couple lived in a solitary house, distant from any high road, near the wood called “Edlington Scrubs.” After they had gone to rest a couple of men broke into the house. Hearing a disturbance, the wife opened the one bedroom door upstairs, connected with the room below by a “Jacob’s ladder,” and looked down through the trap door at the ladder head, with a “dip” in her hand, to see the cause of the disturbance. She was immediately accosted with the demand, “Your money, or your life.” She replied, very deliberately, “Well, life is not worth having without the money.” One of the men began mounting the ladder, but meanwhile the husband had armed himself with a strong bill-hook, a tool for cutting hedges; he took his place by the trap door, and said to the burglar on the ladder, “I shall cut your head off if you come up here.” This position he maintained, moving his weapon backwards and forwards over the trap door, his figure being revealed to the thieves by the light of his wife’s dip, until day began to break, when, to avoid being recognised, they went off, having to content themselves with what spoil the second man could find in the room below. On another occasion, a narrow escape from highway robbery occurred in Woodhall under the following circumstances. It was at the time of the great August Fair at Horncastle, much larger at that time (in the forties) than it is at the present day; for it then lasted some three weeks. That fair has been the occasion of many robberies, and more than one murder. Skeletons have been found buried under the brick floors of public-houses in the town, being doubtless all that remained of those who had fallen the victims of the “sacra fames auri.” The principal farmer in Woodhall was riding home leisurely from the fair late in the evening, when at a point in the road between Langton and Woodhall, about two fields from Old Woodhall Church, where a cartshed then stood contiguous to the road, two men rushed out from the concealment of the shed and seized his bridle. One of them told him roughly to give up his money, or he would pistol him. The other held up a lantern to his face, and then said, “Oh, you’re not the man we want; you may go, and think yourself lucky.” The farmer in question was not much of a horse-dealer, and would not be likely to have much money about him. The man really wanted was a well-known character, then living at Stixwould, by name Grantham, who would be almost certain to be going home with pockets fairly full, as he dealt largely in horse-flesh, and the men had probably seen him make a good bargain or two in the fair that day. The farmer, thus set at liberty, hurried to his home, only two fields distant; and, having a shrewd guess for whom they were lying in wait, he sent an active young fellow by a short cut across the fields to warn Grantham. The lad succeeded in intercepting the latter before he arrived at the point of danger; and Grantham, turning his horse round, rode home