any subsequent "snatching" a useless enterprise.

Opposite the Crown Inn at Hempstead there is a clump of trees planted in a circle, and known as Turpin's Ring. How the highwayman's name came to be associated with this curious cluster of trees is a mystery. It is also puzzling to account satisfactorily for their having been planted in this unusual shape. The local tradition has it that this was the village cock-pit, or even the scene of Hempstead bear-baiting in the good old times.

Another Turpin relic may be seen at Dawkin's Farm, a mile or so from the village. This is merely the decaying trunk of the famous Hempstead oak, in the boughs of which Dick is reputed to have hidden from his pursuers. It would furnish but a meagre hiding-place to-day, but in Turpin's time it was a living forestgiant, with a girth of more than fifty feet, and branches spreading over a circumference of a hundred and five yards.

For all his shortcomings, at this distance of time we can afford to be charitable to the memory of Dick Turpin. He may not deserve the plea of Schiller, which discerns a spirit of genius beneath the guise of every robber; but, though his body

hung in no gibbet, he may be included among those outcasts for whom Villon wrote the immortal epitaph:

"The water of heaven has washed us clean,

The sun has scorched us black and bare,
Ravens and rooks they have pecked at our een,

And lined their nests with our beards and hair;
Round are we tossed, and here and there,
This way and that at the wild wind's will,
Not for a moment our bodies are still

Birds they are busy about my face.

Be not as we, nor fare as we fare
Pray God pardon us out of His grace."