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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Adventures of Captain
+Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3, by George Augustus Sala
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3
+       Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave
+       among the moors...
+
+Author: George Augustus Sala
+
+Release Date: September 19, 2008 [EBook #26667]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN DANGEROUS, VOL. 1 OF 3 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Emmy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
+
+OF
+
+CAPTAIN DANGEROUS:
+
+WHO WAS A SOLDIER, A SAILOR, A MERCHANT, A SPY, A SLAVE AMONG THE MOORS,
+A BASHAW IN THE SERVICE OF THE GRAND TURK,
+
+AND
+
+=Died at last in his own House in Hanover Square.=
+
+A NARRATIVE IN OLD-FASHIONED ENGLISH.
+
+ATTEMPTED BY
+
+GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+LONDON:
+
+TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
+
+1863.
+
+[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
+
+LONDON:
+
+SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS,
+
+CHANDOS STREET.
+
+
+TO
+
+ALEXANDER MUNRO,
+
+=Sculptor=,
+
+THIS BOOK,
+
+IN TOKEN OF SINCERE AND ADMIRING FRIENDSHIP, IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+IN the last century--and many centuries before the last; but it is about
+the eighteenth that I am specially speaking--long before steamers and
+railways, or even frigate-built ships and flying coaches were dreamt of,
+when an Englishman went abroad, he stopped there. When he came back, if
+at all, it was, as a rule, grizzled and sunburnt, his native habits all
+unlearnt, and his native tongue more than half forgotten. Even the Grand
+Tour, with all that money could purchase in the way of couriers and
+post-horses, to expedite matters for my Lord, his chaplain, his courier,
+and his dancing master, took as many years as it now does months to
+accomplish. There were no young novelists in those days to make a
+flying-trip to the Gaboon country, to ascertain whether the stories told
+by former tourists about shooting gorillas were fibs or not. There were
+no English engineers, fresh from Great George Street, Westminster,
+writing home to the _Athenĉum_ to say that they had just opened a branch
+railway up to Ephesus, and that (by the way) they had discovered a
+prĉ-Imperial temple of Juno the day before yesterday. Unprotected
+females didn't venture in "unwhisperables" into the depths of Norwegian
+forests; or, if they hazarded such undertakings their unprotectedness
+led them often to fall into cruel hands, and they never returned. A
+great fuss used to be made, before the days of steam, about the "Fair
+Sophia," who undertook a journey from Turkey to discover her lover, Lord
+Bateman; but how long and wearisome was her travail before she reached
+his lordship's castle in Northumberland, and was informed by the "proud
+young porter" that he was just then "taking of his young bride in"?
+Madame Cottin's Elizabeth, when she walked from Tobolsk to St.
+Petersburg to crave pardon for the exiles of Siberia; Sir Walter Scott's
+Jeanie Deans, when she tramped from Edinburgh to London on her errand of
+mercy, were justly regarded as heroines. But what were the achievements
+of those valorous young women when compared with the Ladies who make
+tours round Monte Rosa; nay, for the matter of that, "all round the
+world"? _Il n'y a plus de Pyrénées._ Nay, there are no more Andes,
+Himalayas, or Rocky Mountains. When the late Mr. Albert Smith wanted to
+change the attractions of his show, he calmly took a trip from
+Piccadilly to Hong Kong; it would have been better for him, poor dear
+fellow, had he remained at home. When her Majesty wanted to show the
+late Sultan of Turkey a slight act of civility, she sent Sir Charles
+Young out to Constantinople to invest Abdul Medjid with the Order of
+the Garter. Thirty years ago, it is possible the estimable King of Arms
+might have thought a mail-coach journey to York a somewhat serious
+expedition, yet he took the P. and O. Boat for Stamboul as blithely as
+though he were bound for a water-party at Greenwich. If an Emperor is to
+be crowned in Russia, or Prussia, or Crim Tartary, all the London
+newspapers despatch special correspondents to the scene of the pageant.
+Mr. Reuter will soon have completed his Overland Telegraph to China. At
+Liverpool they call New York "over the way." The Prince of Wales's
+travels in his nonage have made Telemachus a tortoise, and the young
+Anacharsis a stay-at-home. Married couples spend their honeymoon
+hippopotamus hunting in Abyssinia, or exploring the sources of the Nile.
+And the Traveller's Club are obliged to blackball nine-tenths of the
+candidates put up for election, because now-a-days almost every
+tolerably educated Englishman has travelled more than six hundred miles
+in a straight direction from the British Metropolis.
+
+Bearing these facts in mind, the travels of Captain Dangerous, widely
+extended as they were, may not appear to the present generation as very
+uncommon or very surprising. But such travellers as my hero, formed, in
+the last century, a class apart, and were, in most cases, very strange
+men. Diplomatic agents belonging to the aristocracy rarely ventured
+beyond the confines of Europe. The Ambassadors sent to eastern climes
+were usually, although accredited from the English Court, maintained at
+the charge of great commercial corporations, such as the Turkey and
+Russia Companies, and were selected less on the score of their having
+handles to their names, or being born Russells, Greys, and Elliots, than
+because they had led roving and adventurous lives, and had fought in or
+traded with the countries where they were appointed to reside. Beyond
+these, the travelling class was made up of merchants, buccaneers,
+spies, and, notably, of political adventurers, and English, Scotch, and
+Irish Romanist Priests. The unhappy political dissensions which raged in
+this country from the time of the Great Rebellion to the accession of
+George the Third, and the infamous penal laws against the Roman
+Catholics, periodically drove into banishment vast numbers of loyal
+gentlemen and their families, and ecclesiastics of the ancient faith,
+who expatriated themselves for conscience' sake, or through dread of the
+bloody enactments levelled at those who worshipped God as their fathers
+had done before them. The Irish and Scotch soldiers who took service
+under continental sovereigns sprinkled the army lists of France, of
+Spain, and of Austria with O's and Macs. There was scarcely a European
+city without an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic monastery or nunnery, and
+scarcely a seaport without a colony of British exiles cast upon foreign
+shores after the tempests of the Boyne, of Sheriffmuir, of Preston, or
+of Culloden. When these refugees went abroad it was to remain for ten,
+for twenty, for thirty years, or for life. The travelling of the present
+century is spasmodic, that of the last century was chronic.
+
+I do not know whether the "Adventures" I have ascribed to Captain
+Dangerous will be readily recognised as "strange." To some they may
+appear exaggerated and distorted, to others merely strained and dull. If
+truth, however, be stranger than fiction, I may plead something in
+abatement; for although I am responsible for the thread of the story and
+the conduct of the narrative, there is not one Fact set down as having
+marked the career of the Captain that has been drawn from imagination.
+For the story of Arabella Greenville, for the sketch of the Unknown
+Lady, for the exploits of the "Blacks" in Charlwood Chase, for the
+history of Mother Drum, for the voyage round the world, for the details
+of the executions of Lord Lovat and Damiens, for the description of the
+state of a Christian captive among the Moors, I am indebted, not to a
+lively fancy, but to books of travel, memoirs, Acts of Parliament, and
+old newspapers and magazines. I can scarcely, however, hope that,
+although the incidents and the language in this book are the result of
+years of weary plodding and note-taking, through hundreds of dusty
+tomes, they will succeed in interesting or amusing the public now that
+they have undergone the process of condensation. The house need not be
+elegant because the foundations have been laboriously laid. A solid
+skeleton does not always imply a beautiful skin.
+
+It is possible, nevertheless, that many persons may cry out that what I
+have written of Captain Dangerous could not have occurred, with any
+reasonable amount of probability, to any one man. Let me mention the
+names of a score of men and women recently or still living, and let me
+ask the reader whether anything in my hero's career was stranger than
+the adventures which marked theirs? Here is a penful taken at
+random,--Lord Dundonald, Lola Montes, Raousset-Boulbon, Richard Burton,
+Garibaldi, Felice Orsini, Ida Pfeiffer, Edgar Poe, Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson
+(the Siberian travellers), Marshal St. Arnaud, Paul du Chaillu, Joseph
+Wolff, Dr. Livingstone, Gordon Cumming, William Howard Russell, Robert
+Houdin, Constantine Simonides, Barnum, and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. The
+life of any one of these personages, truthfully written, would be a
+thousand times stranger than anything that is set down to Dangerous's
+account. Let me quote one little example more in point. Two years ago I
+wrote a story called the "Seven Sons of Mammon," in which there was an
+ideal character--that of a fair-haired-little swindler, and presumable
+murderess, called Mrs. Armytage. The Press concurred in protesting that
+the character in question was untrue to nature, and, indeed, wholly
+impossible. Some details I had given of her violent conduct in prison
+were specially objected to as grossly improbable. I said at the time
+that I had drawn the woman from nature, and I was sneered at, and not
+believed. I now again declare, upon my honour, that this Mrs. Armytage,
+was a compound of two real people; that as regards her murdering
+propensities, I was, for the matter and the manner thereof, beholden to
+the French _Gazette des Tribunaux_ for the year 1839; and that as
+respects her achievements in the way of lying, thieving, swindling,
+forging, and fascinating, I had before me, as a model, a woman whose
+misdeeds were partially exposed some ten years since in _Household
+Words_, who, her term of punishment over, is, to the best of my belief,
+alive at this moment, _and who was re-married less than a year
+ago_:--the announcement of that fact being duly inserted in the _Times_
+newspaper. The prison details had been gathered by me years before, in
+visits to gaols and in conversations with the governors thereof; and
+months after the publication of the "Seven Sons of Mammon," I found them
+corroborated in their minutest characteristics in a remarkable work
+called "Female Life in Prison."
+
+It remains for me to say one word as to the language in which the
+"Adventures of Captain Dangerous" are narrated. I had originally
+intended to call it a "Narrative in plain English;" but I found, as I
+proceeded, that the study of early eighteenth century literature--I mean
+the ante-Johnsonian period--had led me into the use of very many now
+obsolete words and phrases, which sounded like anything but plain
+English. Let me, however, humbly represent that the style, such as it
+is, was not adopted without a purpose, and that the English I have
+called "old-fashioned," was not in the remotest degree intended to be
+modelled upon the diction of Swift, or Pope, or Addison, or Steele, or
+Dryden, or Defoe, or even Nash or Howel. Such a feat of elegant pedantry
+has already been accomplished by Mr. Thackeray in his noble story of
+_Esmond_; and I had no wish to follow up a dignified imitation by a
+sorry caricature. I simply endeavoured to make Captain Dangerous express
+himself as a man of ordinary intelligence and capacity would do who was
+born in the reign of Queen Anne,--who received a scrambling education in
+that of George the First,--who had passed the prime of his life abroad
+and had picked up a good many bastard foreign words and
+locutions,--whose reading had been confined to the ordinary newspapers
+and chap-books of his time (with perhaps an occasional dip into the
+pages of "Ned Ward" and "Tom Brown"),--and who in his old age had
+preserved the pseudo-didactic of his youth. The "Adventures of Captain
+Dangerous" have been, in every sense, an experiment, and not a very
+gratifying one. I have earned by them a great many kicks, but a very
+few halfpence. Should the toe of any friendly critic be quivering in his
+boot just now, at the bare announcement of "Captain Dangerous'"
+re-appearance, I would respectfully submit that there could not possibly
+occur a better opportunity than the present for kicking me _de novo_, as
+I have been for months very ill, and am weary, and broken.
+
+                                                   GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
+
+  BERNARD STREET, RUSSELL SQUARE,
+    _April, 1863._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+  CHAPTER THE FIRST.
+
+    MINE OWN HOUSE                                         1
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE SECOND.
+
+    THE HISTORY OF AN UNKNOWN LADY, WHO CAME FROM
+      DOVER IN A COACH-AND-SIX                            22
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE THIRD.
+
+    THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDMOTHER, WHO WAS A LADY
+      OF CONSEQUENCE IN THE WEST COUNTRY                  40
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
+
+    MY GRANDMOTHER DIES, AND I AM LEFT ALONE, WITHOUT
+      SO MUCH AS A NAME                                   85
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
+
+    I AM BARBAROUSLY ABUSED BY THOSE WHO HAVE CHARGE
+      OF ME, AND FLYING INTO CHARLWOOD CHASE, JOIN
+      THE "BLACKS"                                       124
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
+
+    THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG
+      KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF THE KING'S CASTLES
+      IN THE EAST COUNTRY                                148
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
+
+    I AM BRED UP IN VERY BAD COMPANY, AND (TO MY
+      SHAME) HELP TO KILL THE KING'S DEER                181
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
+
+    THE HISTORY OF MOTHER DRUM                           220
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE NINTH.
+
+    THE END OF MY ADVENTURES AMONG THE BLACKS            247
+
+
+  CHAPTER THE TENTH.
+
+    I AM VERY NEAR BEING HANGED                          283
+
+
+
+
+THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
+
+OF
+
+CAPTAIN DANGEROUS.
+
+A Narrative in Old Fashioned English.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST.
+
+MINE OWN HOUSE.
+
+
+I, JOHN DANGEROUS, a faithful subject of his Majesty King George, whose
+bread, God bless him! I have eaten, and whose battles I have fought, in
+my poor way, am now in my sixty-eighth year, and live in My Own House in
+Hanover Square. By virtue of several commissions, both English and
+foreign, I have a right to call myself Captain; and if any man say that
+I have no such right, he Lies, and deserves the Stab. It may be that
+this narrative, now composed only for my own Pleasure, will, long after
+my Death, see the light in Print, and that some copper Captain, or
+counterfeit critic, or pitiful creature of that kidney, will question my
+Rank, or otherwise despitefully use my Memory. Let such treachours and
+clapper-dudgeons (albeit I value not their leasing a bagadine) venture
+it at their peril. I have, alas, no heirs male; but to my Daughter's
+husband, and to his descendants, or, failing them, to their executors,
+administrators, and assigns, I solemnly commit the task of seeking out
+such envious Rogues, and of kicking and firking them on the basest part
+of their base bodies. The stab I forego; I wish not to cheat the hangman
+of his due, or the Rev. Mr. Villette of a sermon. But let the knaves
+discover, to the aching of their scald sides, that even the Ghost of
+John Dangerous is not to be libelled.
+
+There is a knot of these same cittern-headed simpletons who meet at a
+coffee-house in Great Swallow Street, which I am sometimes minded to
+frequent, and who imagine that they show their wit and parts by reviling
+their Church and their King, and even by maligning the Honourable East
+India Company,--a corporation to which I am beholden for many Favours.
+"Fellow," I said, only last Saturday, to a whippersnapper from an Inn of
+Court,--a Thing I would not trust to defend my Tom-Cat were he in peril
+at the Old Bailey for birdslaughter, and who picks up a wretched
+livelihood, I am told, by scribbling lampoons against his betters in a
+weekly Review,--"Fellow," I said, "were I twenty years younger, and you
+twenty years older, John Dangerous would vouchsafe to pink an
+eyelet-hole in your waistcoat. Did I care to dabble in your polite
+conversation or your _belles lettres_ (of which I knew much more than
+ever you will know years before the Parish was at pains to fix your
+begetting on some one), I would answer your scurrilities in Print; but
+this I disdain, sirrah. Good stout Ash and good strong Cordovan leather
+are the things fittest to meet your impertinences with;" and so I held
+out my Foot, and shook my Staff at the titivilitium coxcomb; and he was
+so civil to me during the rest of the evening as to allow me to pay his
+clog-shot for him.
+
+The chief delight I derive from ending my days in Hanover Square is the
+knowledge that the house is Mine Own. I bought it with the fruit of mine
+own earnings, mine own moneys--not gotten from grinding the faces and
+squeezing the vitals of the Poor, but acquired by painful and skilful
+Industry, and increased by the lawful spoil of War. For booty, as I have
+heard a great commander say in Russia, is a Holy Thing. I have not
+disdained to gather moderate riches by the buying and selling of lawful
+Merchandize; albeit I always looked on mere Commerce and Barter as
+having something of the peddling and huxtering savour in them. My notion
+of a Merchant is that of a Bold Spirit who embarks on his own venture in
+his own ship, and is his own supercargo, and has good store of guns and
+Bold Spirits like himself on board, and sails to and fro on the High
+Seas whithersoever he pleases. As to the colour of the flag he is under,
+what matters it if it be of no colour at all, as old Robin Roughhead
+used to say to me,--even Black, which is the Negation of all colour? So
+I have traded in my way, and am the better by some thousands of pounds
+for my trading, now. That much of my wealth has its origin in lawful
+Plunder I scorn to deny. If you slay a Spanish Don in fair fight, and
+the Don wears jewelled rings and carcanets on all his fingers, and
+carries a great bag of moidores in his pocket, are you to leave him on
+the field, prithee, or gently ease him of his valuables? Can the crows
+eat his finery as well as his carcase? If I find a ship full of golden
+doubloons and silver candlesticks destined for the chapel of St. Jago de
+Compostella, am I to scuttle the ship and let her go down with all these
+good things on board; or am I to convey them to mine own lockers, giving
+to each of my Valiant Comrades his just and proper share? The governor
+of Carthagena will never get the doubloons, St. Jago of Compostella will
+never see his candlesticks; why should not I and my Brave Hearts enjoy
+them instead of the fishes and the mermaids? They have Coral enough down
+there, I trow, by the deep, nini; what do they want with Candlesticks?
+If they lack further ornament, there are pearls enow to be had out of
+the oysters--unless there be lawyers down below--ay, and pearls, too, in
+dead men's skulls, and emerald and diamond gimmels on skeleton hands,
+among the sea-weed, sand, and the many-coloured pebbles of the great
+Ocean.
+
+There are those who call me an old Pirate. Let them. I was never in
+trouble with the Admiralty Court. I can pass Execution Dock without
+turning pale. And no one can gainsay me when I aver that I have
+faithfully served his Majesty King George, and was always a true friend
+to the Protestant succession.
+
+There has been a mighty talk, too, about my turning Turk. Why should not
+I, if I could not Help it? Better to read the Koran, than to sing the
+Black Sanctus. Better to serve Mahound than Bungy's dog. I never Turned
+my Tippet, as some fine gentlemen who have never seen Constantinople
+have done. I never changed my Principles, although I was a Bashaw with
+three tails. Better to have three tails than to be a Rat with only one.
+And, let me tell you, it is a mighty fine thing to be a Bashaw, and to
+have as many purses full of Sequins and Aspers as there are days in the
+year.
+
+I should have been hanged long ago, should I--hanged for a Pirate, a
+Spy, and a Renegade? Well, I have escaped the bow-string in a country
+where hundreds die of Sore Throat every day, and I can afford to laugh
+at any prospect of a wych round my weasand in mine old age. Sword of
+Damocles, forsooth! why my life has been hanging on a cobweb any time
+these fifty years; and here I am at Sixty-Eight safe and sound, with a
+whole Liver and a stout Heart, and a bottle of wine to give a Friend,
+and a house of mine own in Hanover Square.
+
+I write this in the great Front Parlour, which I have converted into a
+library, study, and counting-room. The year of our Lord is seventeen
+hundred and eighty. His Majesty's subjects have lost eleven
+days--through some Roguery in high places, you may be sure--since I was
+a young man; and were I a cocksloch, I might grudge that snipping off of
+the best part of a fortnight from an Old Man's life. It may be, indeed,
+that Providence, which has always been good to me, will add eleven
+days--yea, and twice eleven--to the dwindling span of poor old John
+Dangerous. I have many Mercies to be thankful for; of sins likewise
+without blin, and grievous ones, there may be a long list that I shall
+have to account for; but I can say that I never killed a man in cold
+blood, that I never wilfully wronged a woman, _so long as she was not
+obstinate_, that I never spake an unkind word to a child, that I always
+gave freely from that which I got freely, and never took from him who
+had little, and that I was always civil to the clergy. Yet Doctor
+Dubiety of St. George's tells me that I have been a signal sinner, and
+bids me, now, to repent of my evil ways. Dr. Dubiety is in the right no
+doubt;--how could a Doctor of Divinity be ever in the Wrong?--but I
+can't see that I am so much worse than other folks. I should be in
+better case, perhaps, if these eyes stood wider open. I confess that I
+have killed many men with Powder and Lead, and the sharp sword; but,
+then, had I not shot or stabbed them, they would surely have shot or
+stabbed me. And are not his Majesty's fellow-subjects shooting and
+stabbing one another at this instant moment[A] in the American
+plantations? No; I always fought fair, and never refused Quarter when
+mine enemy threw up his point; nor, unless a foeman's death were
+required for Lawful Reprisals, did I ever deny moderate Ransom.
+
+There may be some things belonging to my worldly store that trouble me a
+little in the night season. Should I have given St. Jago de
+Compostella's candlesticks to Westminster Abbey? Why, surely, the Dean
+and Chapter are rich enough. But I declare that I had neither art not
+part in fitting the thumbscrews to the Spanish captain, and putting the
+boatswain and his mate to the ordeal of flogging and pickling. 'Twas not
+I, but Matcham, who is Dead, that caused the carpenter to be
+carbonadoed, and the Scotch purser to walk the Plank. Those were, I
+grant, deeds worthy of Blackbeard; but I had naught to do with them.
+John Dangerous had suffered too many tortures in the dungeons of the
+Inquisition to think of afflicting his fellow-creatures when there was
+no need for it. Then, as to what became of Doña Estella. I declare that
+I did my best to save that unhappy lady. I entreated, I protested; but
+in vain. None of that guilt lies at my door; and in the crime of him who
+roasted the Bishop, and cut off the Franciscan Monk's great-toes I have
+no share. Let every man answer for his own deeds. When I went the Middle
+Passage, I tried to keep the slaves alive as long I could. I was never a
+Mangoniser. When they died, what was there to do but to fling them
+overboard? Should I not have done the same by white men? I was not one
+of those cruel Guinea captains who kept the living and the dead chained
+together. I defy any one to prove it.
