Shrewsbury by Stanley J. Weyman

It wanted two hours of midnight on a fine night when we two rode over London Bridge, and through a gap in the houses saw the river flowing below, a ripple of silver framed in blackness, and so cold to the eye that involuntarily I shivered; feeling a return of all the vague fears and apprehensions which, originally awakened by the prospect of the journey, had been set at rest for the time by the awe in which I held my companion. I began to recall a dozen stories of footpads and highwaymen, outrage and robbery, which I had read, and found but cold comfort in the reflection that the Kent Road, from the amount of traffic that used it, was accounted one of the safest in England. It was not wonderful, that with nerves so disordered, I went in front of danger; or that when -- opposite the Marshalsea, where the chain crosses the road, near the entrance to White Horse Yard -- a man came suddenly out of a passage and caught hold of my companion's rein, I cried out, and all but turned my horse to fly.

Smith himself appeared to be taken off his guard; for, after bidding me beware what I did, he called with the same harshness to the man to release the rein, or take the consequences.