competitive points are like the traveler in the hands of a highwayman, without immediate redress. The railway company which discriminates between competitive and non-competitive points forgets that its line is a common highway for all points tributary to it; that all have equal rights, and that the only differences in tariff which the principles ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... extravagantly than that braggadocio, claiming to have killed from seventy to eighty men in the course of his experience. Mosely had been taken in by his confident tone, and knowing that he was himself a sham desperado, though a genuine thief and highwayman, had been made to feel uneasy while ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... our cities, once reasonably secure from crimes of violence, have now become the field of operations for the foot-pad and highwayman. The days of Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard have returned, with this serious difference—that the Turpins and Sheppards of our day are not dependent upon the horse, but have the powerful automobile to facilitate their crimes and make ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... (and Professor Spence continues to argue that they are) a mistaken thought is quite as powerful a reality as the other kind. Only let it be conceived with sufficient force and nourished by continual attention and it will grow into a veritable highwayman of the mind—a thievish tyrant of one's mental roads, holding their more legitimate travellers at the stand ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... particularly brave show in her eighteenth-century costume, with her pink satin finery and powdered hair. But there was no mistaking the adulation in the boy's eyes, and even in the midst of her misery she felt a little glow of gratification. He was looking alluringly disreputable in his highwayman's dress, and the dark eyes shone upon her with fascinating audacity as he lifted ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... may be sure that Fritz was on the watch in the open. He always is, like the highwayman hiding behind a hedge and envying people who have comfortable beds. Probably from a distance he had a peep through his periscope at the Grand Fleet before the approach of the policeman destroyers made him duck beneath the water; and probably ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... in pursuit of Monmouth's ill-fated followers; George IV. and his gay courtiers on the Brighton road; beaux and beauties in their well-appointed carriages bound for Tunbridge Wells, Cheltenham, or Bath; splendid teams with crowded coaches, and great covered waggons laden with merchandise; the highwayman at dusk in quest of belated travellers, and companies of farmers and cattle-dealers riding home from market together ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... professionals upon any ale-house bench without any one being able to pick him out as one of the wealthiest landowners in England. It was an age of eccentricity, but he had carried his peculiarities to a length which surprised even the out- and-outers by marrying the sweetheart of a famous highwayman when the gallows had come between her and her lover. She was perched by his side, looking very smart in a flowered bonnet and grey travelling-dress, while in front of them the four splendid coal- black ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the meantime the horse-dealer had mounted. With his gaunt figure, his short riding-jacket under the broad-brimmed, varnished hat, his yellow breeches over his lean thighs, his high leather boots, his large, heavy spurs, and his whip, he looked like a highwayman. He rode away cursing and swearing, without saying good-by, leading the brown mare by a halter. He never once glanced back at the farm-house, but the mare several times bent her neck around and emitted a doleful neigh, as if complaining because her good days were now over. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on Suum Cuique was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and execution of some notorious highwayman. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... somewhere far down the Brightwater. No matter! Here was her opportunity; for she saw, with quick appreciation, that she would now be able to place herself between him and the ranch buildings without showing herself to the men at the corrals. And then? She could not "hold him up" like a highwayman; and if she did not stop him he would raise his hat (perhaps), and ride past her without a word. And how was she to stop him? She had come there with a very definite purpose, but with no clear plan, trusting to the inspiration of the moment. And now the moment had arrived; but where was ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... market—England—still shut against them. Moreover, the high seas during the closing years of the eighteenth and the opening of the nineteenth centuries were not as to-day, when a pirate is as scarce a beast of prey as a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. The Napoleonic wars had broken down men's natural sense of order and of right, and the seas swarmed with privateers, who on occasion were ready enough to turn pirates. Many whalers fell a prey ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... black lightning of perdition; such a man, we say, he could never forgive. It was in vain that large rewards were subscribed and offered, it was in vain that every effort was made to discover the culprit. Not only was there no trace of him got, but other robberies had been committed by a celebrated highwayman of the day, named Finnerty, whom neither ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... gardens of Lansdowne and Downshire Houses to Berkeley Street. The bars at each entrance were set up after the escape of a highwayman, who galloped through. ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... consisted of gold coin, which it was impossible to identify. Lord Liverpool, however, had no such fears of highwaymen as the noble earl. He once, when he was a boy, he said, lost all the money he had in his pockets by a highwayman; and it was natural that he should be as much alive to this danger as the noble earl. But still, with all his early associations, he could not help thinking that if danger must revive with a return to a metallic currency, it would have been felt ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... about Kenneth's manner and look, and a tone of command in his voice that there was no resisting, especially when it was coupled with such physical strength, so the countryman heaved a sigh and took off his smock-frock and hob-nailed boots, while the supposed highwayman took off his coat ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... the entrance lies at the back of an old-fashioned fireplace. A hole leads to a passage which opens into a cavernous recess beneath, to which there is ample room for anybody to descend. The local wiseacres declare that there is, or was, a communication between this secret chamber and another famous highwayman's inn, the old "Magpie" directly on the Bath road, and that those who preyed on travellers used to bolt from one house to the other like hunted rabbits. No one seemingly has himself ever explored this mysterious subterranean passage. Beyond Hounslow, on the Bath road, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... idea." The sheriff snapped the handcuffs into place. Then Fairchild shut off the pumps and they started toward the machine. Back in Ohadi more news awaited them. Harry, if Harry had been the highwayman, had gone to no expense for his outfit. The combined general store and hardware emporium of Gregg Brothers had been robbed of the articles necessary for a disguise,—also the revolvers and their bullets. Robert