+
+And all this bald chat about sacking towns and gutting convents? War is
+war all the world over; and if you take a town by Assault, why of course
+you must Sack it. As to gutting convents, 'tis a mercy to let some pure
+air into the close, stifling places; and, of a surety, an act of Charity
+to let the poor captive nuns out for a Holiday. Reverend Superiors,
+holy sisters, I never did ye any harm. You cannot torment me in the
+night. Your pale faces and shadowy forms have no need to gather round
+the bed of John Dangerous. Take, for Pity's sake, those Eyes away! But
+no more! These thoughts drive me Mad.
+
+I am not Alone in my house. My daughter, my beloved Lilias, my only and
+most cherished child, the child of my old age, the legacy of the
+departed Saint her mother, lives with me. Bless her! she believes not a
+word of the Lies that are whispered of her old Father. If she were to be
+told a tithe of them, she would grieve sorely; but she holds no converse
+with Slanderers and those who wag their tongues and say so-and-so of
+such-a-one. She knows that my life has been wild, and stormy, and
+Dangerous as my name; but she knows that it has also been one of valour,
+and honesty, and striving. St. Jago de Compostella's candlesticks never
+went towards her schooling, pretty creature! My share from the gold in
+the scuttled ship never helped to furnish forth her dowry. Lilias is my
+joy, my comfort; my stay, my merciful consolation for the loss of that
+good and perfect Woman her mother. Dear heart! she has never been
+crossed in love, never known Love's sorrows, angers, disappointments,
+and despair. She was married to the Man of her Choice; and I am
+delighted to know that I never interfered, by word or by deed, with the
+progress of her Wooing; that he to whom she is wedded is one of the
+worthiest of youths; and that Heaven has blessed me with the means to
+enable him to maintain the state and figure of a gentleman.
+
+Thus, although Comfort and Quiet are the things I chiefly desire after
+the bustle and turmoil of a tempest-tossed career, and the pleasure I
+take in the gaieties of the Town is but small, it cheers me to see my
+Son and Daughter enjoying themselves, as those who have youth and health
+and an unclouded conscience are warranted in doing, and, indeed, called
+upon to do. I like them on Sundays and Holidays to come to church at
+St. George's, and sit under Doctor Dubiety, where I, as a little lad,
+sat many and many a time, more than fifty years ago; but my house is no
+Conventicle, and on all weekdays and Lawful Occasions my family is
+privileged to partake to their heart's content of innocent and permitted
+pastimes. I never set my face against a visit to the Playhouse or to the
+Concert-room; although to me, who can remember the most famous players
+and singers of Europe, the King's Theatre and the Pantheon, and even
+Drury-Lane, are very tame places, filled with very foolish folk. But
+they please the young people, and that is enough for me. Nor to an
+occasional junketing at Vauxhall do I ever turn queasy. 'Tis true I have
+seen Ranelagh and Marylebone Belsize, and Spring Gardens, and seen Folly
+on the Thames--to say nothing of the chief Continental Tivolis, Spas,
+Lustgartens, and other places of resort of the Great; but fiddlers are
+fiddlers, and coloured lamps are coloured lamps, all the world over, I
+apprehend; and my children have as much delight in gazing on these
+spangled follies now as I had when I and the eighteenth century were
+young. Only against Masquerades and Faro-tables, as likewise against the
+pernicious game of E. O., post and pair, fayles, dust-point, do I
+sternly set my face, deeming them as wholly wicked, carnal, and
+unprofitable, and leading directly to perdition.
+
+It rejoices me much that my son, or rather son-in-law,--but I love to
+call him by the more affectionate name,--is in no wise addicted to
+dicing, or horse-racing, or cock-fighting, or any of those sinful or
+riotous courses to which so many of our genteel youth--even to those of
+the first Quality--devote themselves. He is no Puritan; (for I did ever
+hate your sanctimonious Banbury-men); but he has a Proper Sense of what
+is due to the Honour and Figure of his family, and refrains from soiling
+his hands with bales of dice and worse implements among the profligate
+crew to be met with, not alone at Newmarket, or at the "Dog and Duck,"
+or "Hockley Hole," but in Pall-Mall, and in the very ante-chambers of
+St. James's, no cater-cousin of the Groom-Porter he. He rides his
+hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited him from
+occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no
+Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of
+bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish
+with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would
+disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an
+over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He
+hunts sometimes, and fishes and goes a birding, and he has a pretty
+fancy for the making of salmon-flies, in the which pursuit, I conclude,
+there is much ingenuity, and no manner of harm, fish being given to us
+for food, and the devising how best to snare the creatures entirely
+Lawful.
+
+Lilias Dangerous has been wedded to Edward Marriner these two years. It
+was at first my design to buy the youth a Pair of Colours, and to let
+him see the world and the usages of honourable warfare for a year or
+two; but my Lilias could not bear the thought of her young Ensign's
+coming home without an arm or a leg, or perchance being slain in some
+desperate conflict with savage Indians, or scarcely less savage
+Americans; and I did not press my plan of giving Edward for a time to
+the service of the King. He, I am bound to say, was eager to take up a
+Commission; but the tears and entreaties of my Daughter, who thinks War
+the wickedest of crimes, and the shedding of human blood a wholly
+Unpardonable Thing, prevailed. So they were Married, and are Happy; and
+I am sure, now, that were I to lose either of them, it would break the
+old man's heart.
+
+My Lilias is tall and slender, her skin is very white, her hair a rich
+brown, her eyes very large and clear and blue. But that I am too old to
+be vain, I might be twitted with Conceit when I state that she holds
+these advantages of person less from her Mother than from myself, her
+loving Father. Not that I was so comely in my young days; but my
+Grandmother before me was of the same fair Image that I so delight to
+look upon in Lilias. She was tall, and white, and brown-haired, and
+blue-eyed. She had Lilias's small and daintily-fashioned hands and feet,
+or rather Lilias has hers. To me these features were only transmitted in
+a meaner degree. I was a big-boned lusty lad, with flowing brown locks,
+an unfreckled skin, and an open eye; but my Grandmother's Face and Form
+have renewed themselves in my child. At twenty she is as beautiful as
+her Great-grandmother must have been at that same sunny time, as I am
+told and know that Lady was: albeit when I remember her she was nearly
+Ninety years of age.
+
+Yes; Lilias's eyes are very blue; but they are always soft and tender
+and pitiful in their regard. Her Great-grandmother's had, when she was
+moved, a Strange Wild look that awed and terrified the beholders. Only
+once in the life of my Lilias, when she was very young, and on the
+question of some toy or sweetmeat which my departed Saint had denied
+her, did I notice that Terrible Look in her blue eyes. My wife, who,
+albeit the most merciful soul alive, ever maintained strict discipline
+in her household, would have corrected the child for what she set down
+as flat mutiny and rebellion; but I stayed her chastening hand, and bade
+the young girl walk awhile in the garden until her heat was abated; and
+as she went away, her little breast heaving, her little hands clenched,
+and the Terrible Look darting out on me through the silken tangles of
+her dear hair, I shuddered, and said, "Wife of mine, our Lilias's look
+is one she cannot help. It comes from Me, you may have seen it fiercer
+and fiercer in mine own eyes; and She, whom of all women I loved and
+venerated, looked thus when anger overcame her. And though I never knew
+my own dear Mother, she, or I greatly mistake, must have had that look
+in hers likewise."
+
+I thank Heaven that those pure blue waters, limpid and bright, in my
+Lilias's orbs were nevermore ruffled by that storm. As she grew up,
+their expression became even softer and kinder, and she never ceased
+from being in the likeness of an Angel. She looks like one now, and will
+be one, I trust, some day, Above, where she can pray for her danger-worn
+old sire.
+
+My own wife (whose name was Lilias too) was a merry, plump,
+ruddy-skinned little woman--a very baby in these strong arms of mine.
+She had laughing black eyes, and coal-black tresses, and lips which were
+always at vintage-time. Although her only child takes after me, not her,
+in face and carriage, in all things else she resembles my Saint. She is
+as merry, as light-hearted, as pure and good, as she was. She has the
+same humble, pious Faith; the same strong, inflexible will of abiding by
+Right; the same hearty, outspoken hatred of Wrong, abhorrence of Wrong.
+She has the same patience, cheerfulness, and obedience in her behaviour
+to those who are set in authority over her; and if I am by times
+angered, or peevish, or moody, she bears with my infirmities in the same
+meek, loving, and forgiving spirit. She has her Mother's grace, her
+Mother's voice, her Mother's ringing voice. She has her Mother's
+infinite care of and benevolence to the poor and needy. She has her
+Mother's love for merry sports and innocent romps. Like my departed
+Saint, she has an exquisitely neat and quick hand for making pastries
+and marchpanes, possets and sugared tankards, and confeeding of
+diapasms, pomanders, and other sweet essences, and cures for the
+chilblains; and like her she plays excellent well on the harpsichords.
+
+Thus, in a quiet comfort and competence, in the love of my children, and
+in the King's peace, these my latter days are gliding away. I am
+somewhat troubled with gout and twitching pains, scotomies in the head,
+and fulness of humours, with other old men's ailments; and I do not
+sleep well o' nights owing to vexatious Dreams and Visions, to abate
+which I am sometimes let blood, and sometimes blistered behind the ears;
+but beyond these cares--and who hath not his cares?--Captain John
+Dangerous, of number One hundred Hanover Square, is a Happy Man.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[A] 1780.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND.
+
+THE HISTORY OF AN UNKNOWN LADY, WHO CAME FROM DOVER IN A COACH-AND-SIX.
+
+
+IN the winter of the year 1720, died in her house in Hanover
+Square,--the very one in which I am now finishing my life,--an Unknown
+Lady nearly ninety years of age. The mansion was presumed to be her own,
+and it was as much hers as it is mine now; but the reputed landlord was
+one Doctor Vigors, a physician of the College in Warwick Lane, in whose
+name the Lease ran, who was duly rated to the poor as tenant, and whose
+patient the Unknown Lady was given out to be. But when Dr. Vigors came
+to Hanover Square it was not as a Master, but as the humblest of
+Servants; and no tradesman, constable, maid, or lacquey about the house
+or neighbourhood would have ventured for his or her life to question
+that, from cellar to roof, every inch of the mansion belonged to the
+Unknown Lady. The vulgar held her in a kind of Awe, and spoke of her as
+the Lady in Diamonds; for she always wore a number of those precious
+gems, in rings, bracelets, stomachers, and the like. The gentlefolks, of
+whom many waited upon her, from her first coming hither unto her death,
+asked for "my Lady," and nothing more. It was in the year 1714 that she
+first arrived in London, coming late at night from Dover, in a
+coach-and-six, and bringing with her one Mr. Cadwallader, a person of a
+spare habit and great gravity of countenance, as her steward; one
+Mistress Nancy Talmash, as her waiting-woman; and a Foreign Person of a
+dark and forbidding mien, who was said to be her chaplain. In the
+following year, and during the unhappy troubles in Scotland arising out
+of the treasons of the Earl of Mar, and other Scots Lords, one of his
+Majesty's messengers came for the Foreign Person, and conveyed him in a
+coach to the Cockpit at Whitehall; while another messenger took up his
+abode in the house at Hanover Square, lying in the second best
+bed-chamber, and having his table apart, for a whole week. From these
+circumstances, it was rumoured that the Unknown Lady was a Papist and
+Jacobite; that the seminary Priest, her confederate, was bound for
+Newgate, and would doubtless make an end of it at Tyburn; and that the
+Lady herself would be before many days clapt up in the Tower. But Signor
+Casagiotti, the Venetian Envoy, as a subject of the seignory, claimed
+the Foreign Person and obtained his release; and it was said that one of
+the great Lords of the Council came himself to Hanover Square to take
+the examination of the Unknown Lady, and was so well satisfied with the
+speech he had with her as to discharge her then and there from
+Custody,--if, indeed, she had ever been under any actual durance,--and
+promise her the King and Minister's countenance for the future. The
+Foreign Person was suffered to return, and thenceforward was addressed
+as Father Ruddlestone, as though he had some licence bearing him
+harmless from the penalties and prĉmunires which then weighed upon
+recusant persons. And I am given to understand that, on the evening of
+his enlargement, the same great Lord, being addressed in a jocular
+manner at the coffee-house by a Person of Honour, and asked if he had
+not caught the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender in petticoats and
+diamonds, somewhere in St. George's parish, very gravely made answer,
+that some degrees of Loyalty were like Gold, which were all the better
+for being tried in the furnace, and that, although there had once been a
+King James, and there was now a King George, the lady, of whom perhaps
+that gentleman was minded to speak, had done a notable Thing before he
+was born, which entitled her to the eternal gratitude of Kings.
+
+Although so old on her first coming to Hanover Square, and dwelling in
+it until her waiting-woman avowed that she was close on her Ninetieth
+year, the Unknown Lady preserved her faculties in a surprising manner,
+and till within a few days of her passing away went about her house,
+took the air from time to time in her coach, or in a chair, and received
+company. The very highest persons of Quality sought her, and appeared to
+take pleasure in her conversation. To Court, indeed, she never went; but
+she was visited more than once by an illustrious Prince; and many great
+nobles likewise waited upon her in their Birthday suits. On Birthnights
+there was Play in the great drawing-room, where nothing but gold was
+permitted to be staked.
+
+Credible persons have described her to me as being, and supplemented
+mine own memory--in the extremest sunset of her life, when the very fray
+and pillings of her garment were come to, and no more stuff remained
+wherewith to piece it,--a person of Signal Beauty. She was of commanding
+stature, stooped very little, albeit she made use of a crutch-stick in
+walking, and had a carriage full of graciousness, yet of somewhat
+austere Dignity. No portion of her hair was visible under the thick
+folds of muslin and point of Alençon which covered her head, and were
+themselves half hidden by a hood of black Paduasoy; but in a glass-case
+in her cabinet, among other relics of which I may have presently to
+speak, she kept a quantity of the most beauteous chestnut tresses ever
+beheld. "These were my Love-Locks, child," I remember her saying to me
+once. I am ashamed to confess that, during my brief commerce with her,
+the dress she wore, which was commonly of black velvet, and the diamonds
+which glittered on her hands and arms and bosom impressed themselves far
+more forcibly on my memory than her face, which I have since been told
+was Beautiful. My informant bears witness that her eyes were Blue, and
+of an exceeding brightness, sometimes quite terrible to look upon,
+although tempered at most times by a Sweet Mildness; yet there were
+seasons when this brightness, as that of the Sun in a wholly cloudless
+sky, became Fierce, and burnt up him who beheld it. Time had been so
+long a husbandman of her fair demesne, had reaped so many crops of
+smiles and tears from that comely visage, that it were a baseness to
+infer that no traces of his husbandry appeared on her once smooth and
+silken flesh, for the adornment of which she had ever disdained the use
+of essences and unguents. Yet I am told that her wrinkles and creases,
+although manifold, were not harsh nor rugged; and that her face might be
+likened rather to a billet of love written on fair white vellum, that
+had been somewhat crumpled by the hand of him who hates Youth and Love,
+than to some musty old conveyance or mortgage-deed scrabbled on yellow,
+damp-stained, rat-gnawed parchment. Her hands and neck were to the last
+of an amazing Whiteness. The former, as were also her feet, very small
+and delicate. Her speech when moved was Quick, and she spoke as one
+accustomed to be obeyed; but at most seasons her bearing towards her
+domestics was infinitely kind and tender. Towards the Foreign Person,
+her Director, she always bore herself with edifying meekness. She was
+cheerful in company, full of ready wit, of great shrewdness, discretion,
+and observation; could discourse to admiration of foreign cities and
+persons of renown, even to Kings and Princes, whom she had seen and
+known; and was well qualified to speak on public affairs, although she
+seldom deigned to concern herself with the furious madness of Party.
+Mere idle prattle of Operas, and Play-books, and Auctions, and the like,
+was extremely distasteful to her; and although at that time a shameful
+looseness of manners and conversation obtained even among the Greatest
+persons in the land, she would never suffer any evil or immodest talk to
+be held in her presence; and those who wished to learn aught of the
+wickedness of the town and the scandals of High Life were fain to go
+elsewhere for their gossip.
+
+I have said that her dress was to me the chief point of notice, and is
+that of which I retain the keenest remembrance. Her diamonds, indeed,
+had over me that strange fascination which serpents are said to have
+over birds; and I would sit with my little mouth all agape, and my eyes
+fixed and staring, until they grew dazed, and I was frightened at the
+solemn twinkling of those many gems. In my absurd child-way, it was to
+my fancy as though the Lady were some great Altar or Herse of State in a
+Church, and her Jewels so many Lamps kindled about her, and to be kept
+alive for ever. She robed habitually, as I have said, in Black Velvet;
+but on Birthnights, when more company than usual came, and there was
+play in the great drawing-room, she would wear a sack of sad-coloured
+satin; while, which was stranger still, on the thirtieth day of January
+in every year, at least so long as I can keep it in mind, she wore her
+sable dress; not her ordinary one, but a fuller garment, which had bows
+of Crimson Ribbon down the front and at the sleeves, and a great
+Crimson Scarf over the right shoulder, so as to come in saltire over her
+Heart. And on the day she made this change she wore no Diamonds, but
+Rubies in great number, and of great size. On that day, also, we kept an
+almost entire fast, and from morning to night I had nothing but a little
+cake and a glass of Red wine. From sunrise to sunset the Lady sat in her
+cabinet among her Relics; and I was bidden to sit over against her on a
+little stool. She would talk much, and, as it seemed to me wildly, in a
+language which I could not understand, going towards her relics and
+touching them in a strange manner. Then she would say to me, with a
+sternness that chilled the marrow in my bones, "Child, Remember the Day:
+Remember the Thirtieth of January." And she would often repeat that
+word, "Remember," rocking herself to and fro. And more than once she
+would say, "Blood for blood." Then Mistress Talmash would enter and
+assay to Soothe her, telling her that what was past was past, and could
+not be undone. Then she would take out a great Prayer-Book bound in Red
+leather, and which had this strange device raised in an embosture of
+gold, on either cover, and in a solemn voice read out long passages,
+which I afterwards learned were from that service holden on the
+anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles the First. She would go on
+to read the Ritual for the King's Touching for the Evil, now expunged
+from our Liturgy; and then Mistress Talmash would pray her to read the
+joyful prayers for the twenty-ninth of May, the date of the happy
+restoration of King Charles the Second. But that she would seldom do,
+murmuring, "I dare not, I dare not. Tell not Father Ruddlestone." All
+these things were very strange to me; but I grew accustomed to them in
+time. And there seems to a solitary child, an immensity of time passing
+between his first beginning to remember and his coming to eight years of
+age.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There is one thing that I must mention before this Lady ceases to be
+Unknown to the reader. She was afflicted with a continual trembling of
+the entire Frame. She was no paralytic, for to the very end she could
+take her food and medicine without assistance; but she shook always like
+a very Aspen. It had to do with her nerves, I suppose; and it was
+perhaps for that cause she was attended for so many years by Doctor
+Vigors; but he never did her any good in that wise; and the whole
+College of Warwick Lane would, I doubt not, have failed signally had
+they attempted her cure. Often I asked Mistress Talmash why the
+Lady--for until her death I knew of no other name whereby to call
+her--shook so; but the waiting-woman would chide me, and say that if I
+asked questions she would shake me. So that I forebore.
+
+Ours was a strange and solemn household. All was stately and well
+ordered, and--when company came--splendid; but the house always seemed
+to me much gloomier than the great Parish-Church, whither I was taken
+every Sunday morning on the shoulder of a tall footman, and shut up
+alone in a great Pew lined with scarlet baize, and where I felt very
+much like a little child that was lost in the midst of the Red Sea. Far
+over my head hung a gallery full of the children of Lady Viellcastel's
+charity-school; and these, both boys and girls, would make grimaces at
+me while the Psalms were being sung, until I felt more frightened than
+when I was on my little stool in the cabinet of relics, on the thirtieth
+of January. Just over the ledge of my pew I could see the clergyman, in
+his large white wig, leaning over the reading-desk, and talking at me,
+as I thought, in a mighty angry manner; and when he, or another divine,
+afterwards ascended the pulpit above, I used to fancy that it was only
+the same parson grown taller, and with a bigger wig, and that he seemed
+to lean forward, and be angrier with me than ever. The time of kneeling
+was always one of sore trouble to me, for I had to feel with my foot for
+the hassock, which seemed to lie as far beneath me as though it were,
+indeed, sunk at the bottom of the Red Sea. Getting up again was quite as
+difficult; and I don't think we ever attained the end of the Litany
+without my dropping my great red Prayer-Book--not the thirtieth-of-January
+one, but another affected to my especial use--with a Clang. On such
+occasions the pew-door would open, and the Beadle enter. He always
+picked up the book, and gave it me with a low bow; but he never omitted
+to tell me, in a deadly whisper, that if I had been one of Lady
+Viellcastel's boys, he'd skin me alive, he would.
