There was a paltry parcel of books at the Stag o' Tyne, and these I read over and over again at my leisure. There was a History of the Persecutions undergone by the Quakers, and Bishop Sprat's Narrative of the Conspiracy of Blackhead and the others against him. There was Foxe's Martyrs, and God's Revenge against Murder (a very grim tome), and Mr. Daniel Defoe's Life of Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack. These, with two or three Play-books, and a Novel of Mrs. Aphra Behn (very scurrilous), a few Ballads, and some ridiculous Chap-books about Knights and Fairies and Dragons, made up the tattered and torn library of our house in Charlwood Chase. 'Twas good enough, you may say, for a nest of Deerstealers. Well, there might have been a worse one; but these, I can aver, with English and Foreign newspapers and letters, and my Bible in later life, have been all the reading that John Dangerous can boast of. Which makes me so mad against your fine Scholars and Scribblers, who, because they can turn verse and make Te-to-tum into Greek, must needs sneer at me at the Coffee House, and make a butt of an honest man who has been from one end of the world to the other, and has fought his way through it to Fortune and Honour. I was in the twelfth year of my age, when a great change overtook me in my career. Moved, as it would seem, to exceeding Anger and implacable Disgust by the carryings-on of Captain Night and his merry men in Charlwood Chase, the King's Ministers put forth a Proclamation against us, promising heavy Blood Money to any who would deliver us, or any one member of the Gang, into the hands of Authority. This Proclamation came at first to little. There was no sending a troop of horse into the Chase, and the husbandmen of the country-side were too good Friends of ours to play the Judas. We were not Highway Robbers. Not one of our band had ever taken to or been taken from the Road. Rascals of the Cartouche and Macheath kidney we Disdained. We were neither Foot-pads nor Cut-purses, nay, nor Smugglers nor Rick-burners. We were only Unfortunate Gentlemen, who much did need, and who had suffered much for our politics and our religion, and had no other means of earning a livelihood than by killing the King's Deer. Those peasants whom we came across Feared us, indeed, as they would the very Fiend, but bore us no malice; for we always treated them with civility, and not rarely gave them the Umbles and other inferior parts of the Deer, against their poor Christenings and Lyings-in. And through these means, and some small money presents our Captain would make to their wives and callow brats, it came to pass that Mother Drum had seldom cause to brew aught but the smallest beer, for morning Drinking; for though we had to pay for our Wine and Ardent Drinks, the cellar of the Stag o' Tyne was always handsomely furnished with barrels of strong ale, which Lobbin Clout or Colin Mayfly, the Hind or the Plough-churl, would bring us secretly by