They passed through several very suspicious places without any molestation.  The Misses Popkins, who were very romantic, and had learnt to draw in water colors, were enchanted with the savage scenery around; it was so like what they had read in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, they should like of all things to make sketches.  At length, the carriage arrived at a place where the road wound up a long hill.  Mrs. Popkins had sunk into a sleep; the young ladies were reading the last works of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, and the dandy was hectoring the postilions from the coach box.  The Alderman got out, as he said, to stretch his legs up the hill.  It was a long winding ascent, and obliged him every now and then to stop and blow and wipe his forehead with many a pish! and phew! being rather pursy and short of wind.  As the carriage, however, was far behind him, and toiling slowly under the weight of so many well-stuffed trunks and well-stuffed travellers, he had plenty of time to walk at leisure.

On a jutting point of rock that overhung the road nearly at the summit of the hill, just where the route began again to descend, he saw a solitary man seated, who appeared to be tending goats.  Alderman Popkins was one of your shrewd travellers that always like to be picking up small information along the road, so he thought he’d just scramble up to the honest man, and have a little talk with him by way of learning the news and getting a lesson in Italian.  As he drew near to the peasant he did not half like his looks.  He was partly reclining on the rocks wrapped in the usual long mantle, which, with his slouched hat, only left a part of a swarthy visage, with a keen black eye, a beetle brow, and a fierce moustache to be seen.  He had whistled several times to his dog which was roving about the side of the hill.  As the Alderman approached he rose and greeted him.  When standing erect he seemed almost gigantic, at least in the eyes of Alderman Popkins; who, however, being a short man, might be deceived.

The latter would gladly now have been back in the carriage, or even on ’change in London, for he was by no means well pleased with his company.  However, he determined to put the best face on matters, and was beginning a conversation about the state of the weather, the baddishness of the crops, and the price of goats in that part of the country, when he heard a violent screaming.  He ran to the edge of the rock, and, looking over, saw away down the road his carriage surrounded by robbers.  One held down the fat footman, another had the dandy by his starched cravat, with a pistol to his head; one was rummaging a portmanteau, another rummaging the principezza’s pockets, while the two Misses Popkins were screaming from each window of the carriage, and their waiting maid squalling from the dickey.

Alderman Popkins felt all the fury of the parent and the magistrate Roused within him.  He grasped his cane and was on the point of scrambling down the rocks, either to assault the robbers or to read the riot act, when he was suddenly grasped by the arm.  It was by his friend the goatherd, whose cloak, falling partly off, discovered a belt stuck full of pistols and stilettos.  In short, he found himself in the clutches of the captain of the band, who had stationed himself on the rock to look out for travellers and to give notice to his men.