+
+The Unknown Lady did not attend the parish-church. She, and Mistress
+Talmash, and the Foreign Person, held a service apart. I was called
+"Little Master," and went with the footman. The fellow's name, I
+remember, was Jeremy. He used to talk to me, going and coming, as I sat,
+in my fine Laced Clothes, and my hat with a plume in it, and my little
+rapier with the silver hilt, perched on his broad shoulder. He used to
+tell me that he had been a soldier, and had fought under Colonel Kirk;
+and that he had a wife, who washed bands and ruffles for the gentlemen
+of the Life Guard, and drank strong waters till she found herself in the
+Roundhouse. Always on a Sunday morning, as the church-bells began to
+ring, the Unknown Lady would give me a Guinea to put into the plate
+after service. I remember that the year before she died, when I was big
+enough to walk with my hand in Jeremy's, instead of being carried, that
+he told me on Easter-Sunday morning that his wife was dead, and that he
+had two children in a cellar who had no bread to eat. He cried a good
+deal; and before we reached the church, took me into a strange room in a
+back-street, where there were a number of men and women shouting and
+quarrelling, and another, without his wig and with a great gash in his
+forehead, sprawling on the ground, and crying out "Lillibulero!" and two
+more playing cards on a pair of bellows. And they were all drinking from
+mugs and smoking tobacco. Here Jeremy had something to drink, too, from
+a mug. He put the vessel to my lips, and I tasted something Hot, which
+made me feel very faint and giddy. When we were in the open air again,
+he cried worse than ever. What could I do but give him my guinea? On our
+return, to Hanover Square, the Lady asked me, according to her custom,
+what was the text, and whether I had put my money into the plate. She
+was not strict about the first; for I was generally, from my tenderness
+of years, unable to tell her more than that the gentleman in the wig
+seemed very angry with me, and the Pope, and the Prince of Darkness;
+but she alway taxed me smartly about the Guinea. This was before the
+time that I had learned to Lie; and so I told her how I had given the
+piece of gold to Jeremy, for that his wife was no more, and his children
+were in a cellar with nothing to eat. She stayed a while looking at me
+with those blue eyes, which had first their bright fierceness in them
+and then their kind and sweet tenderness. It was the first time that I
+marked her eyes more than her dress and her diamonds. She took me in her
+lap, and printed her lips--which were very soft, but cold--upon my
+forehead.
+
+"Child," she said, "did I use thee as is the custom, thou shouldst be
+Whipped, not Kissed, for thy folly and disobedience. But you knew not
+what you did. Here are two guineas to put into the plate next Sunday;
+and let no rogues cozen you out of it. As for Jeremy," she continued,
+turning to Mistress Talmash, "see that the knave be stripped of his
+livery, and turned out of the house this moment, for robbing my
+Grandson, and taking him on a Sabbath morning to taverns, among grooms,
+and porters, and fraplers, and bullies."
+
+Yes; the Unknown Lady was my Grandmother. I purpose now to relate to you
+her History, revealed to me many years after her death, in a manner to
+be mentioned at the proper time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD.
+
+THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDMOTHER, WHO WAS A LADY OF CONSEQUENCE IN THE WEST
+COUNTRY.
+
+
+MY Grandmother was born at Bristol, about the year 1630, and in the
+reign of King Charles the First. She came of a family noted for their
+long lives, and of whom there was, in good sooth, a proverb in the West
+setting forth that "Bar Gallows, Glaive, and the Gout, every Greenville
+would live to a hundred." Her maiden name was Greenville: she was
+baptised Arabella; and she was the only daughter of Richard Greenville,
+an Esquire of a fair estate between Bath and Bristol, where his
+ancestors had held their land for three hundred years, on a Jocular
+Tenure of presenting the king, whenever he came that way, with a
+goose-pie, the legs sticking through the crust. It was Esquire
+Greenville's misfortune to come to his patrimony just as those unhappy
+troubles were fomenting which a few years after embroiled these kingdoms
+in one great and dismal Quarrel. It was hard for a gentleman of
+consequence in his own county, and one whose forefathers had served the
+most considerable offices therein,--having been of the Quorum ever since
+the reign of King Edward the Third,--to avoid mingling in some kind or
+another in the dissensions with which our beloved country was then torn.
+Mr. Greenville was indeed a person of a tranquil and placable humour, to
+whom party janglings were thoroughly detestable; and although he leant
+naturally, as beseemed his degree, towards the upholding of his
+Majesty's Crown and Dignity, and the maintenance in proper Honour and
+Splendour of the Church, he was too good a Christian and citizen not to
+shrink from seeing his native land laid waste by the blind savageness
+of a Civil War. And although, he paid Cess and Ship-money without
+murmuring, and, on being chosen a Knight of the Shire, did zealously
+speak up in the Commons House of Parliament on the King's side (refusing
+nevertheless to make one of the lip-serving crowd of courtiers of
+Whitehall), and although, when churchwarden in his parish, he ever
+preserved the laudable custom of Whitsun and Martinmas ales for the good
+of the poor, and persisted in having the Book of Sports read from the
+pulpit,--he was averse from all high-handed measures of musketooning,
+and calivering, and gambriling those of the meaner sort, or those of
+better degree (as Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, and Another whom I shudder to
+mention), who, for Conscience' sake, opposed themselves to the King's
+Government. He was in this wise at issue with some of his hotter
+Cavalier neighbours, as, for instance, Sir Basil Fauconberg, who,
+whenever public matters were under question, began with "Neighbour, you
+must first show me Pym, Hampden, Haslerigge, and the rest, swinging as
+the Sign of the Rogue's Head, and then I will begin to chop Logic with
+you." For a long time Mr. Greenville, my Great-grandfather (and my
+enemies may see from this that I am of no Rascal Stock), cherished hopes
+that affairs might be brought to a shape without any shedding of Blood;
+but his hope proved a vain and deceiving one; ungovernable passions on
+either side caused not alone the drawing of the Sword, but the flinging
+away of the Scabbard; and my Grandmother was yet but a schoolmaid at
+Madam Ribotte's academy for gentlewomen at Bristol when that dreadful
+sinful war broke out which ended in the barbarous Murther of the Prince,
+and the Undoing of these kingdoms.
+
+Mr. Greenville had two children: a son, whose name, like his own, was
+Richard, and who was born some five years before his sister Arabella.
+Even as a child this last named person was exceedingly beautiful, very
+gracious, fair, grave, and dignified of deportment, with abundant brown
+hair, and large and lustrous blue eyes, which, when the transient
+tempests of childhood passed over her, were ever remarked as having the
+wild, fierce look, shared in sometimes by the males of her family. Her
+mother, to her sorrow, died when she was quite a babe. The Esquire was
+passionately fond of this his only daughter; but although it was torture
+for him to part with her, and he retained her until she was thirteen
+years of age in his mansion-house, where she was instructed in reading
+and devotion, pickling and preserving (and the distilling of strong
+waters), sampler work, and such maidenly parts of education, by the
+housekeeper, and by a governante brought from London,--he had wisdom
+enough to discern and to admit that his daughter's genius was of a
+nature that required and demanded much higher culture than could be
+given to her in an old Country Seat, and in the midst of talk about
+dogs, and horses, and cattle, and gunning and ploughing, and the
+continual disputes of hot-headed Cavaliers or bitter Parliamentarians,
+who were trying who should best persuade my Great-grandfather to cast in
+his lot with one or the other of the contending parties. His son Richard
+had already made his election, and, it is feared, by taking up supplies
+on post obit from usurious money-scriveners in Bristol and London, had
+raised a troop of horse for the service of the King. Moreover, Arabella
+Greenville was of a very proud stomach and unbending humour. She might
+be Led, but would not be Driven. She adored her father, but laughed at
+the commands of the governante, and the counsels of the housekeeper, who
+knew not how either to lead or to rule her. It was thus determined to
+send her to Madam Ribotte's academy at Bristol,--for even so early as
+King Charles's time had outlandish and new-fangled names been found for
+Schools; and thither she was accordingly sent, with instructions that
+she was to learn all the polite arts and accomplishments proper to her
+station, that she was to be kept under a strict regimen, and corrected
+of her faults; but that she was not to be thwarted in her reasonable
+desires. She was to have her pony, with John coachman on the skewball
+sent to fetch her every Saturday and holiday; was not to be overweighted
+with tedious and dragging studies; and was by no means to be subject to
+those shameful chastisements of the Ferula and the Rod, which, even
+within my own time, I blush to say had not been banished from schools
+for young gentlewomen. To sum up, Miss Arabella Greenville went to
+school with a pocketful of gold pieces, and a play-chest full of
+sweet-cakes and preserved fruits, and with a virtual charter for
+learning as little as she chose, and doing pretty well as much as she
+liked.
+
+Of course my Grandmother ran a fair chance of being wholly spoiled, and
+growing up to one of those termagant, mammythrept romps we used to laugh
+at in Mr. Colley Cibber's plays. The schoolmistress fawned upon her,
+for, although untitled, Esquire Greenville (from whom my descent is
+plain), and he was so much respected in the West, that the innkeepers
+were used to beseech him to set up achievements of his arms at the
+hotels where he baited on his journeys, was one of the most considerable
+of the County Gentry; the teachers were glad when she would treat them
+from her abundant store of play-money; and she was a kind of divinity
+among the schoolmaids her companions, to whom she gave so many cakes and
+sweetmeats that the apothecary had to be called in about once a week to
+cure many of surfeit. But this fair young flower-bed was saved from
+blight and choking weeds, first, by the innate rectitude and nobility of
+her disposition, which (save only when that dangerous look was in her
+eyes) taught her to keep a rein over her caprices, and subdue a too warm
+and vigorous imagination; next, by the entire absence of Vanity and
+Self-Conceit in her mind,--a happy state, which made her equally alive
+to her own faults and to the excellences of others; and, last, by her
+truly prodigious aptitude for polite learning. I have often been told
+that but for adverse circumstances Mrs. Greenville must have proved one
+of the most learned, as she was one of the wittiest and best-bred, women
+of her Age and Country. In the languages, in all manner of fine
+needlework, in singing and fingering instruments of music, in medicinal
+botany and the knowledge of diseases, in the making of the most cunning
+electuaries and syllabubs, and even in Arithmetic,--a science of which
+young gentlewomen were then almost wholly deficient,--she became, before
+she was sixteen years of age, a truly wonderful proficient. A Bristol
+bookseller spoke of printing her book of recipes (containing some
+excellent hints on cookery, physic, the casting of nativities, and
+farriery); and some excellent short hymns she wrote are, I believe, sung
+to this day in one of the Bristol free-schools. But the talent for which
+she was most shiningly remarkable was in that difficult and laborious
+art of Painting in Oils. Her early drawings, both in crayons and Chinese
+ink, were very noble; and there are in this House now some miniatures of
+her father, brother, and school-companions, limned by her in a most
+delicate and lovely fashion; but 'twas in oils and in portraiture of the
+size of life that she most surpassed. She speedily out-went all that the
+best masters of this craft in Bristol could teach her; and her
+pictures--especially one of her Father, in his buff coat and
+breastplate, as a Colonel of the Militia--were the wonder, not only of
+Bristol, but of all Somerset and the counties adjacent.
+
+About this time those troubles in the West, with which the name of
+Prince Rupert is so sadly allied, grew to be of such force and fury as
+to decide Mr. Greenville on going to London, taking his daughter
+Arabella with him, to make interest with the Parliament, so that peril
+might be averted from his estate. For although his son was in arms for
+King Charles, and he himself was a gentleman of approved loyalty, he had
+done nothing of an overt kind to favour King or Parliament. He thus
+hoped, having ever been a peaceable and law-worthy gentleman, to
+preserve his lands from peril, and himself and family from prosecution;
+and it is a great error to suppose that many honest gentlemen did not so
+succeed in the very fiercest frenzy of the civil wars in keeping their
+houses over their heads, and their heads upon their shoulders. Witness
+worthy Mr. John Evelyn of Wotton and Sayes Court, and many other persons
+of repute.
+
+While the Esquire was intent on his business at Westminster, and
+settling the terms of a Fine, without which it seemed even his peaceable
+behaviour could not be compounded, he lay at the house of a friend, Sir
+Fortunatus Geddings, a Turkey merchant, who had a fair house in the
+street leading directly to St. Paul's Church, just without Ludgate. The
+gate has been pulled down this many a day, and the place where he dwelt
+is now called Ludgate Hill. As he had much going to and fro, and was
+afraid that his daughter might come to hurt, both in the stoppage to her
+schooling, and in the unquietness of the times, he placed her for a
+while at a famous school at Hackney, under that notable governante Mrs.
+Desaguiliers. And here Mrs. Greenville had not been for many weeks ere
+the strangest adventure in the world--as strange as any one of my
+own--befel her. The terrible battle of Naseby had by this time been
+fought, and the King's cause was wholly ruined. Among other Cavaliers
+fortunate enough to escape from that deadly fray, and who were in hiding
+from the vengeance of the usurping government, was the Lord Francis
+V----s, younger son to that hapless Duke of B----m who was slain at
+Portsmouth by Captain F----n. It seems almost like a scene in a comedy
+to tell; and, indeed, I am told that Tom D'Urfey did turn the only merry
+portion of it into a play; but it appears that, among other shifts to
+keep his disguise, the Lord Francis, who was highly skilled in all the
+accomplishments of the age, was fain to enter Mrs. Desaguiliers' school
+at Hackney in the habit of a dancing-master, and that as such he taught
+corantoes and rounds and qyres to the young gentlewomen. Whether the
+governante, who was herself a stanch royalist, winked at the deception,
+I know not; but her having done so is not improbable. Stranger to
+relate, the Lord Francis brought with him a Companion who was, forsooth,
+to teach French and the cittern, and who was no other than Captain
+Richard, son to the Esquire of the West country, and who was likewise
+inveterately pursued by the Usurper. The brother recognised his
+sister--to what joy and contentment on both their parts I need not say;
+but ere the false Dancing-Master had played his part many days, he fell
+madly in love with Arabella Greenville. To her sorrow and wretchedness,
+my poor Grandmother returned his Flame. Not that the Lord Francis stands
+convicted of any Base Designs upon her. I am afraid that he had been as
+wild and as reckless as most of the young nobles of his day; but for
+this young woman at least his love was pure and honourable. He made no
+secret of it to his fast friend, Captain Richard (my Grand-uncle), who
+would soon have crossed swords with the Spark had any villany been
+afloat; and he made no more ado, as was the duty of a Brother jealous of
+his sister's fair fame, but to write his father word of what had
+chanced. The Esquire was half terrified and half flattered by the honour
+done to his family by the Lord Francis. The poor young man was under the
+very sternest of proscriptions, and it was openly known that if the
+Parliament laid hold on him his death was certain. But, on the other
+hand, the Esquire loved his daughter above all things; and one short
+half-hour, passed with her alone at Hackney, persuaded him that he must
+either let Arabella's love-passion have its vent, or break her heart for
+ever. And, take my word for it, you foolish parents who would thwart
+your children in this the most sacred moment of their lives,--thwart
+them for no reasonable cause, but only to gratify your own pride of
+purse, avarice, evil tempers, or love of meddling,--you are but
+gathering up bunches of nettles wherewith to scourge your own shoulders,
+and strewing your own beds with shards and pebbles. Take the advice of
+old John Dangerous, who suffered his daughter to marry the man of her
+choice, and is happy in the thought that she enjoys happiness; and I
+should much wish to know if there be any Hatred in the world so dreadful
+as that curdled love, as that reverence decayed, as that obedience in
+ruins, you see in a proud haughty daughter married against her will to
+one she holds in loathing, and who points her finger, and says within
+herself, "My father and mother made me marry that man, and I am
+Miserable."
+
+It was agreed amongst those who had most right to come to an agreement
+in the matter, that as a first step the Lord Francis V----s should
+betake himself to some other place of hiding, as more in keeping with
+Mrs. Greenville's honour; but that, with the consent of her father and
+brother, he should be solemnly betrothed to her; and that, so soon as
+the troubles were over, or that the price which was upon his head were
+taken off, he should become her husband. And there was even a saving
+clause added, that if the national disturbances unhappily continued,
+Mrs. Greenville should be privately conveyed abroad, and that the Lord
+Francis should marry her so soon after a certain lapse of time as he
+could conveniently get beyond sea. My Lord Duke of B----m had nothing to
+say against the match, loving his brother, as he did, very dearly; and
+so, in the very roughest of times, this truest of true loves seemed to
+bid fair to have a smooth course.
+
+But alas the day! My Grandmother's passion for the young Lord was a very
+madness. On his part, he idolised her, calling her by names and writing
+her letters that are nonsensical enough in common life, but which are
+not held to be foolish pleas in Love's Chancery. When the boy and
+girl--for they were scarcely more--parted, she gave him one of her rich
+brown tresses; he gave her one of his own dainty love-locks. They broke
+a broad piece in halves between them; each hung the fragment by a ribbon
+next the heart. They swore eternal fidelity, devotion. Naught but Death
+should part them, they said. Foolish things to say and do, no doubt; but
+I look at my grizzled old head in the glass, and remember that I have
+said and done things quite as foolish forty--fifty years ago.
+
+Nothing but Death was to part them; and nothing but Death so parted
+them. The Esquire Greenville, his business being brought to a pleasant
+termination, having paid his Fine and gotten his Safe-Conduct and his
+Redemption from Sequestration, betook himself once more to the West. His
+daughter went with him, nourishing her love and fondling it, and
+dwelling, syllable by syllable, on the letters which the Lord Francis
+sent her from time to time. He was in hopes, he said, to get away to
+Holland.
+
+Then came that wicked business of the King's Murder. Mr. Greenville, as
+became a loyal gentleman, was utterly dismayed at that horrid crime; but
+to Arabella the news was as of the intelligence of the death of some
+loved and revered friend. She wept, she sobbed, she called on Heaven to
+shower down vengeance on the Murderers of her gracious Prince. She had
+not heard from her betrothed for many days, and those who loved and
+watched her had marked a strange wild way with her.
+
+It was on the fourth of February that the dreadful news of the Whitehall
+tragedy came to her father's house. She was walking on the next day very
+moodily in the garden, when the figure of one booted and spurred, and
+with the stains of many days' travel on his dress, stood across her
+path. He was but a clown, a mere boor; he had been a ploughboy on her
+father's lands, and had run away to join Captain Richard, who had made
+him a trumpeter in his troop. What he had to say was told in clumsy
+speech, in hasty broken accents, with sighs and stammerings and
+blubberings; but he told his tale too well.
+
+The Lord Francis V----s and Captain Richard Greenville--Arabella's
+lover, Arabella's brother--were both Dead. On the eve of the fatal
+thirtieth of January they had been taken captives in a tilt-boat on the
+Thames, in which they were endeavouring to escape down the river. They
+had at once been tried by a court-martial of rebel officers; and on the
+thirtieth day of that black month, by express order sent from the Lord
+General Cromwell in London, these two gallant and unfortunate gentlemen
+had been shot to death by a file of musketeers in the courtyard of
+Hampton Court Palace. The trumpeter had by a marvel escaped, and lurked
+about Hampton till the dreadful deed was over. He had sought out the
+sergeant of the firing party, and questioned him as to the last moments
+of the condemned. The sergeant said that they died as Malignants, and
+without showing any sign of Penitence; but he could not gainsay that
+their bearing was soldier-like.
+
+Arabella heard this tale without moving.
+
+"Did the Captain--did my brother--say aught before they slew him?" she
+asked.
+
+"Nowt but this, my lady: 'God forgive us all!'"
+
+"And the Lord Francis, said he aught?"
+
+"Ay; but I dunno loike to tell."
+
+"Say on."
+
+"'Twas t' Sergeant tould un. A' blessed the King, and woud hev' t'
+souldiers drink 's health, but they wouldno'. And a' wouldno' let un
+bandage uns eyes; an' jest befwoar t' red cwoats foired, a' touk a long
+lock o' leddy's hair from 's pocket and kissed un, and cried out 'Bloud
+for Bloud!' and then a' died all straight along."
+
+Mrs. Arabella Greenville drew from her bosom a long wavy lock of silken
+hair,--his hair, poor boy!--and kissed it, and crying out "Blood for
+Blood!" she fell down in the garden-path in a dead faint.
+
+She did not Die, however, being spared for many Purposes, some of them
+Terrible, until she was nearly ninety years of age. But her first state
+was worse than death; she lying for many days in a kind of trance or
+lethargy, and then waking up to raving madness. For the best part of
+that year, she was a perfect maniac, from whom nothing could be got but
+gibberings and plungings, and ceaseless cries of "Blood for Blood!" The
+heir-at-law to the estate, now that the Esquire's son was dead, watched
+her madness with a cautelous avaricious desire. He was a sour Parliament
+man, who had pinned his faith to the Commonwealth, and done many
+Awakening things against the Cavaliers, and he thought now that he
+should have his reward, and Inherit.
+
+It was so destined, however, that my Grandmother should recover from
+that Malady. On her beauty it left surprisingly few traces. You could
+only tell the change that had taken place in her by the deathly paleness
+of her visage, by her never smiling, and by that Fierce Expression in
+her eyes being now an abiding instead of a passing one. Beyond these,
+she was herself again; and after a little while went to her domestic
+concerns, and chiefly to the cultivation of that pleasing art of
+Painting in Oils in which she had of old time given such fair promise of
+excellence. Her father would have had several most ingenious examples of
+History and Scripture pieces by the Italian and Flemish masters bought
+for her to study by,--such copies being then very plentiful, by reason
+of the dispersing of the collections of many noblemen and gentlemen on
+the King's side; but this she would not suffer, saying that it were
+waste of time and money, and, with astonishing zeal, applied herself to
+the branch of portraiture. From a little miniature portrait of her
+dead Lord, drawn by Mr. Cooper, she painted in large many fair and noble
+presentments, varying them according to her humour,--now showing the
+Lord Francis in his panoply as a man of war, now in a court habit, now
+in an embroidered night-gown and Turkish cap, now leaning on the
+shoulder of her brother, the Captain, deceased. And anon she would make
+a ghastly image of him lying all along in the courtyard at Hampton
+Court, with the purple bullet-marks on his white forehead, and a great
+crimson stain on his bosom, just below his bands. This was the one she
+most loved to look upon, although her father sorely pressed her to put
+it by, and not dwell on so uncivil a theme, the more so as, in Crimson
+Characters, on the background she had painted the words "Blood for
+Blood," But whatever she did was now taken little account of, for all
+thought her to be distraught.
