The "Old Pack Horse" has been somewhat modernized of late years by additions built out on the ground floor, but it remains substantially the same building at which Jack Rann, the famous "Sixteen-string Jack" of highway romance, may have taken a last drink with which to screw up his courage just before setting out to rob Dr. Bell, the chaplain to the Princess Amelia, in Gunnersbury Lane, near by. "Sixteen-string Jack" was hanged for that job in 1774. He was peculiarly unfortunate, for Turnham Green and Gunnersbury were veritable Alsatias then, and those who travelled here should not have mentioned so ordinary a happening as having their purses taken. Indeed, it was so usual an occurrence that Horace Walpole tells us of a certain Lady Brown who, visiting here, always went provided with a purse full of brass tokens for the highwaymen. Imagination, conjuring up a picture of a Turpin or a Claude du Vall riding away with a pocketful of guineas which, on arriving home, he discovers to be counterfeits, provokes a smile. XI There are changes impending not far from here. Who that knows Kew Bridge has not an affection for that hump-backed old structure, although it presents many difficulties to the rider? Kew Bridge is doomed, and the powers that be are going to pull it down and build another in its stead--and one, it is almost unnecessary to add, not at all picturesque. Farewell, then, to the suburban delights of Kew. They are going to "improve" the river at Kew also--that river where, in summer time, the steamers get hung up on the sandbanks for lack of water. Alas, then, for the picturesque foreshore of Strand-on-the-Green! [Illustration: KEW BRIDGE, LOW WATER.] [Sidenote: _HIGHWAYMEN_] The passengers by the Bath Flying Machine grew at this point a shade paler. They generally expected to be robbed on Hounslow Heath, and their expectations were almost invariably realized by the gentlemen in cocked hats and crape masks, who were by no means backward in coming forward. The fine flower of the highwaymen practised on the Heath, and they did their spiriting gently and with so much courtesy that it was almost (not quite) a pleasure to hand over those rings and guineas of which so plenteous a store was collected every night.