I do not think the advertiser ever heard of Daniel Wilkinson or of his wall-eyed horse again; although it does not seem to have been a very desirable animal. Horses of good points were duly noticed by the Highway-men of the Heath, and many an one was taken by force from the groom exercising them. An instance of this is found in an offer of a reward, appearing in the _London Gazette_, of March 15th, 1686, when a “Black Mare, 15 hands high, about 4 Years old, having all her paces,” was “taken away from a Gentleman’s Man upon Newmarket Heath, by several Highway-men.” Three guineas and expenses were offered as a reward, but we may readily suppose that no one ever qualified for it. The dangers of the road became even more acute twelve years later, in the reign of William III., when the wars in which England had been engaged were brought for the while to a conclusion; and disbanded soldiers lacking civil employment, and probably not wanting any while “the Road,” as an institution, remained possible, made every highway as dangerous to travellers as an expedition into an enemy’s country would have been. Epping Forest formed a most convenient centre for such as these; for it was densely wooded, contained caves and natural harbourages for desperadoes, and commanded several roads. Here a fraternity of freebooters, to the number of thirty, sworn to stand by one another to the last extremity, found a home in the leafy coverts in the neighbourhood of High Beech and Waltham Cross. Never, since the romantic days of Robin Hood and Little John, in their refuge under the greenwood trees of Sherwood Forest, had England known the like. These brethren built huts and storehouses, and came forth when they thought fit, to plunder and to slay. The King, journeying to Newmarket with distinguished company, was safe only because well escorted; and others, not so strongly guarded, were attacked, with loss of life, soon after he had passed. An armed force, cautiously advancing into these wilds, did at last succeed in destroying the houses of this gang of land buccaneers, but they soon assembled again, and were strong enough, or impudent enough, to send a written and signed challenge to the Government, to come and dislodge them; which the Government accordingly did, in its own good time, in 1692, when, by the heroic method of posting detachments of Dragoons at a distance of ten miles from London on all the great roads, and by forming a chain of patrols, the Highway-men were in some instances brought to battle, killed or captured, or driven out of the business for a time, until such unusually severe measures were withdrawn and the Gentlemen of the Road were again suffered to pursue their avocation in peace.