+
+By and by she fell to quite a new order in her painting. She seemed to
+take infinite pleasure in making portraitures of OLIVER CROMWELL, who
+had by this time become Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. She had
+never seen that Bold Bad Man (the splendour of whose mighty achievements
+must for ever remain tarnished by his blood-guiltiness in the matter of
+the King's Murther); but from descriptions of his person, for which she
+eagerly sought, and from bustos, pictures, and prints cut in brass,
+which she obtained from Bristol and elsewhere, she produced some
+surprising resemblances of him who was now the Greatest Man in England.
+She painted him at full and at half length--in full-face, profile, and
+three-quarter; but although she would show her work to her intimates,
+and ask eagerly "Is it like--is it like him?" she would never part with
+one copy (and there were good store of time-servers ready to buy the
+Protector's picture at that time), nor could any tell how she disposed
+of them.
+
+This went on until the summer of the year 1657, when her father gently
+put it to her that she had worn the willow long enough, and would have
+had her ally herself with some gentleman of worth and parts in that part
+of the country. For the poor Esquire desired that she should be his
+heiress, and that a man-child should be born to the Greenville estate,
+and thus the heir-at-law, who was a wretched attorney at Bristol, and
+more bitter against kings than ever, should not inherit. She was not to
+be moved, however, towards marriage; saying softly that she was already
+wedded to her Frank in heaven,--for so she spoke of the Lord Francis
+V----s,--and that her union had been blessed by her brother Dick, who
+was in Heaven too, with King Charles and all the Blessed Army of
+Martyrs. And I have heard, indeed, that the unhappy business of the
+King's death was the means of so crazing, or casting into a Sad Celibacy
+and Devouring Melancholy, multitudes of comely young women who were born
+for love and delights, and to be the smiling mothers of many children.
+
+So, seeing that he could do nothing with her, and loth to use any
+unhandsome pressure towards one whom he loved as the Apple of his Eye,
+the Esquire began to think it might divert her mind to more cheerful
+thoughts if she quitted for a season that part of the country (for it
+was at Home that she had received the dreadful news of her misfortune);
+and, Sir Fortunatus Geddings and his family being extremely willing to
+receive her, and do her honour, he despatched Arabella to London, under
+protection of Mr. Landrail, his steward, a neighbour of his, Sir
+Hardress Eustis, lending his Coach for the journey.
+
+Being now come to London, every means which art could devise, or
+kindness could imagine, were made use of by Sir Fortunatus, his wife,
+and daughter, to make Arabella's life happier. But I should tell you a
+strange thing that came about at her father's house the day after she
+left it for the Town. Mr. Greenville chanced to go in a certain long
+building (by the side of his pleasure-pond) that was used as a
+boat-house, when, to his amazement, he sees, piled up against the wall,
+a number of pictures, some completed, some but half finished, but all
+representing the Lord Protector Cromwell. But the strangest thing about
+them was, that in every picture the canvas about the head was pricked
+through and through in scores of places with very fine clean holes, and,
+looking around in his marvel, he found an arbalist or cross-bow, with
+some very sharp bolts, and was so led to conjecture that some one had
+been setting these heads of the Protector up as a target, and shooting
+bolts at them. He was at first minded to send an express after his
+daughter to London to question her if she knew aught of the matter; but
+on second thoughts he desisted, remembering that in the Message, almost,
+(as the times stood) there was Treason, and concluding that, after all,
+it might be but some idle fancy of Arabella, and part of the Demi-Craze
+under which she laboured. For there could be no manner of doubt that
+the Pictures, if not the Holes in them, were of her handiwork.
+
+Meanwhile Arabella was being entertained in the stateliest manner by Sir
+Fortunatus Geddings, who stood in great favour with the government, and
+had, during the troubles, assisted the Houses with large sums of money.
+There were then not many sports or amusements wherewith a sorrowing
+maiden could be diverted; for the temper of England's Rulers was against
+vain pastimes and junketings. The Maypoles had been pulled down; the
+players whipped and banished; the bear and bull baitings, and even the
+mere harmless minstrelsy and ballad-singing of the streets, all
+rigorously pulled down. But whatever the worthy Turkey merchant and his
+household could do in the way of carrying Arabella about to suppers,
+christenings, country gatherings, and so forth, was cheerfully and
+courteously done. Sir Fortunatus maintained a coach (for he was one of
+the richest merchants in the City of London), and in this conveyance
+Arabella was ofttimes taken to drive in Hyde Park, or towards the
+Uxbridge Road. 'Twas on one of these occasions that she first saw the
+Protector, who likewise was in his coach, drawn by eight Holstein mares,
+and attended by a troop of Horse, very gallantly appointed, with scarlet
+livery coats, bright gorgets and back-pieces, and red plumes in their
+hats.
+
+"He is very like, very like," she murmured, looking long and earnestly
+at the grand cavalcade.
+
+"Like unto Whom, my dear?" asked Mrs. Nancy Geddings, the youngest
+daughter of Sir Fortunatus, who was her companion in the coach that day.
+
+"Very like unto him who is at Home in the West yonder," she made answer.
+"Now take me back to Ludgate, Nancy sweet, for I am Sick."
+
+She was to be humoured in everything, and she was taken back as she
+desired. It chanced, a few days after this, that word came that his
+Highness the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England (for to such
+State had Oliver grown) designed to visit the City, to dine with the
+citizens at Guildhall. There was to be a great Pageant. He was to be met
+at Temple Bar by the Mayor and Aldermen, and to be escorted towards
+Cheapside by those city Trainbands which had done such execution on the
+Parliament side during the wars, and by the Companies with their Livery
+banners. Foreign Ambassadors were to bear him company; for Oliver was
+then at the height of his power, and had made the name of England
+dreaded, and even his own prowess respected, by all nations that were
+beyond sea. He was to hear a sermon at Bow Church at noon, and at two
+o'clock--for the preacher was to be Mr. Hugh Peters, who always gave his
+congregation a double turn of the hour-glass--he was to dine at the
+Guildhall, where I know not how many geese, bustards, capons, pheasants,
+ruffs and reeves, sirloins, shoulders of veal, pasties, sweet puddings,
+jellies, and custards, with good store of Rhenish and Buckrack and
+Canary, and Bordelais and Gascoin wines, were provided to furnish a
+banquet worthy of the day. For although the Protectorate was a stern sad
+period, and Oliver was (or had schooled himself to be) a temperate man,
+the citizens had not quite forgotten their love of good cheer; and the
+Protector himself was not averse from the keeping up some state and
+splendour, Whitehall being now well-nigh as splendid as in the late
+King's time, and his Highness sitting with his Make-Believe Lords around
+him (Lisle, Whitelocke, and the rest), and eating his meat to tuckets
+upon Trumpets, and being otherwise puffed up with Vanity.
+
+The good folks with whom Arabella was sojourning thought it might help
+to cure her of her sad moping ways if she saw the grand pageant go by,
+and mingled in the merriment and feasting which the ladies of Sir
+Fortunatus's family--the Knight himself being bidden to the
+Guildhall--proposed to give their neighbours on the day when Oliver came
+into the City. To this intent, the windows of their house without
+Ludgate were all taken out of their frames, and the casements themselves
+hung with rich cloths and tapestries, and decked with banners. And an
+open house was kept, literally; meats and wines and sweets being set out
+in every room, even to the bed-chambers, and all of the Turkey
+merchant's acquaintance being bidden to come in and help themselves, and
+take a squeeze at the windows to see his Highness go by. Only one window
+on the first floor was set apart, and here sat the Ladies of the family,
+with Mistress Deborah Clay, the Remembrancer's lady, and one that was
+sister to a Judge of Commonwealth's Bench, and Arabella Greenville, who
+was, for a wonder, quite cheerful and sprightly that morning, and who
+had for her neighbour one Lady Lisle, the wife of John Lisle, one of
+Cromwell's Chief Councillors and Commissioners of the Great Seal.[B]
+
+The time that passed between their taking seats and the coming of the
+pageant was passed pleasantly enough; not in drinking of healths, which
+practice was then considered as closely akin to an unlawful thing, but
+in laughing and quaffing, and whispering of merry jests. For I have
+usually found that, be the Rule of Church and State ever so sour and
+stern, folks _will_ laugh and quaff and jest on the sly, and be merry in
+the green tree, if they are forced to be sad in the dry.
+
+There was a gentleman standing behind Arabella, a Counsellor of
+Lincoln's Inn I think, who was telling a droll story of Lord President
+Bradshaw to his friend from the Temple. Not greatly a person of whom to
+relate merry tales, I should think, that terrible Bencher, who sat at
+the head of the High Commission, clothed in his scarlet robe, and passed
+judgment upon his lord the King. But still these gentlemen laughed loud
+and long, as one told the other how the President lay very sick, sick
+almost to death, at his country house; and how, he being one that was in
+the Commission of the Chancellorship, had taken them away with him, and
+would by no means surrender them, keeping them under his pillow, night
+and day; wherefore one of his brother commissioners was fain to seek him
+out, and press him hard to give up the seals, saying that the business
+of the nation was at a Standstill, for they could neither seal patents
+nor pardons. But all in vain, Bradshaw crying out in a voice that,
+though weak, was still terrible, that he would never give them up, but
+would carry them with him into the next world; whereat quoth the other
+commissioner, "_By ----, My Lord President, they will certainly melt if
+you do._" And at this tale the gentleman from Lincoln's Inn and he from
+the Temple both laughed so, that Arabella, who had been listening
+without eavesdropping, burst into a fit of laughter too; only my Lady
+Lisle (who had likewise heard the Story) regarded her with a very grim
+and dissatisfied countenance, and murmured that she thought a little
+trailing up before the Council, and committing to the Gate-house, would
+do some popinjays some good, and cure them of telling tales as
+treasonable as they were scurrilous.
+
+But now came a great noise of trumpets and hautboys and drums, and the
+great pageant came streaming up towards Ludgate, a troop of Oliver's own
+Body-guard on iron-grey chargers clearing the way, which they did with
+scant respect for the lives and limbs of the crowd, and with very
+little scruple either in bruising the Trainbands with their horses'
+hoofs and the flat of their broadswords. As Arabella leant forward to
+see the show approach, something hard, and it would seem of metal, that
+she carried beneath her mantle, struck against the arm of my Lady Lisle,
+who, being a woman of somewhat quick temper, cried out,
+
+"Methinks that you carry a pocket-flask with you, Mistress Greenville,
+instead of a vial of essences. That which you have must hold a pint at
+least."
+
+"I do carry such a flask," answered Arabella, "and please God, there are
+those here to-day who shall drink of it even to the Dregs."
+
+This speech was afterwards remembered against her as a proof of her
+Intent.
+
+All, however, were speedily too busy with watching the Show go by to
+take much heed of any word passage between the two women. Now it was
+Mistress Deborah Clay pointing out the Remembrancer to her gossip; now
+the flaunting banners of the Companies, now the velvet robes of the
+Lords of the Council were looked upon; now a Great Cry arose that his
+Highness was coming.
+
+He came in his coach drawn by the eight Holstein mares, one of his lords
+by his side, and his two chaplains, with a gentleman of the bed-chamber
+sitting over against. He wore a rich suit of brown velvet purfled with
+white satin, a bright gorget of silver,--men said that he wore mail
+beneath his clothes,--startups and gauntlets of yellow Spanish, a great
+baldric of cloth-of-gold, and in his hat a buckle of diamonds and a red
+feather. Yet, bravely as he was attired, those who knew him declared
+that they had never seen Oliver look so careworn and so miserable as he
+did that day.
+
+By a kind of Fate, he turned his glance upwards as he passed the house
+of the Turkey merchant, and those Cruel Eyes met the fierce gaze of
+Arabella Greenville.
+
+"Blood for Blood!" she cried out in a loud clear voice; and she drew a
+Pistol from the folds of her mantle, and fired downwards, and with good
+aim, at the Protector's head.
+
+My Lady Lisle saw the deed done. "Jezebel!" she shrieked, striking the
+weapon from Arabella's hand.
+
+Oliver escaped unharmed, but by an almost miracle. The bullet had struck
+him as it was aimed, directly in the centre of his forehead, he wearing
+his hat much slouched over his brow; but it had struck--not his skull,
+but the diamond buckle, and glancing off from that hard mass, sped out
+of the coach-window again, on what errand none could tell, for it was
+heard of no more. I have often wondered what became of all the bullets I
+have let fly.
+
+The stoppage of the coach; the Protector half stunned; the chaplain
+paralysed with fear; the Trainbands in a frenzy--half of terror, half of
+strong drink--firing off their pieces hap-hazard at the windows, and
+shouting out that this was a plot of the Papists or the Malignants; the
+crowd surging, the Body-Guard galloping to and fro; the poor
+standard-bearers tripping themselves up with their own poles,--all this
+made a mad turmoil in the street without Ludgate. But the Protector had
+speedily found all his senses, and had whispered a word or two to a
+certain Sergeant in whom he placed great trust, and pointed his finger
+to a certain window. Then the Sergeant being gone away, orders were
+given for the pageant to move on; and through Ludgate, and by Paul's,
+and up Chepe, and to Bow Church, it moved accordingly. Mr. Hugh Peters
+preached for two hours as though nothing had happened. Being doubtless
+under instructions, he made not the slightest allusion to the late
+tragic Attempt; and at the banquet afterwards at the Guildhall, there
+were only a few trifling rumours that his Highness had been shot at by a
+mad woman from a window in Fleet Street; denial, however, being
+speedily given to this by persons in Authority, who declared that the
+disturbance without Ludgate had arisen simply from a drunken soldier of
+the Trainbands firing his musketoon into the air for Joy.
+
+But the Sergeant, with some soldiers of the Protector's own, walked
+tranquilly into the house of Sir Fortunatus Geddings, and into the upper
+chamber, where the would-be Avenger of Blood was surrounded by a throng
+of men and women gazing upon her, half in horror, and half in
+admiration. The Sergeant beckoned to her, and she arose without a
+murmur, and went with him and the soldiers, two only being left as
+sentinels, to see that no one stirred from the house till orders came.
+By this time, from Ludgate to Blackfriars all was soldiers, the crowd
+being thrust away east and west; and, between a lane of pikemen,
+Arabella was brought into the street, hurried through the narrow lanes
+behind Apothecaries' Hall, and so through the alleys to Blackfriars
+Stairs, where a barge was in waiting, which bore her swiftly away to
+Whitehall.
+
+"You have flown at High Game, mistress," was the only remark made to her
+by the Sergeant.
+
+She was locked up for many hours in an inner chamber, the windows being
+closed, and a lamp set on the table. They bound her, but, mindful of her
+sex and youth, not in fetters, or even with ropes, contenting themselves
+with fastening her arms tightly behind her with the Sergeant's silken
+sash. For the Sergeant was of Cromwell's own guard, and was of great
+authority.
+
+At about nine at night the Sergeant and two soldiers came for her, and
+so brought her, through many lobbies, to Cromwell's own closet, where
+she found him still with his hat and baldric on, sitting at a table
+covered with green velvet.
+
+"What prompted thee to seek my Life?" he asked, without anger, but in a
+slow, cold, searching voice.
+
+"Blood for Blood!" she answered, with undaunted mien.
+
+"What evil have I done thee, that thou shouldst seek my blood?"
+
+"What evil--what evil, Beelzebub?--all! Thou hast slain the King my Lord
+and master. Thou hast slain the Dear Brother who was my playmate, and my
+father's hope and pride. Thou hast slain the Sweet and Gallant Youth who
+was to have been my husband."
+
+"Thou are that Arabella Greenville, then, the daughter of the wavering
+half-hearted Esquire of the West."
+
+"I am the daughter of a Gentleman of Long Descent. I am Arabella
+Greenville, an English Maid of Somerset; and I cry for vengeance for the
+blood of Charles Stuart, for the blood of Richard Greenville, for the
+blood of FRANCIS VILLIERS. Blood for Blood!"
+
+That terrible gleam of Madness leapt out of her blue eyes, and, all
+bound as she was, she rushed towards the Protector, as though in her
+fury she would have spurned him with her foot, or torn him with her
+teeth. The Sergeant for his part made as though he would have drawn his
+sword upon her; but Oliver laid his hand on the arm of his officer, and
+bade him forbear.
+
+"Leave the maiden alone with me," he said calmly; "wait within call. She
+can do no harm." Then, when the soldiers had withdrawn, he walked to and
+fro in the room for many minutes, ever and anon turning his head and
+gazing fixedly on the prisoner, who stood erect, her head high, her
+hands, for all their bonds, clenched in defiance.
+
+"Thou knowest," he said, "that thy Life is forfeit."
+
+"I care not. The sooner the better. I ask but one Mercy: that you send
+me not to Tyburn, but to Hampton Court; there to be shot to death in
+the courtyard by a file of musketeers."
+
+"Wherefore to Hampton?"
+
+"Because it was there you murdered my Lover and my Brother."
+
+"I remember," the Protector said, bowing his head. "They were rare
+Malignants, both. I remember; it was on the same thirtieth of January
+that Charles Stuart died the death. But shouldst thou not, too, bear in
+mind that Vengeance is not thine, but the Lord's?"
+
+"Blood for Blood!"
+
+"Thou art a maiden of a stern Resolve and a strong Will," said the
+Protector, musingly. "If thou art pardoned, wilt thou promise repentance
+and amendment?"
+
+"Blood for Blood!"
+
+"Poor distraught creature," this Once cruel man made answer, "I will
+have no blood of thine. I have had enough," he continued, with a dark
+look and a deep sigh; "I am weary; and Blood will have Blood. But that
+my life was in Mercy saved for the weal of these kingdoms, thou mightst
+have done with me, Arabella Greenville, according to thy desires."
+
+He paused, as though for some expression of sorrow; but she was silent.
+
+"Thou art hardened," he resumed; "it may be that there are things that
+_cannot_ be forgiven."
+
+"There are," she said, firmly.
+
+"I spare thy life," the Lord Protector continued; "but, Arabella
+Greenville, thou must go into Captivity. Until I am Dead, we two cannot
+be at large together. But I will not doom thee to a solitary prison.
+Thou shalt have a companion in durance. Yes," he ended, speaking between
+his teeth, and more to himself than to her, "she shall join Him yonder
+in his lifelong prison. Blood for Blood; the Slayer and the Avenger
+shall be together."
+
+She was taken back to her place of confinement, where meat and drink
+were placed before her, and a tiring-woman attended her with a change of
+garments. And at day-break the next morning she was taken away in a
+litter towards Colchester in Essex.[C]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] This Lady Lisle was a very virulent partisan woman, and, according
+to my Grandmother's showing, was so bitter against the Crown that, being
+taken, when a young woman, to witness the execution of King Charles, and
+seeing one who pressed to the scaffold after the blow to dip her
+kerchief in the Martyr's blood, she cried out "that she needed no such
+relic; but that she would willingly drink the Tyrant's blood." This is
+the same Alice Lisle who afterwards, in King James's time, suffered at
+Winchester for harbouring two of the Western Rebels.
+
+[C] Those desirous of learning fuller particulars of my Grandmother's
+History, or anxious to satisfy themselves that I have not Lied, should
+consult a book called _The Travels of Edward Brown, Esquire_, that is
+now in the Great Library at Montague House. Mr. Brown is in most things
+curiously exact; but he errs in stating that Mrs. Greenville's name was
+Letitia,--it was Arabella.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
+
+MY GRANDMOTHER DIES, AND I AM LEFT ALONE, WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A NAME.
+
+
+I HAVE sat over against Death unnumbered times in the course of a long
+and perilous life, and he has appeared to me in almost every shape; but
+I shall never forget that Thirtieth of January in the year '20, when my
+Grandmother died. I have seen men all gashed and cloven about--a very
+mire of blood and wounds,--and heads lying about on the floor like
+ninepins, among the Turks, where a man's life is as cheap as the
+Halfpenny Hatch. I was with that famous Commander Baron Trenck[D] when
+his Pandours--of whom I was one--broke into Mutiny. He drew a pistol
+from his belt, and said, "I shall decimate you." And he began to count
+Ten, "one, two, three, four," and so on, till he came to the tenth man,
+whom he shot Dead. And then he took to counting again, until he was
+arrived at the second Tenth. That man's brains he also blew out. I was
+the tenth of the third batch, but I never blenched. Trenck happily held
+his hand before he came to Me. The Pandours cried out that they would
+submit, although I never spoke a word; he forgave us; and I had a flask
+of Tokay with him in his tent that very after-dinner. I have seen a man
+keel-hauled at sea, and brought up on the other side, his face all
+larded with barnacles like a Shrove-tide capon. Thrice I have stood
+beneath the yardarm with the rope round my neck (owing to a king's ship
+mistaking the character of my vessel).[E] I have seen men scourged till
+the muscles of their backs were laid bare as in a Theatre of Anatomy; I
+have watched women's limbs crackle and frizzle in the flames at an Act
+of Faith, with the King and Court--ay, and the court-ladies too--looking
+on. I stood by when that poor mad wretch Damiens was pulled to pieces by
+horses in the Grève. I have seen what the plague could do in the galleys
+at Marseilles. Death and I have been boon companions and bedfellows. He
+has danced a jig with me on a plank, and ridden bodkin, and gone snacks
+with me for a lump of horse-flesh in a beleaguered town; but no man can
+say that John Dangerous had aught but a bold face to show that Phantom
+who frights nursemaids and rich idle people so.
