Not only solitary highwaymen, but bands of marauders, scoured the treeless and hedgeless wastes of Salisbury Plain and its neighbourhood. One of these was known as the "Cherhill Gang," and chiefly favoured the locality between Marlborough, Calne, and Devizes. Individual members of this brotherhood were taken from time to time, hanged at Devizes, and afterwards gibbeted at a spot high on the downs, between Beckhampton and Cherhill. The remaining members of the band and the friends and relations of the departed of course bitterly resented this kind of post-mortem publicity, and very often they would either come by night and saw through the post of the gibbet and so bring the whole thing to the ground, or would climb up the post and bring down the tattered relics of their friend, swinging there in his chains or his iron cage, and give it decent burial. There is much to be said in favour of them. But after this had continued for some time, the authorities hit upon a plan of binding the lower portion of the gibbet round with iron, of tarring it, and of driving some hundreds of nails half-way into the post, just by way of deterrents to climbers and others. A very pretty story—pretty in its peculiar way—is told of Serjeant Merewether successfully defending one of the Cherhill Gang at the assizes, and of his being robbed of his fee that night, by his interesting client, when on his return home. Another member of the same gang had the peculiar fancy of stripping himself perfectly naked, by night, and then springing out of a wayside bush upon the startled traveller. The unexpected spectacle, he said, was so alarming that robbery became very easy. But this was probably only a midsummer freak. Imagination refuses to contemplate even the most desperate highwaymen in midwinter, when snow-squalls swept Marlborough Downs, emulating those picturesque figures, the naked aborigines of the poet's vision: When, wild in woods, the noble savage ran. I will quote here but one of the many old newspaper reports of doings on this spot, but that a picturesque one. The date is January 1743: "A captain in the army, who was going to Bath in a postchaise, was stopped near Sandy Lane by two highwaymen, by one of whom he was told that he wanted but a guinea, which he hoped to be soon able to pay him again. The captain gave him the guinea, and the fellow gave the driver a shilling, and told the gentleman if he was stopped by any one else, to say 'Virgin Mary,' that being the watchword for the day. They had not gone far before they were stopped by four persons; but on being given the watchword, they raised their hats, and rode off." [Illustration: "CLIBBORN'S POST."]