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第3章（第2页）

his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that

Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one

heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather,

forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and

protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by

armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself

every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town

without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for

security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the

light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellowtradesman

whom he stopped in his character of “the Captain,”

gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was

waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then

got shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence of the

failure of his ammunition”: after which the mail was robbed in