+
+And yet, now, I can recall the cold shudder that passed through my young
+veins when my Grandmother died. Of all days, too, that the Thirtieth of
+January should have been ordered for her passing away! It was
+mid-winter, and the streets were white with Innocent Snow when she was
+taken ill. She had not been one of those trifling and trivanting
+gentlewomen that pull diseases on to their pates with drums and routs,
+and late hours, and hot rooms, and carding, and distilled waters. She
+had ever been of a most sober conversation and temperate habit; so that
+the prodigious age she reached became less of a wonder, and the
+tranquillity with which her spirit left this darksome house of clay
+seemed mercifully natural. They had noticed, so early as the autumn of
+'19, that she was decaying; yet had the roots of life stricken so
+strongly into earth as to defy that Woodman who pins his faith to
+shaking blasts at first, but when he finds that windfalls will not serve
+his turn, and that although leaves decay, and branches are swept away,
+and the very bark is stripped off, the tree dies not, takes heart of
+grace, and lays about him with his Axe. Then one blow with the sharp
+suffices. So for many months Death seemed to let her be, as though he
+sat down quietly by her side, nursing his bony chin, and saying, "She is
+very old and weak; yet a little, and she must surely be mine." Mistress
+Talmash appeared to me, in the fantastic imagination of a solitary
+childhood, to take such a part, and play it to the Very Death; and there
+were sidelong glances from her eyes, and pressures of her lips, and a
+thrusting forth of her hands when the cordial or the potion was to be
+given, that seemed to murmur, "Still does she Tarry, and still do I
+Wait." This gentlewoman was never hard or impatient with my Grandmother;
+but towards the closing scene, for all the outward deference she
+observed towards her, 'twas she who commanded, and the Unknown Lady who
+obeyed. Nor did I fail to mark that her bearing was towards me fuller of
+a kind of stern authority than she had of aforetime presumed to show,
+and that she seemed to be waiting for me too, that she might work her
+will upon me.
+
+The ecclesiastic Father Ruddlestone was daily, and for many hours,
+closeted with my kinswoman and benefactress; and I often, when admitted
+to her presence after one of these parleys, found her much dejected, and
+in Tears. He had always maintained a ghostly sway over her, and was in
+these latter days stern with her almost to harshness. And although I
+have ever disdained eavesdropping and couching in covert places to hear
+the foregatherings of my betters (which some honourable persons in the
+world's reckoning scorn not to do), it was by Chance, and not by Design,
+that, playing one wintry day in the Withdrawing-room adjoining the
+closet where my Grandmother still sat among her relics, I heard high
+words--high, at least, as they affected one person, for the lady's rose
+not above a mild complaint; and Father Ruddlestone coming out, said in
+an angry tone:
+
+"My uncle saved the King's life when he was in the Oak, and his soul
+when he was at Whitehall; and I will do his bidding by you now."
+
+"The Lord's will be done, not mine," my Grandmother said meekly.
+
+Then Father Ruddlestone passed into the Withdrawing-room, and seeing me
+on a footstool, playing it is true at the Battle of Hochstedt with some
+leaden soldiers, and two wooden puppets for the Duke and Prince Eugene,
+but still all agape at the strange words that had hit my sense, he
+catches me a buffet on the ear, bidding me mind my play, and not listen,
+else I should hear no good of myself, or of what an osier wand might
+haply do to me. And that a change was coming was manifest even in this
+rude speech; for my Grandmother, albeit of the wise King's mind on the
+proper ordering of children, and showing that she did not hate me when I
+needed chastening, would never suffer her Domestics, even to the
+highest, to lay a finger upon me.
+
+It was after these things, and while I was crying out, more in anger
+than with the smart of the blow, that she called me into her closet and
+soothed me, giving me to eat of that much-prized sweetmeat she said was
+once such a favourite solace with Queen Mary of Modena, consort of the
+late King James, and which she only produced on rare occasions. And then
+she bewailed my hurt, but bade me not vex her Director, who was a man of
+much holiness, full, when we were contrite, of healing and quieting
+words; but then, of a sudden, nipping me pretty sharply by the arm, she
+said:
+
+"Child, I charge thee that thou abandon that fair false race, and trust
+no man whose name is Stuart, and abide not by their fatal creed." In
+remembrance of which, although I am by descent a Cavalier, and bound by
+many bonds to the old Noble House,--and surely there was never a Prince
+that carried about him more of the far-bearing blaze of Majesty than the
+Chevalier de St. G----, and bears it still, all broken as he is, in his
+Italian retreat,--I have ever upheld the illustrious House of Brunswick
+and the Protestant Succession as by Law Established. And as the barking
+of a dog do I contemn those scurril flouts and obloquies which have of
+old times tossed me upon tongues, and said of me that I should play fast
+and loose with Jacobites and Hanoverians, drinking the King over the
+Water on my knees at night, and going down to the Cock-pit to pour news
+of Jacobites and recusants and other suspected persons into the ears of
+Mr. Secretary in the morning. Treason is Death by the Law, and legal
+testimony is not to be gainsaid; but I abhor those Iscariot-minded
+wretches, with faces like those who Torture the Saints in old Hangings,
+who cry, aha! against the sanctuaries, and trot about to bear false
+witness.[F]
+
+There were no more quarrels between my Grandmother and her Director.
+Thenceforth Father Ruddlestone ruled over her; and one proof of his
+supremacy was, that she forewent the use of that Common Prayer-Book of
+our Anglican Church which had been her constant companion. From which I
+conjecture that, after long wavering and temporizing, even to the length
+of having the Father in her household, she had at length returned to or
+adopted the ancient faith. But although the Substance of our Ritual was
+now denied her, she was permitted to retain its Shadow; and for hours
+would sit gazing upon the torn-off cover of the book, with its device of
+the crown and crossed axes, in sad memory of K. C. 1st.
+
+A most mournful Christmas found her still growing whiter and weaker, and
+nearer her End. At this ordinarily joyful season of the year, it was her
+commendable custom to give great alms away to the poor,--among whom at
+all times she was a very Dorcas,--bestowing not only gifts of money to
+the clergy for division among the needy, but sending also a dole of a
+hundred shillings to the poor prisoners in the Marshalsea, as many to
+Ludgate, and the Gatehouse, and the Fleet,--surely prisons for debt were
+as plentiful as blackberries when I was young!--and giving away besides
+large store of bread, meat, and blankets at her own door in Hanover
+Square: a custom then pleasantly common among people of quality, but
+now--when your parish Overseer, forsooth, eats up the very marrow of the
+poor--fallen sadly into disuse. They are for ever striking Poor's Rates
+against householders, and will not take clipped money; whereas in my day
+Private Charity, and a King's Letter in aid from the pulpit now and
+then, were enough; and, for my part, I would sooner see a poor rogue
+soundly firked at the post, and then comforted with a bellyful of bread
+and cheese and beer by the constable, and so passed on to his
+belongings, than that he should be clapped up in a workhouse, to pick
+oakum and suck his paws like a bear, while Master Overseer gets
+tun-stomached over shoulder of veal and burnt brandy at vestry-dinners.
+For it is well-known, to the shame of Authority, that these things all
+come out of the Poor Rate.
+
+Ere my Grandmother was brought so low, she would sit in state on
+almsgiving morning, which was the day after Christmas; and the more
+decent of her bedesmen and bedeswomen would be admitted to her presence
+to pay their duty, and drink her health in a cup of warm ale on the
+staircase. Also the little children from Lady Viellcastel's
+charity-school would be brought to her by their governante to have cakes
+and new groats given to them, and to sing one of those sweet tender
+Christmas hymns which surely fall upon a man's heart like sweet-scented
+balsam on a wound. And the beadle of St. George's would bring a great
+bowpot of such hues as Christmas would lend itself to, and have a bottle
+of wine and a bright broad guinea for his fee; while his Reverence the
+rector would attend with a suitable present,--such as a satin work-bag
+or a Good Book, the cover broidered by his daughters,--and, when he sat
+at meat, find a bank-bill under his platter, which was always of silver.
+And I warrant you his Reverence's eyes twinkled as much at the bill as
+at the plum-porridge, and that he feigned not to see Father Ruddlestone,
+if perchance he met that foreign person on the staircase, or in the
+store-office where Mistress Nancy Talmash kept many a toothsome cordial
+and heart-warming strong water.
+
+This dismal Christmas none of these pleasant things were done. My Lady
+gave one Sum to her steward, Mr. Cadwallader, and bade him dispose of it
+according to his best judgment among the afflicted, bearing not their
+creed or politics or parish in mind, but their necessities. And I was
+bereft of a joyful day; for in ordinary she would be pleased that I
+should be her little almoner, and hand the purses with the groats in
+them to the poor almsfolk. What has become, I wonder, of those good old
+customs of giving away things at Christmas-tides? Where is the Lord
+Mayor's dole of beef-pies to the vagrant people that lurk in St.
+Martin's-le-Grand, that new Alsatia? Where is the Queen's gift of an
+hundred pounds to the distressed people who took up quarters in Somerset
+House? Where are the thousand guineas which the Majesty of England was
+used to send every New-Year's morning to the High Bailiff of Westminster
+to be parted among the poor of the Liberty? Nothing seems to be given
+nowadays. 'Tis more caning than cakes that is gotten by the charity
+children; and Master Collector, the Jackanapes, is for ever knocking at
+my door for Poor's Rates.
+
+In the middle of January my Grandmother was yet weaker. Straw was laid
+before her door, and daily prayers--for of course the Rector knew
+nothing about Father Ruddlestone--were put up for her at St. George's.
+And I think also she was not forgotten in the orisons of those who
+attended the chapel of the Venetian Envoy, and in that permitted to the
+use of the French Ambassador. Doctor Vigors was now daily in attendance,
+with many other learned physicians, who almost fought in the
+antechambers on the treatment to be observed towards this sick person.
+One was for cataplasms of bran and Venice turpentine, another for
+putting live pigeons to her feet, another for a portion of hot wine
+strained through gold-leaf and mingled with hellebore and chips of
+mandrake. Warwick Lane suggested mint-tea, and Pall Mall was all for
+bleeding. This Pall Mall physician was about the most passionate little
+man, with the biggest ruffles and the tallest gold-headed cane I ever
+saw. His name was Toobey.
+
+"Blood, sir! there's nothing like blood!" he would cry to Doctor Vigors;
+and he cried out for "blood, sir," till you might fancy that he was a
+butcher or a herald-at-arms, or a housewife making black puddings.
+
+Says Doctor Vigors in a Rage, "You are nothing but a barber-surgeon,
+brother, and learnt shaving on a sheep's head, and phlebotomy on a cow
+that had the falling fever."
+
+"Mountebank and quacksalver!" answers my passionate gentleman, "you
+bought your diploma from one that forges seamen's certificates in Sopar
+Lane. Go to, metamorphosed and two-legged ass! Where is your worship's
+stage in the Stocks Market, with pills to purge the vapours, and powders
+to make my lady in love with her footman, and a lying proclamation on
+every post, and a black boy behind you to beat on the cymbals when you
+draw out teeth with the kitchen pliers."
+
+"Rogue!" screams Dr. Toobey, "but for the worshipful house we are in, I
+would batoon you to a mummy."
+
+"Mummy forsooth!" the other retorts; "Mummy with a murrain! Why, you dug
+up your grandmother, and pounded her up with conserve of myrrh, and
+called the stuff King Pharaoh, that was sovereign to cure the
+strangury."
+
+"Better to do that," quoth Toobey, calming down into mere give and
+take--for he had, in truth, done some droll things in mummy
+medicaments,--"than to have been a Fleet parson, that was forced to sell
+ale and couple beggars for a living, and turned doctor when he had cured
+a bad leg for one that had lain too long in the bilboes."
+
+This was too much for Doctor Vigors, who had once been in orders, and
+was still a Nonjuror, winked at, for his skill's sake, by Authority. He
+was for rushing on the Pall-Mall mummy-doctor and tousling of his wig,
+when Mistress Talmash came out of her lady's closet, and told them that
+she was fainting. This was the way that doctors disagreed when I was
+young, and I fancy that they don't agree much better now.
+
+She lingered on, however, still resolutely refusing to take to her bed,
+and seeing me, if only for a moment, every day, for yet another
+fortnight. On the Twentieth of January, it was her humour to receive the
+visit of a certain great nobleman. Very many of the quality had daily
+waited upon her, or had sent their gentlemen to inquire after her; but
+for many weeks she had seen none but her own household. The nobleman I
+speak of had lately come down from the Bath, where he had been taking
+the waters; for he was full of years, and of Glory, and of infirmities.
+A message went to his grand house in Pall Mall, and he presently waited
+on my Grandmother. He was closeted with her for an hour, when the tap of
+my Grandmother's cane against the wainscot summoned Mistress Talmash,
+and she, doing her errand, brought me into the presence.
+
+"My Lord," whispered my Grandmother, as she drew me towards her, and
+gave me a kiss that was almost of a whisper too, so feebly gentle was
+it,--"My Lord Duke, will you be pleased to lay your hand on the boy's
+head and give him your blessing, and it will make him Brave."
+
+He smiled sadly at her fancy, but did as she entreated. He laid a hand
+that was all covered with jewelled rings, and that shook almost as much
+as my Grandmother's, on my locks, and prattled out to me something about
+being a good boy and not playing cards. He, too, was almost gone. He had
+a mighty wig, and velvet clothes all covered with gold-lace, a diamond
+star, and broad blue ribbon; but his poor swollen legs were swathed in
+flannel, and he was so feeble that he had to be helped down-stairs by
+two lacqueys. I too ran down-stairs unchecked, and saw him helped,
+tottering, into his chair, a company of the Foot-guards surrounding it;
+for he was much misliked by the mobile at that time, and few cried, God
+bless him! Indeed, as the company moved away, I heard a ragged fellow
+(who should have been laid by the heels for it) cry, "There goes
+Starvation Jack, that fed his soldiers on boiled bricks and baked
+mortar."
+
+"He is a Whig now," said my Grandmother to me, when I rejoined her; "but
+he was of the bravest among men, and in the old days loved the true King
+dearly."
+
+When this man was young and poor, the mobile used to call him "Handsome
+Jack." When he was rich and old and famous, he was "Starvation Jack" to
+them. And of such are the caprices of a vain, precipitate age. But I am
+glad I saw him, Whig and pinchpenny as he was. I am proud of having seen
+this Great Captain and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The King of
+Prussia, the Duke of Cumberland, my Lord George Sackville, Marshal
+Biron, Duke Richelieu, and many of the chiefest among the Turkish
+bashaws, have I known and conversed with; but I still feel that Man's
+trembling hand on my head; my blood is still fired, as at the sound of a
+trumpet, by the remembrance of his voice; I still rejoice at my fortune
+in having set eyes, if only for a moment, on John Churchill, Duke of
+Marlborough.
+
+It was on the Twenty-ninth of January (o.s.) that our servants, who had
+declared to having heard the death-watch ticking for days, asserted that
+those ominous sounds grew faster and faster, resolving themselves at
+length into those five distinct taps, with a break between, which are
+foolishly held by the vulgar to spell out the word DEATH. And although
+the noise came probably from some harmless insect, or from a rat
+nibbling at the wainscot, that sound never meets my ear--and I have
+heard it on board ship many a time, and in gaol, and in my tent in the
+desert--without a lump of ice sliding down my back. As for Ghosts, John
+Dangerous has seen too many of them to be frightened.[G]
+
+That night I slept none. It was always my lot in that huge house to be
+put, little fellow as I was, in the hugest of places. My bed was as
+spacious as a Turkish divan. Its yellow silken quilt, lined with
+eiderdown, and embroidered with crimson flowers, was like a great waving
+field of ripe corn with poppies in it. When I lay down, great weltering
+waves of Bed came and rolled over me; and my bolster alone was as big as
+the cook's hammock at sea, who has always double bedding, being swollen
+with other men's rations. This bed had posts tall and thick enough to
+have been Gerard the Giant's lancing-pole, that used to stand in the
+midst of the bakehouse in Basing Lane; and its curtains of yellow
+taffety hung in folds so thick that I always used to think birds nestled
+among them. That night I dreamt that the bed was changed into our great
+red pew at St. George's, only that it was hung with dark velvet instead
+of scarlet baize, and that the clergyman in the pulpit overhead, with a
+voice angrier than ever, was reading that service for the martyrdom of
+K. C. 1st, which I had heard so often. And then methought my dream
+changed, and two Great Giants with heading-axes came striding over the
+bed, so that I could feel their heavy feet on my breast; but their heads
+were lost in the black sky of the bed's canopy. Horror! they stooped
+down, and lo, they were headless, and from their sheared shoulders and
+their great hatchets dripped, dripped, for ever dripped, great gouts of
+something hot that came into my mouth and tasted salt! And I woke up
+with my hair all in a dabble with the nightdews, with my Grandmother's
+voice ringing in my ears, "Remember the Thirtieth of January!" Mercy on
+me! I had that dream again last night; and the Giants with their axes
+came striding over these old bones--then they changed to a headless
+Spaniard and a bleeding Nun; but the voice that cried, "Remember!" spake
+not in the English tongue, and was not my Grandmother's. And the hair of
+my flesh stood up, as Job's did.
+
+In the morning, when the clouds of night broke up from the pale winter's
+sky, and went trooping away like so many funeral coach-horses to their
+stable, they told me that my Grandmother was Dead; that she had passed
+away when the first cock crew, softly sighing "Remember." It was a
+dreadful thing for me that I could not, for many hours, weep; and that
+for this lack of tears I was reproached for a hardened ingrate by those
+who were now to be my most cruel governors. But I could not cry. The
+grief within me baked my tears, and I could only stare all round at the
+great desert of woe and solitude that seemed to have suddenly grown up
+around me. That morning, for the first time, I was left to dress myself;
+and when I crept down to the parlour, I found no breakfast laid out for
+me--no silver tankard of new milk with a clove in it, no manchet of
+sweet diet bread, no egg on a trencher in a little heap of salt. I asked
+for my breakfast, and was told, for a young cub, that I might get it in
+the kitchen. It would have gone hard with me if, in my Grandmother's
+time, I had entered that place to her knowledge; but all things were
+changed to me now, and when I entered the kitchen, the cook, nay, the
+very scullion-wench, never moved for me. John Footman sat on the dresser
+drinking a mug of purl that one of the maids had made for him. The cook
+leered at me, while another saucy slut handed me a great lump of dry
+bread, and a black-jack with some dregs of the smallest beer at the
+bottom. What had I done to merit such uncivil treatment?
+
+By and by comes Mr. Cadwallader with a sour face, and orders me to my
+chamber, and get a chapter out of Deuteronomy by heart by dinner-time,
+"Or you keep double fast for Martyrdom-day, my young master," he says,
+looking most evilly at me.
+
+"Young master, indeed," Mrs. Nancy repeated; "young master and be saved
+to us. A parish brat rather. No man's child but his that to hit you must
+throw a stone over Bridewell Wall. Up to your chamber, little varlet,
+and learn thy chapter. There are to be no more counting of beads or
+mumblings over hallowed beans in this house. Up with you; times are
+changed."
+
+Why should this woman have been my foe? She had been a cockering,
+fawning nurse to me not so many months ago. Months!--yesterday. Why
+should the steward, who was used to flatter and caress me, now frown and
+threaten like some harsh taskmaster of a Clink, where wantons are sent
+to be whipped and beat hemp. I slunk away scared and cowed, and tried to
+learn a chapter out of Deuteronomy; but the letters all danced up and
+down before my eyes, and the one word "Remember," in great scarlet
+characters, seemed stamped on every page.
+
+It should have been told that between my seventh and my eighth year I
+had been sent, not only to church, but to school; but my grandmother
+deeming me too tender for the besom discipline of a schoolmaster,--from
+which even the Quality were not at that time spared,--I was put under
+the government of a discreet matron, who taught not only reading and
+writing, but also brocaded waistcoats for gentlemen, and was great
+caudle-maker at christenings. It was the merriest and gentlest school in
+the town. We were some twenty little boys and girls together, and all we
+did was to eat sweetmeats, and listen to our dame while she told us
+stories about Cock Robin, Jack the Giant-Killer, and the Golden
+Gardener. Now and then, to be sure, some roguish boy would put pepper in
+her snuff-box, or some saucy girl hide her spectacles; but she never
+laid hands on us, and called us her lambs, her sweethearts, and the like
+endearing expressions. She was the widow of an Irish colonel who
+suffered in the year '96, for his share in Sir John Fenwick's
+conspiracy; and I think she had been at one time a tiring-woman to my
+Grandmother, whom she held in the utmost awe and reverence. I often pass
+Mrs. Triplet's old school-house in what is now called Major Foubert's
+Passage, and recall the merry old days when I went to a schoolmistress
+who could teach her scholars nothing but to love her dearly. It was to
+my Grandmother, a kind but strict woman, to whom I owed what scant
+reading and writing ken I had at eight years of age.
+
+Rudely and disdainfully treated as I now was, my governors thought it
+fit, for the world's sake, that I should be put into decent mourning;
+for my grandmother's death could not be kept from the Quality, and there
+was to be a grand funeral. She lay in State in her great bedchamber;
+tapers in silver sconces all around her, an Achievement of arms in a
+lozenge at her head, the walls all hung with fine black cloth edged with
+orris, and pieced with her escocheon, properly blazoned; and she
+herself, white and sharp as waxwork in her face and hands, arrayed in
+her black dress, with crimson ribbons and crimson scarf, and a locket of
+gold on her breast. They would not bury her with her rubies, but these,
+too, were laid upon her bier, which was of black velvet, and with a fair
+Holland sheet over all.
