"Ha, ha!" laughed Tom. "And now, Dick, to change the subject. You are off, I understand, to Yorkshire to-night. 'Pon my soul, you are a wonderful fellow--an _alibi_ personified!--here and everywhere at the same time--no wonder you are called the flying highwayman. To-day in town--to-morrow at York--the day after at Chester. The devil only knows where you will pitch your quarters a week hence. There are rumors of you in all counties at the same moment. This man swears you robbed him at Hounslow; that on Salisbury Plain; while another avers you monopolize Cheshire and Yorkshire, and that it isn't safe even to _hunt_ without pops in your pocket. I heard some devilish good stories of you at D'Osyndar's t'other day; the fellow who told them to me little thought I was a brother blade." "You flatter me," said Dick, smiling complacently; "but it's no merit of mine. Black Bess alone enables me to do it, and hers be the credit. Talking of being everywhere at the same time, you shall hear what she once did for me in Cheshire. Meantime, a glass to the best mare in England. You won't refuse that toast, Tom. Ah! if your mistress is only as true to you as my nag to me, you might set at naught the tightest hempen cravat that was ever twisted, and defy your best friend to hurt you. Black Bess! and God bless her! And now for the song." Saying which, with much emotion, Turpin chanted the following rhymes: BLACK BESS Let the lover his mistress's beauty rehearse, And laud her attractions in languishing verse; Be it mine in rude strains, but with truth to express, The love that I bear to my bonny Black Bess. From the west was her dam, from the east was her sire, From the one came her swiftness, the other her fire; No peer of the realm better blood can possess Than flows in the veins of my bonny Black Bess. Look! Look! how that eyeball grows bright as a brand! That neck proudly arches, those nostrils expand! Mark! that wide flowing mane! of which each silky tress Might adorn prouder beauties--though none like Black Bess. Mark! that skin sleek as velvet, and dusky as night, With its jet undisfigured by one lock of white; That throat branched with veins, prompt to charge or caress Now is she not beautiful?--bonny Black Bess! Over highway and by-way, in rough and smooth weather, Some thousands of miles have we journeyed together; Our couch the same straw, and our meal the same mess No couple more constant than I and Black Bess. By moonlight, in darkness, by night, or by day, Her headlong career there is nothing can stay; She cares not for distance, she knows not distress: Can you show me a courser to match with Black Bess? "Egad! I should think not," exclaimed King; "you are as sentimental on the subject of your mare, as I am when I think of my darling Susan. But pardon my interruption. Pray proceed."