However, Master Nicks, who was mounted on a bay mare, effectually despoiled the traveller and rode away, reaching York on the afternoon of the same day. Dismounting there at an inn, he changed his riding-clothes and repaired to the bowling-green, where he found the Lord Mayor of York playing bowls with several other tradesmen. The artful rogue, in order to fix himself, the date, and the hour in that magistrate's memory, made a bet with him upon the game, took an opportunity to ask him the time, and by some means contrived to give him occasion to bear in mind the day of the month, in case he should chance to be arrested on suspicion of the affair. Sure enough, he was apprehended some time later, and when put upon his trial the jury acquitted him, as they held it impossible for a man to be at two places so remote in one day. After his acquittal, all danger being past, he confessed the truth of the matter to the judge, already doubtful of the jury's wisdom, and the affair coming to the knowledge of Charles the Second, his Majesty eke-named this speedy road-agent "Swiftnicks." This name conceals the identity of John, or William, Nevison, who was executed on Knavesmire, York, in 1685. His exploit in thus riding from near Rochester to York is the original of the later, inferior and wholly fictitious story of Dick Turpin's ride from London to York, on Black Bess; an exploit never performed by him. [Sidenote: MRS. LYNN LINTON] One presently becomes more tolerant of Gad's Hill, for, coming to Charles Dickens' house and the old "Falstaff" inn, almost opposite, there opens a view over the surrounding country that is really fine, and the road goes down, too, towards Strood, in a manner eminently picturesque. The story is well known of how, even when but a "queer small boy," Dickens always had a great desire to, some day, be the owner of the place, and how his father, who would take him past here on country walks from Chatham, told him that if he "were to be very persevering, and were to work hard," he might some day come to live in it; but it is not equally a matter of common knowledge that the house had been also the object of an equal affection, years before, to the Reverend Mr. Lynn, father of Mrs. Lynn Linton, who tells us how her early years were spent here, and how, when her father died, it was she who sold the estate to the novelist. She gives also a most picturesque account of Gad's Hill in those times. The coaches were still running when Mrs. Lynn Linton, as a girl, lived here.