much ashamed of himself. 'I can't think what was the matter with me—I suppose I'm not quite accustomed to it yet.' And that very evening, to prove to Plunket—and himself—that he was not such a coward as he seemed, he attacked a gentleman in Hyde Park and robbed him of a gold watch and chain and a small sum of money.
After this Maclean shook off his timidity, and became known to his brother highwaymen as one of the most daring and successful 'gentlemen of the road,'—for so the people called them. Only on one occasion did he run any risk of being caught, and then he took refuge on board a vessel that was sailing for Holland, and sought out his brother at the Hague.
'It is so long since we have seen each other, I could not but come,' he said to the minister, who, suspecting nothing, was delighted to welcome him, and insisted on hearing the story of James's life since they had last parted. For a whole evening the good man listened to a moving tale, not one word of which was true, except that which related to James's marriage and the starting of the grocer's shop. The minister praised and pitied, and told it all to his friends, rich and prosperous citizens who were proud to invite the fine gentleman from London to their parties. And if at the end of the evening some purses and watches were missing, well! they might have been robbed on their way hither, or have forgotten them at home. At any rate, nobody dreamed for one moment of suspecting their minister's guest.
But in spite of all the precautions which, notwithstanding his recklessness, Maclean thought well to take—in spite of his silence respecting his own affairs, and his frequent changes of lodgings so that no one might connect him with one particular neighbourhood, he at last put the rope round his own neck by an act of gross carelessness.
On the morning of June 26, 1750, James robbed Lord Eglinton in his travelling carriage, and a little later in the same day attacked the Salisbury coach, in company with Plunket.