+
+Not alone the chamber itself, but the anterooms and staircase were hung
+from cornice to skirting with black. The undertaker's men were ever in
+the house: they ate and drank whole mountains of beef and bread, whole
+seas of ale and punch (thus to qualify their voracity) in the servants'
+hall. They say my Grandmother's funeral cost a thousand pounds, which
+Cadwallader and Mrs. Talmash would really have grudged, but that it was
+the will of the executors, who were persons of condition, and more
+powerful than a steward and a waiting-woman. In her own testament my
+Grandmother said nothing about the ordering of her obsequies; but her
+executors took upon them to provide her with such rites as beseemed her
+degree. In those days the Quality were very rich in their deaths; and,
+for my part, I dissent from the starveling and nipcheese performances of
+modern funerals. It is most true that a hole in the sand, or a
+coral-reef, full fathom five, has been at many times my likeliest
+Grave; but I have left it nevertheless in my Will--which let those who
+come after me dispute if they dare--that I may be buried as a Gentleman
+of long descent, with all due Blacks, and Plumes, and Lights, and a
+supper for my friends, and mourning cloaks for six poor men.
+
+Why the doctors should have remained in the house jangling and glozing
+in the very lobby of Death, and eating of cold meats and drinking of
+sweet wine in the parlour, after the breath was out of the body of their
+patient and patroness, it passes me to say; as well should a player
+tarry upon the Stage long after the epilogue has been spoken, the
+curtain lowered, and the lights all put out. Yet were Pall Mall and
+Warwick Lane faithful, not only unto the death, but beyond it, to
+Hanover Square. A coachful of these grave gentlemen were bidden to the
+burial, although it was probable that words would run so high among them
+as for wigs to be tossed out of the windows. And although it is but ill
+fighting and base fence to draw upon a foe in a coach, I think (so
+bitter are our Physicians against one another) that they would make but
+little ado in breaking their blades in halves and stabbing at one
+another crosswise as they sat, with their handkerchiefs for hilts.
+
+It was on the eighth night after her demise, and at half-past nine of
+the clock, that my Grandmother was Buried. I was dressed early in the
+afternoon in a suit of black, full trimmed, falling bands of white
+cambric, edged, and a little mourning sword with a crape knot, and
+slings of black velvet. Then Mrs. Talmash knotted round my neck a
+mourning-cloak that was about eight-times too large for me, and with no
+gentle hand flattened on my head a hat bordered by heavy sable plumes.
+On the left shoulder of my cloak there was embroidered in gold and
+coloured silks a little escocheon of arms; and with this, in my
+child-like way, my fingers hankered to play; but with threats that to me
+were dreadful, and not without sundry nips and pinches, and sly clouts,
+I was bidden to be still, and stir not from a certain stool apportioned
+to me in the great Withdrawing-room. Not on this side of the tomb shall
+I forget the weary, dreary sense of desolation that came over me when,
+thus equipped, or rather swaddled and hampered in garments strange to
+me, and of which I scarcely knew the meaning, I was left alone for many
+hours in a dismal room, whose ancient splendour was now all under the
+eclipse wrought by the undertakers. And I pray that few children may so
+cruelly and suddenly have their happiness taken away from them, and from
+pampered darlings become all at once despised and friendless outcasts.
+
+By and by the house began to fill with company; and one that was acting
+as Groom of the Chambers, and marshalling the guests to their places, I
+heard whisper to the Harbinger, who first called out the names at the
+Stair-head, that Clarencieux king-at-arms (who was then wont to attend
+the funerals of the Quality, and to be gratified with heavy fees for
+his office; although in our days 'tis only public noblemen, generals,
+ambassadors, and the like, who are so honoured at their interment, only
+undertaker's pageantry being permitted to the private sort)--that
+Clarencieux himself might have attended to marshal the following, and
+proclaim the Style of the Departed; but that it was ordered by authority
+that, as in her life her name and honours had been kept secret, so
+likewise in her death she was to remain an Unknown Lady. How such a
+reticence was found to jump with the dictates of the law, which required
+a registry of all dead persons in the parish-books, I know not; but in
+that time there were many things suffered to the Great which to the
+meaner kind would have been sternly denied; and, indeed, I have since
+heard tell that sufferance even went beyond the concealment of her Name,
+and that she was not even buried in woollen,--a thing then very strictly
+insisted upon, in order to encourage the staple manufactures of
+Lancashire and the North,--and that, either by a Faculty from the
+Arches Court, or a winking and conniving of Authority, she was placed in
+her coffin in the same garb in which she had lain in state. Of such
+sorry mocks and sneers as to the velvet of her funeral coffer being
+nearer Purple than Crimson in its hue, and of my mourning cloak being
+edged with a narrow strip of a Violet tinge,--as though to hint in some
+wise that my Grandmother was foregathered, either by descent or by
+marital alliance, with Royalty,--I take little account. 'Tis not every
+one who is sprung from the loins of a King who cares to publish the
+particulars of his lineage, and John Dangerous may perchance be one of
+such discreet men.
+
+The doctors had been so long in the house that their names and their
+faces were familiar to me, not indeed as friends, but as that kind of
+acquaintance one may see every day for twenty years, and be not very
+grieved some morning if news comes that they are dead. Such an
+eye-acquaintance passes my windows every morning. I know his face, his
+form, his hat and coat, the very tie of his wig and the fashion of his
+shoe-buckle; but he is no more to me than I am haply to him, and there
+would be scant weeping, I opine, between us if either of us were to die.
+So I knew these doctors and regarded them little, wondering only why
+they ate and drank so much, and could so ill conceal their hatred as to
+be calling foul names, and well-nigh threatening fisticuffs, while the
+corpse of my Grandmother was in the house. But of the body of those who
+were bidden to this sad ceremony, I had no knowledge whatsoever. For
+aught I knew, they might have been players or bullies and Piccadilly
+captains, or mere undertaker's men dressed up in fine clothes; yet,
+believe me, it is no foolish pride, or a dead vanity, that prompts me to
+surmise that there were those who came to my Grandmother's funeral who
+had a Claim to be reckoned amongst the very noblest and proudest in the
+land. Beneath the great mourning cloaks and scarves, I could see
+diamond stars glistening, and the brave sheen of green and crimson
+ribbons. I desire in this particularity to confine myself strictly to
+the Truth, and therefore make no vain boast of a Blue Ribbon being seen
+there, thus denoting the presence of a Knight of the most noble Order of
+the Garter. I leave it to mine enemies to lie, and to cowardly Jacks to
+boast of their own exploits. This brave gathering was not void of women;
+but they were closely veiled and impenetrably shrouded in their mourning
+weeds, so that of their faces and their figures I am not qualified to
+speak; and if you would ask me that which I remember chiefly of the
+noble gentlemen who were present, I can say with conscience, that beyond
+their stars and ribbons, I was only stricken by their monstrous and
+portentous Periwigs, which towered in the candle-light like so many
+great tufts of plumage atop of the Pope's Baldaquin, which I have seen
+so many times staggering through the great aisles of St. Peter's at
+Rome.
+
+Your humble servant, and truly humble and forlorn he was that night, was
+placed at the coffin's head; it being part of that black night's sport
+to hold me as chief mourner; and, indeed, poor wretch, I had much to
+mourn for. The great plumed hat they had put upon me flapped and swaled
+over my eyes so as almost to blind me. My foot was for ever catching in
+my great mourning cloak, and I on the verge of tripping myself up; and
+there was a hot smoke sweltering from the tapers, and a dreadful smell
+of new black cloth and sawdust and beeswax, that was like to have
+suffocated me. Infinite was the relief when two of the ladies attired in
+black, who had sat on either side of me, as though to guard me from
+running away, lifted me gently each under an armpit, and held me up so
+that I could see the writing on the coffin-plate, which was of embossed
+silver and very brave to view.
+
+"Can you read it out, my little man?" a deep rich voice as of a lady
+sounded in mine ears.
+
+I said, with much trembling, "that I thought I could spell out the
+words, if time and patience were accorded me."
+
+"There is little need, child," the voice resumed. "I will read it to
+thee;" and a black-gloved hand came from beneath her robe, and she took
+my hand, and holding my forefinger not ungently made me trace the
+writing on the silver. But I declare that I can remember little of that
+Legend now, although I am impressed with the belief that my kinswoman's
+married name was not mentioned. That it was merely set forth that she
+was the Lady D----, whose maiden name was A. G., and that she died in
+London in the 90th year of her age, King George I. being king of
+England. And then the smoke of the tapers, the smell of the cloth and
+the wax, and the remembrance of my Desolation, were too much for me, and
+I broke out into a loud wail, and was so carried fainting from the
+room; being speedily, however, sufficiently recovered to take my place
+in the coach that was to bear us Eastward.
+
+We rode in sorrowful solemnity till nigh three o'clock that morning; but
+where my Grandmother was buried I never knew. From some odd hints that I
+afterwards treasured up, it seems to me that the coaches parted company
+with the Hearse somewhere on the road to Harwich; but of this, as I have
+averred, I have no certain knowledge. In sheer fatigue I fell asleep,
+and woke in broad daylight in the great state-bed at Hanover Square.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] The Austrian, not the Prussian Trenck.--ED.
+
+[E] This does not precisely tally with the Captain's disclaimer of
+feeling any apprehension when passing Execution Dock.--ED.
+
+[F] I do not find it in the memoirs of his adventures, but in an old
+volume of the _Annual Register_ I find that, in the year 1778, one
+Captain Dangerous gave important evidence for the crown against poor Mr.
+Tremenheere, who suffered at Tyburn, for fetching and carrying between
+the French King and some malcontents in this country, notably for giving
+information as to the condition of our dockyards.--ED.
+
+[G] Captain Dangerous was, unconsciously, of the same mind with Samuel
+Taylor Coleridge.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
+
+I AM BARBAROUSLY ABUSED BY THOSE WHO HAVE CHARGE OF ME, AND FLYING INTO
+CHARLWOOD CHASE, JOIN THE "BLACKS."
+
+
+IN the morning, the wicked people into whose power I was now delivered,
+came and dragged me from my bed with fierce thumps, and giving me coarse
+and rude apparel, forced me to dress myself like a beggar boy. I had a
+wretched little frock and breeches of grey frieze, ribbed woollen hose
+and clouted shoes, and a cap that was fitter for a chimney-sweep than a
+young gentleman of quality. I was to go away in the Wagon, they told me,
+forthwith to School; for my Grandmother--if I was indeed any body's
+Grandson--had left me nothing, not even a name. Henceforth, I was to be
+little Scrub, little Ragamuffin, little boy Jack. All the unknown Lady's
+property, they said, was left to Charities and to deserving Servants.
+There was not a penny for me, not even to pay for my schooling; but, in
+Christian mercy, Mrs. Talmash was about to have me taught some things
+suitable for my new degree, and in due time have me apprenticed to some
+rough Trade, in which I might haply--if I were not hanged, as she hinted
+pretty plainly, and more than once--earn an honest livelihood. Meanwhile
+I was to be taken away in the Wagon, as though I were a Malefactor going
+in a Cart to Tyburn.
+
+I was taken down-stairs, arrayed in my new garments of poverty and
+disgrace, and drank in a last long look at my dear and old and splendid
+Home. How little did I think that I should ever come to look upon it
+again, and that it would be my own House--mine, a prosperous and
+honoured old man! The undertaker's men were busied in taking down the
+rich hangings, and guzzling and gorging, as was their wont, on what
+fragments remained of the banquetings and carousals of Death, which had
+lasted for eight whole days. All wretched as I was, I should--so easily
+are the griefs of childhood assuaged by cates and dainties--have been
+grateful for the wing of a chicken or a glass of Canary: but this was
+not to be. John a'Nokes or John a'Styles were now more considered than I
+was, and I was pushed and bandied about by fustian knaves and base
+mechanics, and made to wait for full half an hour in the hall, as though
+I had been the by-blow of a Running Footman promoted into carrying of a
+link.
+
+'Twas Dick the Groom that took me to the Wagon. Many a time he had
+walked by the side of my little pony, trotting up the Oxford Road. He
+was a gross unlettered churl, but not unkind; and I think remembered
+with something like compunction the many pieces of silver he had had
+from his Little Master.
+
+"It's mortal hard," he said, as he took my hand, and began lugging me
+along, "that your grandam should have died and left you nothing. 'Tis
+all clear as Bexley ale in a yard-glass. Lawyers ha' been reading the
+will to the gentlefolks, and there's nothing for thee, poor castaway."
+
+I began to cry, not because my Grandmother had disinherited me, but
+because this common horse-lout called me a "castaway," and because I
+knew myself to be one.
+
+"Don't fret," the groom continued; "there'll be greet enough for thee
+when thou'rt older; for thou'lt have a hard time on't, or my name's not
+Dick Snaffle."
+
+We had a long way to reach the Wagon, which started from a Tavern called
+the "Pillars of Hercules," right on the other side of Hyde Park. I was
+desperately tired when we came thither, and craved leave to sit on a
+bench before the door, between the Sign-post and the Horse-trough. So
+low was I fallen. A beggar came alongside of me, and as I dozed tried to
+pick my pocket. There was nothing in it--not even a crust; and he hit me
+a savage blow over the mouth because I had nothing to be robbed of. Anon
+comes Dick Snaffle, who, telling me that the Saddler of Bawtry was
+hanged for leaving his liquor, and that he had no mind for a halter
+while good ale was to be drunk, had been comforting himself within the
+tavern; and he finding me all blubbered with grief at the blow I had
+gotten from the beggar, fetches him a sound kick; and so the two fell to
+fighting, till out comes the tapster, raving at Tom Ostler to duck the
+cutpurse cadger in the Horse-trough. There was much more sport out of
+doors in my young days than now.
+
+At last the Wagon, for which we had another good hour to wait, came
+lumbering up to the Pillars of Hercules; and after the Wagoner had
+fought with a Grenadier, who wanted to go to Brentford for fourpence,
+and would have stabbed the man with his bayonet had not his hand been
+stayed, the Groom took me up, and put me on the straw inside. He paid
+the Wagoner some money for me, and also gave into his keeping a little
+bundle, containing, I suppose, some change of raiment for me, saying
+that more would be sent after me when needed; and so, handing him too a
+letter, he bade me Godd'en, and went on his way with the Grenadier, a
+Sweep, and a Gipsy woman, who was importunate that he should cross her
+hand with silver, in order that he might know all about the great
+Fortune that he was to wed, as Tom Philbrick did in the ballad. And this
+was the way in which the Servants of the Quality spent their forenoons
+when I was young.
+
+As the great rumbling chariot creaked away westward, there came across
+my child-heart a kind of consciousness that I had been Wronged, and
+Cheated out of my inheritance. Why was I all clad in laces and velvet
+but yesterday, and to-day apparelled like a tramping pedlar's
+foster-brat? Why was I, who was used to ride in coaches, and on
+ponyback, and on the shoulder of my own body-servant, and was called
+"Little Master," and made much of, to be carted away in a vile dray like
+this? But what is a child of eight years old to do? and how is he to
+make head against those who are older and wickeder than he? I knew
+nothing about lawyers, or wills, or the Rogueries of domestics. I only
+knew that I had been foully and shamefully Abused since my dear
+Grandparent's death; and in that wagon, I think, as I lay tumbling and
+sobbing on that straw, were first planted in me those seeds of a Wild,
+and sometimes Savage, disposition that have not made my name to be
+called "Dangerous" in vain.
+
+We were a small and not a very merry company under the wagon tilt. There
+was a Tinker, with all his accoutrements of pots and kettles about him,
+who was lazy, as most Tinkers are when not at hard work, and lay on his
+back chewing straw, and cursing me fiercely whenever I moved. There was
+a Welsh gentleman, very ragged and dirty, with a wife raggeder and
+dirtier than he. He was addressed as Captain, and was bound, he said,
+for Bristol, to raise soldiers for the King's Service. He beat his wife
+now and then, before we came to Hounslow. There was the tinker's dog, a
+great terror to me; for although he feigned to sleep, and to snore as
+much as a Dog can snore, he always kept one little red eye fixed upon
+me, and gave a growl and made a Snap whenever I turned on the straw.
+There was the Wagoner's child that was sickly, and continually cried for
+its mammy; and lastly there was a buxom servant-maid, with a little
+straw hat and cherry ribbons over a Luton lace mob, and a pretty
+flowered gown pulled through the placket-holes, and a quilted petticoat,
+and silver buckles in her shoes, and black mits, who was going home to
+see her Grandmother at Stoke Pogis,--so she told me, and made me
+bitterly remember that I had now no Grandmother,--and was as clean and
+bright and smiling as a new pin, or the milkmaids on May morning dancing
+round the brave Garlands that they have gotten from the silversmiths in
+Cranbourn Alley. She sat prettily crouched up on her box in a corner;
+and so, with the Tinker among his pots and kettles, the Welsh Captain
+and his lady on sundry bundles of rags, the sickly child in a basket,
+the Tinker's dog curled up in his Master's hat, I tossing on the straw,
+and a great rout of crates of crockery, rolls of cloth, tea and sugar,
+and other London merchandize, which the wagoner was taking down West, as
+a return cargo for the eggs, poultry, butcher's meat, and green stuff
+that he had brought up, made altogether such a higgledypiggledy that you
+do not often see in these days, when Servant-maids come up by Coach--my
+service to them!--and disdain the Wagon, and his Worship the Captain
+wears a fine laced coat and a cockade in his hat,--who but he!--and
+travels post.
+
+The maid who was bound on a visit to her Grandmother was, I rejoice to
+admit, most tenderly kind to me. She combed my hair, and wiped away the
+tears that besmirched my face. When the Wagon halted at the King's Arms,
+Kensington, she tripped down and brought me a flagon of new milk with
+some peppermint in it; and she told me stories all the way to Hounslow,
+and bade me mind my book, and be a good child, and that Angels would
+love me. Likewise that she was being courted by a Pewterer in Panyer
+Alley, who had parted a bright sixpence with her--she showed me her
+token, drawn from her modest bodice, and who had passed his word to Wed,
+if he had to take to the Road for the price of the Ring--but that was
+only his funning, she said,--or if she were forced even to run away from
+her Mistress, and make a Fleet Match of it. It was little, in good
+sooth, that I knew about courtships or Love-tokens or Fleet Matches; but
+I believe that a woman, for want of a better gossip, would open her
+Love-budget to a Baby or a Blind Puppy, and I listened so well that she
+kissed me ere we parted, and gave me a pocketful of cheese-cakes.
+
+It was quite night, and far beyond Hounslow, when I was dozing off into
+happy sleep again, that the Wagon came to a dead stop, and I awoke in
+great fright at the sound of a harsh voice asking if the Boy Jack was
+there. I was the "Boy Jack:" and the Wagoner, coming to the after-part
+of the tilt with his lantern, pulled me from among the straw with far
+less ado than if I had been the Tinker's dog.
+
+I was set down on the ground before a tall man with a long face and an
+ugly little scratch wig, who had large boots with straps over his thighs
+like a Farmer, and swayed about him with a long whip.
+
+"Oh, this is the boy, is it?" said the long man. "A rare lump to lick
+into shape, upon my word."
+
+I was too frightened to say aught; but the Wagoner muttered something in
+the long man's ear, and gave him my bundle and money and the letter;
+and then I was clapped up on a pillion behind the long man, who had
+clomb up to the saddle of a vicious horse that went sideways; and he,
+bidding me hold on tight to his belt, for a mangy young whelp as I was,
+began jolting me to the dreadful place of Torture and Infernal cruelty
+which for six intolerable months was to be my home.
+
+This man's name was Gnawbit, and he was my Schoolmaster. I was delivered
+over to him, bound hand and foot, as it were, by those hard-hearted folk
+(who should have been most tender to me, a desolate orphan) in Hanover
+Square. His name was Gnawbit, and he lived hard by West Drayton.
+
+We are told in Good Books about the Devil and his Angels; but sure I
+think that the Devil must come to earth sometimes, and marry and have
+children: whence the Gnawbit race. I don't believe that the man had one
+Spark of Human Feeling in him. I don't believe that any tale of Man or
+Woman's Woe would ever have wrung one tear from that cold eye, or drawn
+a pang from that hard heart. I believe that he was a perfectly
+senseless, pitiless Brute and Beast, suffered, for some unknown purpose,
+to dwell here above, instead of being everlastingly kept down below, for
+the purpose of Tormenting. I was always a Dangerous, but I was never a
+Revengeful man. I have given mine enemy to eat when he was a-hungered,
+and to drink when he was athirst. I have returned Good for Evil very
+many times in this Troubled Life of mine, exposed as it has been always
+to the very sorest of temptations; but I honestly aver, that were I to
+meet this Tyrant of mine, now, on a solitary island, I would mash his
+Hands with a Club or with my Feet, if he strove to grub up roots; that
+were I Alone with him, wrecked, in a shallop, and there were one Keg of
+Fresh Water between us, I would stave it, and let the Stream of Life
+waste itself in the gunwales while I held his head down into the Sea,
+and forced him to swallow the brine that should drive him Raving Mad.
+But this is unchristian, and I must go consult Doctor Dubiety.
+
+Flesh and Blood! Have you never thought upon the Wrongs your Pedagogue
+has wrought upon you, and longed to meet that Wretch, and wheal his
+flesh with the same instrument with which he whealed you, and make the
+Ruffian howl for mercy? Mercy, quotha! did he ever show you any? A
+pretty equal match it was, surely! You a poor, weak starveling of a
+child shivering in your shoes, and ill-nurtured by the coarse food he
+gave you, and he a great, hulking, muscular villain, tall and
+long-limbed, and all-powerful in his wretched Empire; while you were so
+ignorant as not to know that the Law, were he discovered (but who was to
+denounce him?), might trounce him for his barbarity. Ah! brother
+Gnawbit, if I had ever caught you on board a good ship of mine! Aha!