Fairchild ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... his mechanical training, but whence he derived and how he maintained his exuberance and spontaneity has often puzzled me. He himself accounts for it on the score of heredity, in that an ancestress of his married a highwayman who was hanged at Tyburn under ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... wonderful hypnotist, and he hypnotized the bandit, and just as the other one, who wasn't hypnotized, was searching his pockets McGuire said to the hypnotized bandit, 'You're a policeman, shoot this highwayman.' And the hypnotized one was the bandit who had the gun, and he turned around, as Alderman McGuire said, and shot the other, unhypnotized bandit and killed him. But when he reported the entire incident to the station—I was on duty that night—the captain wouldn't believe ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... hovel, for ever, and departed to cart merchandise to market? Was it on the highway that you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you to some fat, red-faced soldier's daughter; after which your harness and team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... his whip and his horses started off on a trot, leaving him seated on the box. The same evening we passed through the Champs Elysees; Desgenais, seeing another carriage passing, stopped it after the manner of a highwayman; he intimidated the coachman by threats and forced him to climb down and lie flat on his stomach. He then opened the carriage door and found within a young man and lady motionless with fright. Whispering to me to imitate him, we began ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... interrupted by a dismayed exclamation from several of the wild band. "A teacher!" As if with one accord they turned and fled into the darkness. For even a highwayman in China respects a man of learning. The travelers went on again, with something of relief and something of the exultation that youth feels in having faced danger. But a second trouble was upon them. One of those terrible storms that still ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... stop thief! a highwayman!" Not one of them was mute; And all and each that passed that way Did ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... goodness! I thought you was a highwayman. Oh, dear—oh, dear! Ain't there any way to stop ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... men, fully armed and completely organized, who within the space of a single hour had captured every strategic point in the capital, and to its utter amazement held it up in the name of a new "Republic," in much the same way as a highwayman of old used to hold up ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... caught his smooth chin with his finger and thumb. "A man on the market," he explained slowly, "is a social highwayman." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... after Mr. Conway; accost him on the road; represent my necessities to him, and request a small loan out of his abundant means, to prevent myself from being deprived of my luxuries—liquor and cards. Is that a roundabout way of saying I intended to act the highwayman, perhaps the—murderer—on this occasion? By no means, madam! What is highway robbery? Is it not the brutal and wanton robbery of the poor as well as the rich? Well, I was not going to rob anybody. I was going to request ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... necessary to translate the deposition of the witness and the defence of the prisoner. This language has many dialects. The sly dexterity of the pickpocket, the brutal ferocity of the footpad, the more elevated career of the highwayman and the deadly purpose of the midnight ruffian is each strictly appropriate in the terms which distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... A reputed highwayman, and noted deerstealer, named William Stallard, living on the Upper Purlieu, above the Hawthorns, is stated to have been the instigator of these outrages, and others of a similar kind on Mr. Prince's flour-mill at Longhope. His lawless career, however, brought him ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... pistol at the head; but otherwise we differ from Front de Boeuf, or Dick Turpin, merely in being less dexterous, more cowardly, and more cruel. More cruel, I say, because the fierce baron and the redoubted highwayman are reported to have robbed, at least by preference, only the rich; we steal habitually from the poor. We buy our liveries, and gild our prayer-books, with pilfered pence out of children's and sick men's wages, and thus ingeniously dispose a given quantity of Theft, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... that," Graham returned, mollified, and then the boys, turning the bend of the road, halted as abruptly as if a highwayman had checked their advance. For hidden from sight by a tangled thicket of underbrush and vines, five girls in white shirt-waists and short skirts were waiting their arrival. The girls shrieked delightedly ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... justice, in order to shield his wife from persecution by a former husband who reappears after being supposed dead. Bulwer's novel of "Paul Clifford," with its final situation of the worldly-minded judge, Sir William Brandon, learning that the highwayman whom he is in the act of sentencing is his own son, and dying of the knowledge, was also well known to Stevenson, and probably counted for something in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... highwayman! upon my life, girl, you have hit it, and this box is some new-purchased booty. Now, could we find him ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... consequence of the sudden death of his beloved, and the discovery that she had worn a hair-shirt next her delicate body. Be this as it may, many allusions in his poems suggest that he had lived the wild life of the barbarous Umbrian cities, being a highwayman perhaps, forfeiting his life, and also having to fly the country before the fury of some family vendetta. On the other hand, it is plain at every line that he was a frantic ascetic, taking a savage pleasure in vilifying all mundane things, and passionately disdainful of study, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... temporarily suspended his "fishing" operations, and being free from the annoyances of the "Aggerawayter," caused consternation to the minds of coachman, guard, and passengers of the said mail, by riding abruptly up, a la highwayman, and demanding to speak to a passenger named Mr. Jarvis Lorry, then on his way to Paris,—as faithfully chronicled in A Tale of Two Cities. Again, in the early part of the present century, when a certain friendless but dear and artless boy, named David Copperfield,—who ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... thief than the burglar or highwayman. It goes beyond the train-wrecker or the vile wretch who used to lure sailing vessels upon a treacherous shore, in its relentless heartlessness. Once it begins to control it never releases its hold unless its victim wakes up to the sure ruin ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... Colenso, and no reports of parliamentary debates. It is to our fancies an 'island valley of Avilion,' or, less magniloquently, a pleasant land of Cockaine, where we may sleep away the disturbance of battle, and even read through 'Clarissa Harlow.' We could put up with an occasional highwayman in Hyde Park, and perhaps do not think that our comfort would be seriously disturbed by a dozen executions in a morning at Tyburn. In such visionary glances through the centuries we have always the advantage of selecting our own position ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen









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