In Kensington Gore (which might have obtained its sanguinary name from these encounters--but didn't) a certain Mr. Jackson, of the Court of Requests at Westminster, was requested to "stand and deliver" on the night of December 27, in the same year, by four desperadoes. And so the tale goes on, with such curious side-lights on the state of society as are afforded by the stories of how pedestrians, desirous of journeying from London to Knightsbridge and Kensington, were used in those "good old times" to wait in Piccadilly until there were gathered a sufficient number of them to render the perilous journey safer. Even then they did not rely only on their numbers, but went well armed with swords, pistols, and cudgels. [Sidenote: _TURNPIKE GATES_] It is scarcely to be supposed that the turnpike-gates earned much money in those times, when ways were foul and dangerous, and when the cut-throats who lurked about that delectable "Halfway House" were in their prime. Printed here will be found several views of the first gate, showing its development from 1786 to 1797. It will be seen that a high brick wall then bounded the Park. This was continued all the way, except where the houses, low inns, and cottages on the north side of the road stood, and where their successors stand to-day, to the eastward and westward of the present "Albert Gate." That imposing entrance to the Park was made in 1846, and the immense houses on either side--the "two Gibraltars," as they were called--built. They were so called because it was thought they would never be taken; but the one on the east side, now the French Embassy, was soon let to Hudson, the Railway King. As mentioned just now, the "Halfway House" stood where the Prince of Wales's Gate opens into the Park. It stood there until 1848, when the ground was purchased for £3000, and the house pulled down. If the owners had kept the land, their descendants to-day could have sold it for a sum that would represent a handsome fortune, as evidenced by the fact that a plot of ground of the same size, on which Thorney House stood, in Kensington Gore was sold in 1898 for £100,000. Thus does the value of land increase in the neighbourhood of London.