+knave, if John Dangerous would not have dubbed himself the sheerest of
+asses, had he not made your back acquainted with nine good tails of
+three-strand cord, with triple knots in each, and the brine-tub
+afterwards. I will find out this Gnawbit yet, and cudgel him to the
+death. But, alas, I rave. He must have been full five-and-forty-years
+old when I first knew him, and that is nigh sixty years agone. And at a
+hundred and five the cruellest Tyrant is past cudgelling.
+
+This man had one of the prettiest houses that was to be seen in the
+prettiest part of England. The place was all draped in ivy, and roses,
+and eglantine, with a blooming flower-garden in front, and a luscious
+orchard behind. He had a wife too who was Fair to see,--a mild little
+woman, with blue eyes, who used to sit in a corner of her parlour, and
+shudder as she heard the boys shrieking in the schoolroom. There was an
+old infirm Gentleman that lodged with them, that had been a Captain
+under the renowned Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Admiral Russell, and could
+even, so it was said, remember, as a sea-boy, the Dutch being in the
+Medway, in King Charles's time. This Old Gentleman seemed the only
+person that Gnawbit was afraid of. He never interfered to dissuade him
+from his brutalities, nay, seemed rather to encourage him therein,
+crying out as the sounds of torture reached him, "Bear it! bear it! Good
+again! Make 'em holloa! Make 'em dance! Cross the cuts! Dig it in! Rub
+in the brine! Oho! Bear it, brave boys; there's nothing like it!" Yet
+was there something jeering and sarcastic in his voice that made Gnawbit
+prefer to torture his unhappy scholars when the Old Gentleman was
+asleep,--and even then he would sometimes wake up and cry out, "Bear
+it!" from the attic, or when he was being wheeled about the
+neighbourhood in a sick man's chair.
+
+The first morning I saw the Old Gentleman he shook his crutch at me, and
+cried, "Aha! another of 'em! Another morsel for Gnawbit. More meat for
+his market. Is he plump? is he tender? Will he bear it? Will he dance?
+Oho! King Solomon for ever." And then he burst into such a fit of
+wheezing laughter that Mrs. Gnawbit had to come and pat him on the back
+and bring him cordials; and my Master, looking very discomposed, sternly
+bade me betake myself to the schoolroom.
+
+After that, the Old Gentleman never saw me without shaking his crutch
+and asking me if I liked it, if I could bear it, and if Gnawbit made my
+flesh quiver. Of a truth he did.
+
+Why should I record the sickening experience of six months' daily
+suffering. That I was beaten every day was to be expected in an Age when
+blows and stripes were the only means thought of for instilling
+knowledge into the minds of youth. But I was alone, I was friendless, I
+was poor. My master received, I have reason to believe, but a slender
+Stipend with me, and he balanced accounts by using me with greater
+barbarity than he employed towards his better paying scholars. I had no
+Surname, I was only "Boy Jack;" and my schoolfellows put me down, I
+fancy, as some base-born child, and accordingly despised me. I had no
+pocket-money. I was not allowed to share in the school-games. I was
+bidden to stand aside when a cake was to be cut up. God help me! I was
+the most forlorn of little children. Mrs. Gnawbit was as kind to me as
+she dared be, but she never showed me the slightest favour without its
+bringing me (if her husband came to hear of it) an additionally cruel
+Punishment.
+
+There was a Pond behind the orchard called Tibb's hole, because, as our
+schoolboy legend ran, a boy called Tibb had once cast himself thereinto,
+and was drowned, through dread of being tortured by this Monster. I grew
+to be very fond of standing alone by the bank of this Pond, and of
+looking at my pale face in its cool blue-black depth. It seemed to me
+that the Pond was my friend, and that within its bosom I should find
+rest.
+
+I was musing in this manner by the bank one day when I felt myself
+touched on the shoulder. It was the crutch of the Old Gentleman, who
+had been wheeled hither, as was his custom, by one of the boys.
+
+"You go into the orchard and steal a juicy pear," said the Old Gentleman
+to his attendant. "Gnawbit's out, and I won't tell him. Leave me with
+Boy Jack for five minutes, and then come back.--Boy Jack," he continued,
+when we were alone, "how do you like it?"
+
+"Like what, sir?" I asked humbly.
+
+"All of it, to be sure:--the birch, the cane, the thong, the ferula, the
+rope's-end,--all Gnawbit's little toys?"
+
+I told him, weeping, that I was very, very unhappy, and that I would
+like to drown myself.
+
+"That's wrong, that's wicked," observed the Old Gentleman with a
+chuckle; "you mustn't drown yourself, because then you'd lose your
+chance of being hanged. Gregory has as much right to live as other
+folks."[H]
+
+I did not in the least understand what he meant, but went on sobbing.
+
+"I tell you what it is," pursued the Old Gentleman; "you mustn't stop
+here, because Gnawbit will skin you alive if you do. He's bound to do
+it; he's sworn to do it. He half-skinned Tibb; and was going to take off
+the other half, when Tibb drowned himself like a fool in this hole here.
+He was a fool, and should have followed my advice and run away. 'Tibb,'
+I said, 'you'll be skinned. Bear it, but run away. Here's a guinea.
+Run!' He was afraid that Gnawbit would catch him; and where is he now?
+Skinned, and drowned into the bargain. Don't you be a Fool. You Run
+while there's some skin left. Gnawbit's sworn to have it all, if you
+don't. Here's a guinea, and run away as fast as ever your legs can carry
+you."
+
+He gave me a bright piece of gold and waved me off, as though I were to
+run away that very moment. I submissively said that I would run away
+after school was over, but asked him where I should run to.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," the Old Gentleman said somewhat peevishly.
+"That's not my business. A boy that has got legs with skin on 'em, and
+doesn't know where to run to, is a jackass.--Stop!" he continued, as if
+a bright idea had just struck him; "did you ever hear of the Blacks?"
+
+"No sir," I answered.
+
+"Stupid oaf! Do you know where Charlwood Chase is?"
+
+"Yes, sir; my schoolfellows have been nutting there, and I have heard
+them speak of it."
+
+"Then you make the best of your way to Charlwood Chase, and go a-nutting
+there till you find the Blacks; you can't miss them; they're everywhere.
+Run, you little Imp. See! the time's up, and here comes the boy who
+stole the juicy pear." And the boy coming up, munching the remains of
+one of Gnawbit's juiciest pears, my patron was wheeled away, and I have
+never seen him from that day to this.
+
+That very night I ran away from Gnawbit's, and made my way towards
+Charlwood Chase to join the "Blacks," although who those "Blacks" were,
+and whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they
+were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester
+John or the Man in the Moon might be.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[H] In my youth ancient persons as frequently spoke of the hangman as
+"Gregory"--and he was so named at the trial of the Regicides in
+1660-61--as by his later title of "Jack Ketch."--J. D.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
+
+THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF
+THE KING'S CASTLES IN THE EAST COUNTRY.
+
+
+AT the time when his Majesty Charles II. was so happily restored to the
+throne of these kingdoms, there was, and had been, confined for upwards
+of ten years, in one of his Majesty's Castles in the eastern part of
+this kingdom, a certain Prisoner. His Name was known to none, not even
+to the guards who kept watch over him, so to speak, night and day,--not
+even to the gaoler, who had been told that he must answer with his Head
+for his safe custody, who had him always in a spying, fretful
+overlooking, and who slept every night with the keys of the Captive's
+cell under his pillow. The Castle where he lay in hold has been long
+since levelled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever had any earth to rest
+upon, and was not rather stayed upon some jutting fragment of Rock
+washed away at last by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, of its exact
+situation I am not qualified to tell. I never saw the place, and my
+knowledge of it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that
+were done within its walls I can affirm the certitude with Truth. From
+such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to
+have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and
+thick, and defying the lashings of the waves, almost as though it were
+some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone
+wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the
+mainland by a drawbridge and barbican. But for many months of the year
+there was no mainland within half a mile of it, and the King's Castle
+could only be reached by boats. Men said that the Sun never shone there
+but for ten minutes before and ten minutes after a storm, and there were
+almost always storms lowering over or departing from that dismal place.
+The Castle was at least two miles from any human habitation; for the few
+fishermen's cabins, made of rotten boats, hogsheads nailed together, and
+the like, which had pitifully nestled under the lee of the Castle in old
+time, had been rigorously demolished to their last crazy timber when the
+Prisoner was brought there. At a respectful distance only, far in, and
+yet but a damp little islet in the midst of the fens, was permitted to
+linger on, in despised obscurity, a poor swamp of some twenty houses
+that might, half in derision and half in civility, be called a Village.
+It had a church without a steeple, but with a poor Stump like the
+blunted wreck of some tall ship's mainmast. The priest's wages were less
+than those of a London coal-porter. The poor man could get no tithes,
+for there were no tithes to give him. Three parts of his glebe were
+always under water, and he was forced to keep a little school for his
+maintenance, of which the scholars could pay him but scant fees, seeing
+that it was always a chance whether their parents were dead of the Ague,
+or Drowned. Yet there was a tavern in the village, where these poor,
+shrinking, feverish creatures met and drank and smoked, and sang their
+songs, contriving now and again to smuggle a few kegs of spirits from
+Holland, and baffle the riding-officers in a scamper through the fens.
+They were a simple folk, fond of telling Ghost-Stories, and with a firm
+belief in charms to cure them from the Ague. And, with an awe whose
+intensity was renewed each time the tale was told, they whispered among
+themselves as to that Prisoner of Fate up at the Castle yonder. What
+this man's Crime had been, none could tell. His misdeed was not, it was
+whispered, stated in the King's Warrant. The Governor was simply told
+to receive a certain Prisoner, who would be delivered to him by a
+certain Officer, and that, at the peril of his life, he was to answer
+for his safe custody. The Governor, whose name was Ferdinando Glover,
+had been a Captain of Horse in the late Protector Oliver's time; but, to
+the surprise of all men, he was not dismissed at his Majesty's
+Restoration, but was continued in his command, and indeed, received
+preferment, having the grade of a Colonel on the Irish establishment.
+But they did not fail to tell him, and with fresh instances of severity,
+that he would answer with his head for the safe keeping of his Prisoner.
+
+Of this strange Person it behoves me now to speak. In the year 1660, he
+appeared to be about seven-and-thirty years of age, tall, shapely,
+well-knit in his limbs, which captivity had rather tended to make full
+of flesh than to waste away; for there were no yards, nor spacious
+outlying walls to this Castle; and but for a narrow ledge that ran
+along the surrounding border, and where he was but rarely suffered to
+walk, there was no means for him to take any exercise whatever. He wore
+his own hair in full dark locks, which Time and Sorrow had alike agreed
+to grizzle. Strong lines marked his face, but age had not brought them
+there. His eye was dim, but more with watching and study than with the
+natural failing of vital forces.
+
+So he had been in this grim place going on for twelve years, without a
+day's respite, without an hour's enlargement. True, he wore no fetters,
+and was treated with a grave and stately Consideration; but his bonds
+were not less galling, and the iron had not the less entered into his
+soul. The Order was, that he was to be held as a Gentleman, and to be
+subjected to no grovelling indignities or base usage. But the Order was
+(for a long time, and until another Prisoner, hereafter to be named,
+received a meed of Enlargement) likewise as strict that, save his
+keepers, he should see no living soul. "And it is useless," wrote a
+Great Lord to the Governor once, when it was humbly submitted to him
+that the Prisoner might need spiritual consolation, and have solace to
+his soul by conferring with poor Parson Webfoot yonder,--"it is
+useless," said that nobleman, "for your charge to see any black gown,
+under pretext that he would Repent; for, albeit though I know not his
+crime more than the babe unborn, I have it from his Majesty's own
+gracious word of mouth, that what he has done cannot be repented of;
+therefore you are again commanded to keep him close, and to let him have
+speech neither of parson nor of peasant." Which was duly done. But
+Colonel Glover, not untouched by that curiosity inherent to mankind, as
+well as womankind, took pains to cast about whether this was not one who
+had a hand in compassing the death of King Charles I.; and this coming,
+in some strange manner (through inquiries he had made in London), to the
+ears of Authority, he was distinctly told that his prisoner was not one
+of those bold bad men who, misled by Oliver Cromwell, had signed that
+fatal Warrant:--the names and doom of the Regicides being now all well
+known, as having suffered or fled from Justice, or being in hold, as Mr.
+Martyn was. So Colonel Glover, being well assured that what was done was
+for the King's honour, and for the well-being of his Estates, and that
+any other further searching or prying might cost him his place, if they
+did not draw him within the meshes of the law against Misprision of
+Treason, forbore to vex himself or Authority further on matters that
+concerned him not, and was so content to guard his Prisoner with greater
+care than ever. The Castle was garrisoned by but twelve men, and of
+these six were invalids and matrosses; but the other six were tall and
+sturdy veterans, who had been indeed of Oliver's Life-guard, and were
+now confirmed in their places, and with the pay, not of common soldiers,
+but of private gentlemen, by the King's own order. Their life was
+dreary enough, for they could hold but little comradeship with the
+invalids, whom they dubbed "greybeards, drivellers, and kill-joys." But
+they had a guard-room to themselves, where they diced and drank, and
+told their ruffian stories, and sang their knavish catches, as is the
+manner, I suppose, for all soldiers to do in all countries, whether in
+camps or in cities. But their duty was withal of the severest. The
+invalids went snugly to bed at nine of the clock, or thereabouts, but
+the veritable men-of-war kept watch and ward all night, turn and turn
+about, and even when they slept took their repose on a bench, which was
+placed right across the Prisoner's door.
+
+This much-enduring man--for surely no lot could be harder than his--to
+be thus, and in the very prime and vigour of manhood, cooped up in a
+worse than gaol, wherein for a long time he was even denied the company
+of captives as wretched as he,--this slave to some Mightier Will and
+Sterner Fate than, it would seem, mortal knowledge could wot of, bore
+his great Distress with an unvarying meekness and calm dignity. With
+him, indeed, they did as they listed, using him as one that was as Clay
+in the hands of the Potter; but, not to the extent of one tetchy word or
+froward movement, did he ever show that he thought his imprisonment
+unjust, or the bearing of those who were set over him cruel. And this
+was not an abject stupor or dull indifference, such as I have marked in
+rogues confined for life in the Bagnios of the Levant, who knew that
+they must needs pull so many strokes and get so many stripes every day,
+and so gave up battling with the World, and grinned contumely at their
+gaolers or the visitors who came sometimes to point at them and fling
+them copper money. In the King's Prisoner there was a philosophic
+reserve and quietness that almost approached content; and his
+resignation under suffering was of that kind that a Just Man may feel
+who knows that he is upon the ground, and that, howsoever his enemies
+push at him, he cannot fall far. He never sought to evade the conditions
+of his captivity or to plead for its being lightened. The courtesies
+that were offered to him, in so far as the Governor was warranted in
+offering such civilities, he took as his due; but he never craved a
+greater indulgence or went one step in word or in deed to obtain a
+surcease from his harsh and cruel lot.
+
+He would rise at six of the clock both in winter and summer, and apply
+himself with great ardour to his private devotions and to good studies
+until eight, when his breakfast, a tankard of furmety and a small
+measure of wine, was brought him. And from nine until noon he would
+again be at his studies, and then have dinner of such meats as were in
+season. From one to three he was privileged to walk either on the narrow
+strip of masonry that encompassed his prison-house, and with a soldier
+with his firelock on hip following his every step, or else to wander up
+and down in the various chambers of the Castle, still followed by a
+guard. Now he would tarry awhile in the guard-room, and stand over
+against the soldier's table, his head resting very sadly against the
+chimney, and listen to their wild talk, which was, however, somewhat
+hushed and shaped to decency so long as he abided there. And anon he
+would come into the Governor's apartment, and hold Colonel Glover for
+some moments in grave discourse on matters of history, and the lives of
+Worthy Captains, and sometimes upon points and passages of Scripture,
+but never upon anything that concerned the present day. For, beyond the
+bounds of the place in which he was immured, what should he know of
+things of instant moment, or of the way the world was wagging? By
+permission, the Colonel had told him that Oliver was no more, and that
+Richard, his son, was made Protector in his stead. Then, at the close of
+that weak and vain shadow of a Reign, and after the politic act of my
+Lord Duke of Albemarle (Gen. Monk), who made his own and the country's
+fortune, and Nan Clarges'[I] to boot, at one stroke, the Prisoner was
+given to know that schism was at an end, and that the King had come to
+his own again. Colonel Glover must needs tell him; for he was bidden to
+fire a salvo from the five pieces of artillery he had mounted, three on
+his outer wall, and two at the top of his donjon-keep, to say nothing of
+hoisting the Royal Standard, which now streamed from the pole where erst
+had floated the rag that bore the arms of the Commonwealth of
+England.[J]
+
+"I am glad," the Prisoner said, when they told him. "I hope this young
+man will make England happier than did his father before him." But this
+was after he was in hopes of getting some company in his solitude, and
+when he was cheerfuller.
+
+It was about midway in his imprisonment when another Captive was brought
+to the King's Castle; but it was not until close upon the Restoration of
+King Charles II. that the two prisoners were permitted to come together.
+The second guest in this most dolorous place was a Woman, and that Woman
+was my Grandmother, Arabella Greenville.
+
+There is no use in disguising the fact that, for many months after the
+failure of her attack on the Protector, the poor Lady had been as
+entirely distraught as was her fate after the death of the Lord Francis,
+and that to write her Life during this period would be merely penning
+the chronicle of a continued Frenzy. It were merciful to draw a veil
+over so sad and mortifying a scene--so well brought up as she had been,
+and respected by all the Quality,--but in pursuit of the determination
+with which I set out, to tell the Truth, and all the Truth, I am forced
+to confess that my Grandmother's Ravings were of the most violent, and
+that of her thoroughly demented state there could be no doubt. So far,
+indeed, did the unhappy creature's Abandonment extend, that those who
+were about her could with difficulty persuade her to keep any Garments
+upon her body, and were forced with Stripes and Revilings to force to a
+decorous carriage the gentle Lady who had once been the very soul and
+mirror of Modesty. But in process of time these dreadful furies and
+rages left her, and she became calm. She was still beautiful, albeit her
+comeliness was now of a chastened and saddened order, and, save her eye,
+there was no light or sparkle in her face.
+
+When her health and mind were healed, so far as earthly skill could heal
+them,--it being given out, I am told, to her kindred that she had died
+mad in the Spinning House at Cambridge: but she had never been further
+than the house of one Dr Empson at Colchester, who had tended her
+during her distraction,--my Grandmother was brought to the King's Castle
+in the East, and for a long time lay incarcerate in a lower chamber of
+the Keep, being not allowed even that scant exercise which was permitted
+to the Prisoner above, and being waited upon and watched night and day
+by the Governor's Daughter, Mistress Ruth Glover, who at nights slept in
+a little closet adjoining my Grandmother's chamber. The girl had a
+tongue, I suppose, like the rest of her sex,--and of our sex too,
+brother,--and she would not have been eighteen, of a lively Disposition,
+and continually in the society of a Lady of Birth and accomplishments,
+not more than ten years her senior, without gossiping to her concerning
+all that she knew of the sorry little world round about her. It was not,
+however, much, or of any great moment, that Ruth had to tell my
+Grandmother. She could but hold her in discourse of how the Invalid
+Matrosses had the rheumatism and the ague; how the Life-guard men in
+their room diced and drank and quarrelled, both over their dice and
+their drink; how the rumour ran that the poverty-stricken habitants of
+the adjoining village had, from long dwelling among the fens, become as
+web-footed as the wild-fowl they hunted; and how her Father, who had
+been for many years a widower, was harsh and stern with her, and would
+not suffer her to read the romances and play-books, some half-dozen of
+which the Sergeant of the Guard had with him. She may have had a little
+also to say about the Prisoner in the upper story of the Keep--how his
+chamber was all filled with folios and papers; how he studied and wrote
+and prayed; and during his two hours' daily liberty wandered sadly and
+in a silent manner about the Castle. For this was all Mistress Ruth had
+to tell, and of the Prisoner's name, or of his Crime, she was, perforce,
+mum.
+
+These two Women nevertheless shaped all kinds of feverish Romances and
+wild conjectures respecting this unknown man above stairs. Arabella had
+told her own sad story to the girl who--though little better than a
+waiting-woman--she had made, for want of a better bower-maiden, her
+Confidante. I need not say that oceans of Sympathy, or the accepted
+Tokens thereof, I mean Tears, ran out from the eyes of the Governor's
+Daughter when she heard the History of the Lord Francis, of the words he
+spoke just before the musketeers fired their pieces at him, and of
+another noble speech he made two hours before he Suffered, when the
+Officer in command, compassionating his youth and parts, told him that
+if he had any suit, short of life, to prefer to the Lord General, he
+would take upon himself to say that it should be granted without
+question; whereon quoth my Lord Francis, "I will not die with any suit
+in my mouth, save to the King of kings." On this, and on the story of
+the Locket, and of his first becoming acquainted with Arabella, of his
+sprightly disguise as a Teacher, with the young squire at Madam
+Desaguilier's school at Hackney, of his Beauty and Virtues and fine
+manners and extraordinary proficiency in Arts and Letters and the
+Exercises of Chivalry,--of these and a thousand kindred things the two
+women were never tired of talking. And, indeed, if one calls to mind
+what vast Eloquence and wealth of words two loving hearts can distil
+from a Bit of Ribbon or a Torn Letter, it is not to be wondered at that
+Arabella and Ruth should find their Theme inexhaustible--so good and
+brave as had been its Object, now dead and cold in the bloody trench at
+Hampton yonder, and convert it into a perpetually welling spring of
+Mournful Remembrances.
