TOM ROCKET.
t happened to my father,” said the tall man in the chimney corner, “and that’s how I came to know all about it.”
The chimney corner is that of the Rising Sun, a pleasant little roadside inn, about two miles from Northampton, and the tall man is the president of a bowling-club that met there, once a fortnight, principally to dine. The “it,” of which the speaker’s relative was the hero, is the adventure which forms the subject of this narrative.
The reason why we were listening to stories, instead of playing bowls, was simply this. One of the heaviest thunder-storms that I can remember, broke over the Rising Sun that afternoon. All during dinner we could see great ragged, copper-coloured clouds banking up against the wind, and the cloth was hardly off the table, when spit! spat! spat! against the diamond-shaped window-panes came a few heavy hail-stones, then came the lightning, then came the thunder, and then came the rain, as though it had not rained for ten years, and was determined to make up for lost time. So there was nothing for it but to sit still and amuse ourselves, as best we could, in-doors; and the conversation having turned upon travelling, and the dangers of the road before railways were invented, Mr. Josh Sandiger, our president, sitting and smoking his pipe in the chimney corner, volunteered to tell us a tale of those times, and said he, “It happened to my father, and that’s how I came to know all about it.”
I do not think you would like me to give you the story just as Mr. Josh gave it us; you might get vexed with his pipe. He always smokes a very long clay pipe, which seems to require a great deal of management to get it to draw properly. He never says more than about six words at a time; then he has a pull at his pipe, and goes on again, giving you a whiff of words, and then a whiff of smoke, whilst you are turning them over in your mind and wondering what is coming next. About every tenth whiff, he takes his pipe out of his mouth and looks gravely into the bowl; then he takes the tobacco-stopper, presses down the ashes carefully, and shakes them out on the hob; then he looks into it again, and, if it is all right, he dips the shank end into his brandy and water, looks into the bowl a third time, and gives it a rub with his cuff. Next, he opens his mouth wide, puts the sealing-wax end in, closes his lips upon it slowly, and then goes on again with his story, six words at a time as before. He is reckoned a very emphatic speaker in these parts, is our president. And so, of course, he is; but I must confess, out of his hearing, that all this fidgetting, these pauses, and puffings, and stoppings, and rubbings, and lookings at nothing at all, in the middle of a story, irritate me sometimes to that degree that I feel inclined to run at him, knock his pipe out of his mouth, and shriek at him to get on faster—that I do!
It would be as well, perhaps, then, if I were to quote his own words as nearly as I can recollect them straight on, and put his pipe out.
My father (continued Mr. Josh), used often to say that he would like to see the man who could rob him upon the highway, and one fine November evening he did see him.
You young fellows who are accustomed to be whisked away a hundred miles between your breakfast and your dinner by an express-train, and grumble vastly if you are ten minutes behind time, don’t know much about what travelling was in l795—cross country travelling ’specially. Folks did not leave their homes then if they could help it. It’s all very fine to talk about the beauties of the country, and the delights of a change of scene, but when there are more highwaymen than scavengers or police about, the roads are not so very charming, I can tell you. Why, it was a week’s journey from here to London and back, in those days! and if you got home with whole bones and a full purse, you were not in a hurry to tempt Providence and Tom Rocket a second time.
Tom Rocket was a highwayman. No one ever christened him Tom, and his father’s name was not Rocket. When he was tried for his life at Warwick Assizes, he was arraigned as Charles Jackson, and they were particular about names then. If you indicted a man as Jim, and his true name was Joe, he got off; and when the law was altered—so that they could set such errors right at the trial—people, leastwise lawyers, said that the British Constitution was being pulled up, root and branch. But that’s neither here nor there.
I cannot tell you how it was that he came to be known as Tom Rocket, and if I could, it would not have anything to do with my story. For six years he was the most famous thief in the Midland counties, and for six years no one knew what he was like. He was a lazy fellow, was Tom; he never