Probably they were seeking to elude the persecution of
the stage-coaches, which, for the last thirty hours, had been scattering
at all the inns and road-side _cabarets_ hand-bills describing their
persons and dress. It happened (perhaps through design) that on this
fourth morning they had separated, so as to enter the village ten minutes
apart from each other. They were exhausted and footsore. In this condition
it was easy to stop them. A blacksmith had silently reconnoitred them, and
compared their appearance with the description of the hand-bills. They
were then easily overtaken, and separately arrested. Their trial and
condemnation speedily followed at Lancaster; and in those days it
followed, of course, that they were executed. Otherwise their case fell so
far within the sheltering limits of what would _now_ be regarded as
extenuating circumstances--that, whilst a murder more or less was not to
repel them from their object, very evidently they were anxious to
economize the bloodshed as much as possible. Immeasurable, therefore, was
the interval which divided them from the monster Williams. They perished
on the scaffold: Williams, as I have said, by his own hand; and, in
obedience to the law as it then stood, he was buried in the centre of a
_quadrivium_, or conflux of four roads (in this case four streets),
with a stake driven through his heart. And over him drives for ever the
uproar of unresting London!
FOOTNOTES
[1] See 'Miscellaneous Essays,' p.
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