Connecticut western news., 1873-10-31
AN OLD.TIME STORY.

AN OLD-TIME STORY.
 The early years of the reign of George III. was the time of those gallant rob- bers, whose fine clothes, high bearing, reckless hardihood, and frequently good birth took away from the superfi- cial observer much of the darkness of the crime actually surrounding their deeds and lives. .
 One in particular was notorious enough in his brief day for most of the qualities have described, as sometimes attributes of these knights of the road. He was we'll connected, too, his uncle being clergyman in high church appointment. His person was elegant, his manner oourtly, and he WAS rash in an extraordinary degree. Ringing freely in fashionable society in his real name, his deeds of robbery were the talk of the town under his assumed Richard Mowbray-that belonging to the road, his sole source of revenue, was Captain de Montmorency-a patronymic high-sounding enough. I do not mean, however, to infer that any : suspected the man of fashion and the highwaymnn to be the same person |; that was never known till the event which I am going to relate took place.
 Richard Mowbray had spent his own small patrimony, years before the period at which this narrative com mences, in the pleasures of the town i: 1t had been melted in play-houses, faro, horsefiesh, and hazard; he had exhaust ed the kindness and forbearance of his relations, from whom he had borrowed and begged till borrowing or begging became impracticable. He had no more extremes of life and, moreover, when Uebts and poverty stared him grimly in the face, he knew not one useful art by which he could support existence or pay dividends to his creditors. What was to be done? He eluded jail as long as he could, and one night, riding on horseback, and meditating gloomily on his evil fortunes, he Inet--covered by the darkness from all discovery-a traveller we'll mourted - plethoric- laden with money-bags, and bearing likewise the burden of excessive fear.
 It was sudden thought-acted k upon as suddenly. Resistance was not dreamed of. Mowbray made off with his booty, considerable enough to his most pressing creditors. It was AAuOA AOOOihS OpOA VI pay ! ttu1s And so by night, under shelter of its darkness, did the ruined gentleman be- come the highwayman. People who knew his circumstances whispered their surprise when it became known that Richard Mowbray had paid his debts, and that he himself made more than his customary appearance. Now this fine gentleman was ever clad with the new est braveries of the day; and in his double character many a conquest did he make, for he disburdened ladies of their jewels and purses with so fine a manner that the defrauded fair ones forgot their losses in admiration of the charming despoiler, and Richard, in both his phases, drank deep thoughts to pleasure till he drained the Circean cup of its veriest dregs. Just as even pleasure became wearisome, when festive and high-bread delights palled upon his sated passions, and the lower extremes of licentiousness and hard drinking, ruffllng, and fighting, diver siAed by the keen excitement and threats of danger, which distinguished his predatory existence, began to satiate, new light broke on the feverish atmos- phere of his life. He loved. Yes l Richard Mowbray, the ruined patrician. De Montmoreney, the gallant highway man, who had hitherto resisted every good or evil influence which love, pure or earth stained, offers to his votaries, succumbed to the simple charms of 6 young, unlearned, uuambitious girl, so youthful that her tastes and habits, childish as they were, could be scarcely Hardcourt had just atttained her six teenth year-had never been to board ing school, and loved nothing so much lr' even her birds and her pet rabbits as her dear old father, an honest coun. try gentleman, and worthy magistrate.
 Fiavis had never been even to Lon don, for MT. Hardcourt resided at Ave- ing-a retired village, about twenty miles from the metropolis. Barring fox hunting and hard-drinking, the old gentleman, on his side, took pleasure only in the pretty, gentle girl, who, from the hour of her birth-which event terminated her mothers exist ence, had made her his constant play mate and companion. And it was to this simple wild flower that the gay man of pleasure, naughty, reckless, un- principled, improvident, irrslgious, and rash, presumed to lift his eyes. to elevate his heart; and, oh, stranger stlu to th1s being, the moral antipodes of her pure self, did Flavia Hardconrt surrender her youthful, modest, inesti- mable love. It must have been her very childishness and purity that at- tracted the desperate robber-now about to commit his worst and most in- excusable crime. He had accidentally met MT. Hardcourt at a country hunt had, with others of his companions, been invited by that honest gentleman to rustic fete in honor of little Fla, via's natal day-a day, he was won't to observe, to him remarkable for com memorating lis greatest misfortune and his intensest happiness and then and there the highwayman vowed to win that pure bud of innocent fresh ness and rare fragrance, or to perish in the attempt. Master Richard Now bray interruptions De eMontmorency I win relate how you kept your VOW.
 He haunted Aveling Grange till the ehasts young heart, the old fathers be. loved darling, surrendered itself into a the highwayman's keeping. Perhaps Mir. Hardcourt was not altogethe, hest nlaaaAd nk FIAviA,a choicA h,1i