And now the coach was rolling rapidly over Hadley Heath, that dreaded spot where so many travellers had met with robbery, and sometimes death, from highwaymen (one of whom and the most notorious, one Richard Turpin, was hanged at York a little more than a year after we passed over it); and the passengers began to point out to each other the bodies of three malefactors swinging in chains as a warning to others. Yet, it being daytime as we crossed the heath, I took very little heed of their stories and legends, but peered out of the window and told Oliver that this place was not many miles from London, and that we should soon be there now. As, indeed, he could see for himself, for soon the villages came thicker and thicker together; between Whetstone and Highgate we passed many beautiful seats, doubtless the suburban retreats of noblemen and gentry, while, at Highgate itself, so close were the dwellings together that, had we not met a party of huntsmen with their horns and hounds, who, the guard told us, were returning from hunting, we should have supposed we were already in London instead of being still four miles from it. But those four miles passed quickly and soon we arrived. So now we had come to the inn whence the north-western coaches departed, and at which they arrived three times a week with a regularity that seems incredible, since, even in the worst of wintry weather, they were scarce ever more than a day behind in their time. And here amongst all the bustle of our arrival, of the shouts of the hackney coachmen to those whom they would have as fares, and of the porters with their knots, Oliver and I engaged a coach, had our necessaries put on it, and gave directions to be driven to my mother's abode.