+
+Arabella had taken to her old trick of Painting again, and in the first
+and second year of her removal to the Castle executed some very
+creditable performances. But she never attempted either the effigies of
+her Lover or of the Protector, and confined herself to portraitures of
+the late martyred King, and of the Princes now unjustly kept from their
+inheritance.
+
+It was during the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell (that mere
+puppet-play of Power) that the watch kept on the prisoners in the King's
+Castle grew for a time much less severe and even lax. Arabella was
+suffered to go out of her chamber, even at the very hours that the
+Prisoner above was wandering to and fro. The guards did not hinder their
+meeting; and, says Colonel Ferdinando Glover, one day to his daughter,
+"I should not wonder if, some of these days, Orders were to come down
+for me to set both my birds free from their cage. That which Mrs.
+Greenville has done, you and I know full well, and I am almost sorry
+that she did not succeed."
+
+"Oh, father!" cries Mistress Ruth, who was of a very soft and tender
+nature, and abhorred the very idea of bloodshed; so that, loving
+Arabella as she did with all her heart, she could not help regarding her
+with a kind of Terror when she remembered the deed for which she was
+confined.
+
+"Tush, girl," the Colonel makes answer, "'tis no Treason now to name
+such a thing. Oliver's dead, and will eat no more bread; and I misliked
+him much at the end, for it is certain that he betrayed the Good Old
+Cause, and hankered after an earthly crown. As for this young Popinjay,
+he will have more need to protect himself than these Kingdoms. And I
+think that if your father is to live on the King's wages, it had better
+be on the real King's than the false one."
+
+"And do you think, father, that King Charles will come to his own
+again?" asks Ruth, in a flutter of delight; for Arabella had made her a
+very Royalist at heart.
+
+"I think what I think," replies the Colonel, with his stern look; "but
+whatever happens, it is not likely, it seems me, that we shall have our
+prisoners here much longer. That is to say:--Mrs. Greenville, for what
+she hath done can scarcely be distasteful to those who loved not
+Oliver. But for my other bird,--who can tell? He may have raised the
+very Devil for aught I know."
+
+"Do you think that he also tried to kill the Protector?" Ruth asks
+timidly, and just hazarding a Surmise that had oft been mooted betwixt
+Arabella and herself.
+
+"Get thee to thy chamber, and about thy business, wench," the Colonel
+says, quite storming. "Away, or I will lay my willow wand about thy
+shoulders. Is there nothing but killing of Protectors, forsooth, for thy
+silly head to be filled with?" And yet I incline to think that Mr.
+Governor was not of a very different mind to his daughter; for away he
+hies to his chamber, and falls to reading Colonel Titus' famous book,
+_Killing no Murder_, and, looking anon on his Prisoner coming wandering
+down a winding staircase, says softly to himself, "He looks like one,
+for all his studious guise, who could do a Bold Deed at a pinch."
+
+This Person, I should have said, wore, winter and summer, a plain black
+shag gown untrimmed, with camlet netherstocks, and a smooth band. And
+his Right Hand was always covered with a glove of Black Velvet.
+
+By and by came, as I have related, the news of his Majesty's Restoration
+and fresh Strict Orders for the keeping of the Prisoner. But though he
+was not to see a clergyman,--and for all that prohibition he saw more
+than one before he came out of Captivity,--a certain Indulgence was now
+granted him. He was permitted to have free access to Mrs. Arabella
+Greenville, and to converse freely with her at all proper times and
+seasons.
+
+But that I know the very noble nature of my Grandmother, and am
+prepared, old as I am, to defend her fame even to taking the heart's
+blood of the villain that maligned her, I might blush at having to
+record a fact which must needs be set down here. Ere six months had
+passed, there grew up between Mrs. Greenville and the Prisoner a very
+warm and close friendship, which in time ripened into the tenderest of
+attachments. That her love for her dear Frank ever wavered, or that she
+ever swerved for one moment in her reverence for his memory, I cannot
+and I will not believe; but she nevertheless looked with an exceeding
+favour upon the imprisoned man, and made no scruple of avowing her Flame
+to Ruth. This young person did in time confide the same to her father,
+who was much concerned thereat, he not knowing how far the allowance of
+any love-passages between two such strangely assorted suitors might
+tally with his duty towards the King and Government. Nor could he shut
+his eyes to the fact that the Prisoner regarded Mrs. Greenville first
+with a tender compassion (such as a father might have towards his
+child), next with an ardent sympathy, and finally--and that very
+speedily too--with a Feeling that had all the Signs and Portents of
+Love. These two unfortunate People were so shut out from the world, and
+so spiritually wedded by a common Misery and discomfort, that their
+mere earthly coming together could not be looked upon but as natural and
+reasonable; for Mrs. Greenville was the only woman upon whom the
+Prisoner could be expected to look,--he being, beyond doubt, one of
+Gentle Degree, if not of Great and Noble Station, and therefore beyond
+aught but the caresses of a Patron with such a simple maid as Ruth
+Glover, whose father, although of some military rank, was, like most of
+the Captains who had served under the Commonwealth (witness Ireton,
+Harrison, Hacker, and many more) of exceeding mean extraction.
+
+That love-vows were interchanged between this Bride and Bridegroom of
+Sorrow and a Dark Dungeon almost, I know not; but their liking for each
+other's society--he imparting to her some of his studies, and she
+playing music, with implements of which she was well provided, to him of
+an afternoon--had become so apparent both to the soldiers on guard and
+servants, even to the poor Invalid Matrosses wheezing and shivering in
+their buff-coats, that Colonel Glover, in a very flurry of uncertainty,
+sent post haste to Whitehall to know what he was to do--whether to
+chamber up Mrs. Greenville in her chamber, as of aforetime, or confine
+the Prisoner in one of the lower vaults in the body of the rock, with so
+many pounds weight of iron on his legs. For Colonel Glover was a man
+accustomed to use strong measures, whether with his family or with those
+he had custody over.
+
+No answer came for many days; and the Governor had almost begun to think
+his message to be forgotten, when one summer evening (A.D. 1661) a troop
+of horse were seen galloping from the Village towards the Castle. The
+Drawbridge, which was on the ordinary kept slung, was now lowered; and
+the captain of the troop passing up to the barbican, gave Colonel Glover
+a sealed packet, and told him that he and his men would bivack at the
+bridge-foot (for the fens were passable at this season) until one who
+was expected at nightfall should come. Meat and drink were sent for, and
+the soldiers, dismounting, began to take tobacco and rail against the
+Castle in their brutal fashion--shame on them!--as an old mangy
+rat-trap.
+
+Colonel Glover went up into his chamber in extreme disturbance. He had
+opened the packet and conned its contents; and having his daughter to
+him presently, and charging her, by her filial duty, to use discretion
+in all things that he should confide to her, tells her that his Majesty
+the King of England, France, and Ireland was coming to the Castle in a
+strictly Disguised habit that very evening.
+
+There was barely time to make the slightest of preparations for this
+Glorious Guest; but what there was, and of the best of Meat, and Wine,
+and Plate, and hangings, and candles in sconces, was set out in the
+Governor's chamber, and ordered as handsomely as might be for his
+Majesty's coming. About eight o'clock--the villagers being given to
+understand that only some noble commander is coming to pass the soldiers
+in the Castle in review--arrived two lackeys, with panniers and
+saddle-bags, and a French varlet, who said he was, forsooth, a cook, and
+carried about with him a whole elaboratory of stove-furnaces, pots and
+pans, and jars of sauces and condiments. Monsieur was quickly at work in
+the kitchen, turning all things topsy-turvy, and nearly frightening
+Margery, the old cook, who had been a baggage-wagon sutler at Naseby in
+the Great Wars, into fits. About half-past ten a trumpet was heard to
+wind at the bridge-foot, and a couple of horses came tramping over the
+planks, making the chains rattle even to the barbican, where their
+riders dismounted.
+
+The King, for it is useless to make any further disguise about
+him--although the Governor deferred falling on his knees and kissing his
+hand until he had conducted him to his own chamber--was habited in
+strict incognito, with an uncurled wig, a flap-hat, and a horseman's
+coat over all. He had not so much as a hanger by his side, carrying only
+a stout oak walking-staff. With him came a great lord, of an impudent
+countenance, and with a rich dress beneath his cloak, who, when his
+Master was out of the room, sometimes joked with, and sometimes swore
+at, poor little Ruth, as, I grieve to say, was the uncivil custom among
+the Quality in those wild days. The King supped very copiously, drinking
+many beakers of wine, and singing French songs, to which the impudent
+Lord beat time, and sometimes presumed to join in chorus. But this
+Prince was ever of an easy manner and affable complexion, which so well
+explains the Love his people bore him. All this while the Governor and
+Ruth waited at table, serving the dishes and wine on their knees; for
+they would suffer no mean hirelings to wait upon their guests.
+
+As the King drank--and he was a great taker of wine--he asked a
+multitude of questions concerning the Prisoner and Mrs. Greenville, to
+all of which Colonel Glover made answer in as plain a manner as was
+consistent with his deep loyalty and reverence. Soon, however, Colonel
+Glover found that his Majesty was paying far more attention to the
+bottle than to his conversation, and, about one in the morning, was
+conducted, with much reverence, to the Governor's own sleeping-chamber,
+which had been hastily prepared. His Majesty was quite Affable, but
+Haggard visibly. The impudent Lord was bestowed in the chamber which had
+been Ruth's, before she came to sleep so near Mrs. Greenville; and it is
+well he knew not what a pretty tenant the room had had, else would he
+have doubtless passed some villanous pleasantries thereupon.
+
+The King, who was always an early riser, was up betimes in the morning;
+and on Colonel Glover representing to him his sorrow for the mean manner
+in which he had of necessity been lodged, answered airily that he was
+better off there than in the Oak, or in Holland, without a styver in
+his pocket; "Although, oddsfish!" quoth his Majesty, "this Castle of
+mine seems fitter to harbour wild-ducks than Christians." And then
+nothing would suit his Majesty but to be introduced to Mrs. Greenville,
+with whom he was closeted two whole hours.
+
+He came forth from her chamber with his dark, saturnine face all
+flushed. "A brave woman!--a bold woman!" he kept saying. "An awful
+service she was like to have done me; and all to think that it was for
+love of poor Frank." For this Prince had known the Lord Francis well,
+and had shown him many favours.
+
+"And now, good Master Governor," the King continued, but with quite
+another expression on his countenance, "we will see your Man Captive, if
+it shall so please you." And the two went upstairs.
+
+This is all I am permitted to tell in this place of what passed between
+King Charles the Second and the Prisoner in the upper chamber:--
+
+"You know me!" the King said, sitting over against him at the table, and
+scanning his face with dark earnestness.
+
+"You are Charles Stuart, second of the name on the throne of England."
+
+"You know I am in the possession of your secret--of the King's Secret;
+for of those dead it was known but to Oliver, as of those living it is
+now only known to yourself and to me."
+
+"And the young Man, Richard?"
+
+"He never knew it. His father never trusted him so far. He had doubts
+and suspicions, that was all."
+
+"Thank God!" said the prisoner.
+
+"What was Oliver's enmity towards you, that he should immure you here
+all these years?"
+
+"I had served him too well. He feared lest the Shedder of Blood should
+become the Avenger of Blood."
+
+"Are you sorry?"
+
+"Sorry!" cried the Prisoner, with a kind of scream. "Had he a thousand
+lives, had I a thousand hands, I would do the same deed to-morrow." And
+he struck the right hand that was covered with the velvet glove with
+cruel violence on to the oaken table.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[I] A woman of very mean belongings, whose parents lived, I have heard,
+somewhere about the Maypole in the Strand, and who was promoted to high
+station, being Monk's Duchess, but to her death of a coarse and brutish
+carriage, and shamefully given to the drinking of strong waters.--J. D.
+
+[J] A very glorious rag nevertheless.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
+
+I AM BRED UP IN VERY BAD COMPANY, AND (TO MY SHAME) HELP TO KILL THE
+KING'S DEER.
+
+
+I LAY all that night in a little Hole by the side of a Bank, just as
+though I had been a Fox-cub. I was not in much better case than that
+Vermin, and I only marvel that my Schoolmaster did not come out next day
+to Hunt me with horses and hounds. Hounds!--the Black Fever to him!--he
+had used me like a Hound any time for Six Months past; and often had I
+given tongue under his Double Thonging. Happily the weather was warm,
+and I got no hurt by sleeping in the Hole. 'Tis strange, too, what
+Hardships and Hazards of Climate and Excess we can bear in our Youth,
+whereas in middle life an extra Slice gives us a Surfeit, and another
+cup turns our Liver to Touchwood; whilst in age (as I know to my sorrow)
+we dare scarcely venture our shoe in a Puddle for fear of the Chills and
+Sciatica. In the morning I laved my face in a Brook that hurtled hard
+by; but waited very fearfully until Noon ere I dared venture forth from
+my covert. I had filled my pockets with Fruit and Bread (which I am
+afraid I did not come very honestly by, and indeed admit that Gnawbit's
+Larder and Orchard found me in Provender), and was so able to break my
+fast. And my Guinea, I remembered, was still unchanged. I had a dim kind
+of impression that I was bound to Charlwood Chase, to join the Blacks of
+whom the Old Gentleman had spoken, but I was not in any Hurry to get to
+my Goal. I was Free, albeit a Runaway, and felt all the delights of
+Independence. You whose pleasures lie in Bowers, and Beds, and Cards,
+and Wine, can little judge of the Ease felt by him who is indeed a
+Beggar and pursued, but is at Liberty. I remember being in hiding once
+with a Gentleman Robber, who had, by the aid of a File and a Friend,
+contrived to give the Galleys leg-bail, and who for days afterwards was
+never tired of patting and smoothing his ankles, and saying, "'Twas
+there the shackles galled me so." Poor rogue! he was soon afterwards
+laid by the heels and swung; for there is no Neck Verse in France to
+save a Gentleman from the Gallows.
+
+Towards evening my gall began to grate somewhat with the sense of mine
+own utter loneliness; and for a moment I Wavered between the resolve to
+go Forward, and a slavish prompting to return to my Tyrant, and suffer
+all the torments his cruelty could visit me with. Then, as a middle
+course, I thought I would creep back to my kennel and die there; but I
+was happily dissuaded from such a mean surrender to Fortune's Spites
+through the all-unknowing agency of a Bull, that, spying me from afar
+off where he was feeding, came thundering across two fields and through
+a shallow stream, routed me up from my refuge, and chased me into the
+open. I have often since been thankful to this ungovernable Beast (that
+would have Tossed, and perchance Gored me sorely, had he got at me), and
+seldom, in later life, when I have felt weak and wavering in the pursuit
+of a profitable purpose, have I failed to remember the Bull, and how he
+chased me out of Distempered Idleness into Activity.
+
+The Sun had begun to welk in the west by the time I had mustered up
+enough courage to come into the High Road, which I had an uncertain idea
+stretched away from Gnawbit's house, and towards Reading. But suddenly
+recalling the Danger of travelling by the Highway, where I might be met
+by Horsemen or Labouring persons sent in quest of me,--for it did not
+enter my mind that I was too worthless a scholar to be Pursued, and that
+Gnawbit was, 'tis likely enough, more Pleased than sorry to be Rid of
+me,--I branched off from the main to the left; so walking, as it seemed
+to me, many miles, I grew grievously hungry. No more Bread or Apples
+remained in my pouch; but I still had my Guinea, so I deemed, and
+resolved that if I came upon any House of Entertainment, I would sup.
+For indeed, while all Nature round me seemed to be taking some kind of
+Sustenance, it was hard that I, a Christian, should go to bed (or into
+another Fox-hole, for bed I had none, and yet had slept in my time in a
+grand chamber in Hanover Square) with an empty belly. The Earth was
+beginning to drink up the dews, like an insatiate toper as she is. I
+passed a flock of sheep biting their hasty supper from the grass; and
+each one with a little cloud of gnats buzzing around it, that with
+feeble stings, poor insects, were trying for their supper too. And 'tis
+effect we have upon another. The birds had taken home their worm-cheer
+to the little ones in the nests, and were singing their after-supper
+songs, very sweetly but drowsily. 'Twas too late in the year for the
+Nightingale,--that I knew,--but the jolly Blackbird was in full feather
+and voice; and presently there swept by me a great Owl, going home to
+feast, I will be bound, in his hollow tree, and with nothing less than a
+Field Mouse for his supper, the rascal. 'Twas a wicked imagining, but I
+could not help thinking, as I heard the birds carolling so merrily,--and
+how they keep so plump upon so little to eat is always to me a marvel,
+until I remember with what loving care Heaven daily spreads their table
+from Nature's infinite ordinary,--how choice a Refection a dish of
+birds' eggs, so often idly stolen and blown hollow by us boys, would
+make. The feathered creatures are a forgiving folk; and 'tis not
+unlikely that the Children in the Wood had often gone birds'-nesting:
+but when they were dead, the kindly Red Jerkins forgave all their little
+maraudings, and covered them with leaves, as though the children had
+strewn them crumbs or brought them worms from January to December.
+Gnawbit was a wretch who used to kill the Robins, and for that, if for
+naught else, he will surely howl.
+
+By and by, when darkness was coming down like a playhouse curtain, and
+the Northern wagoner up yonder--how often have I watched him at
+sea!--was yoking his seven cart-mares to the steadfast star, I came upon
+a Man--the first I had seen since the Old Gentleman bade me begone with
+my Guinea, and join the Blacks. This Man was not walking or running, nay
+nor sitting nor lying as Lazars do in hedges. But he tumbled out of the
+quicket as it were, and came to me with short leaps, making as though he
+would Devour me. We schoolboys had talked often enough about Claude
+Duval and the Golden Farmer, and I set this Dreadful Being down at once
+as a Highwayman; so down I went Plump on my knees and Roared for mercy,
+as I was wont to do to Gnawbit, till I learnt that no Roaring would make
+him desist from his brutish purpose. It was darkish now, and I well-nigh
+fancied the Man was indeed my wicked Master, for he had an uplifted
+weapon in his hand; but when he came nearer to me, I found that it was
+not a cane nor a thong, but a Great Flail, which he whirled over his
+head, and then brought down on the ground with a Thwack, making the
+Night Flies dance.
+
+"You Imp of mischief," said the man as he seized me by the collar and
+shook me roughly, "what are you doing here, spying on honest folks?
+Speak, or I'll brain you with this Flail."
+
+I thought it best to tell this terrible man the Truth.
+
+"If you please, sir," I answered, trembling, "I've run away."
+
+"Run away from where, you egg?"
+
+"From Gnawbit's, sir."
+
+"And who the pest is Gnawbit, you hempen babe?"
+
+"My schoolmaster, sir."
+
+"Ha! that's good," the Man replied, loosening his hold somewhat on my
+collar. "And what did you run away for?"
+
+I told him in broken sentences my short Story--of my Sufferings at
+School, at least, but never saying a word about my being a little
+Gentleman, and the son of a Lady of Quality in Hanover Square.
+
+"And where are you going?" the Man asked, when I had finished.
+
+I told him that I was on my way to Charlwood Chase to join the Blacks.
+And then he asked me whether I had any Money, whereto I answered that I
+had a Guinea; and little doubting in my Quaking Heart but that he would
+presently Wrench it from me, if haply he were not minded to have Meal as
+well as Malt, and brain me as he had threatened. But he forbore to offer
+me violence, and, quite releasing his hold, said--
+
+"I suppose you'd like some supper."
+
+I said that I had not broken my fast for many hours, and was dead
+a-hungered.
+
+"And wouldn't mind supping with the Blacks in Charlwood Chase, eh?" he
+continued.
+
+I rather gave him to understand that such was not only my Wish but my
+Ambition.
+
+"Come along to the Blacks, then," said the Man. "_I'm one of 'em._"
+
+He drew a Lantern from under his garments as he spoke, and letting out
+the Light from the slide, passed it over, and up and down, his Face and
+Figure. Then did I see with Horror and Amazement that both his
+Countenance and his Raiment were all smirched and bewrayed with dabs and
+patches of what seemed soot or blackened grease. It was a once white
+Smock or Gaberdine that made the chief part of his apparel; and this,
+with the black patches on it, gave him a Pied appearance fearful to
+behold. There was on his head what looked like a great bundle of black
+rags; and tufts of hair that might have been pulled out of the mane of a
+wild horse grew out from either side of his face, and wreathed its lower
+half.
+
+"Come along," repeated the Man; "we'll blacken you bravely in time my
+Chicken-skin."
+
+And so he grasped my hand in his,--and when I came to look at it
+afterwards, I found it smeared with sable, and with great black
+finger-marks upon it,--and led me away. We journeyed on in the Dark--for
+he had put up his Lantern--for another good half-hour, he singing to
+himself from time to time some hoarse catches of song having reference
+to some "Billy Boys" that I conjectured were his companions. And so we
+struck from by-lane into by-lane, and presently into a Plantation, and
+then through a gap in a Hedge, and through a Ditch full of Brambles,
+which galled my legs sorely. I was half asleep by this time, and was
+only brought to full wakefulness by the deep baying as of a Dog some few
+yards, as it seemed, from us.
+
+The Lantern's light gleamed forth again; and in the circle of Clear it
+made I could see we were surrounded by tall Trees that with their long
+crooked Arms looked as though they would entwine me in deadly embraces.
+
+"Hist!" the man said very low. "That's surely Black Towzer's tongue."
+And to my huge dismay he set up a sad responsive Howl, very like unto
+that of a Dog, but not at all akin to the voice of a Man.
+
+The answer to this was a whistle, and human speech, saying--
+
+"Black Jowler!"
+
+"Black Towzer, for a spade Guinea!" my companion made answer; and in
+another moment there came bounding towards us another fellow in the same
+blackened masquerade as he, and with another Lantern. He had with him,
+besides, a shaggy hound that smelt me suspiciously and prowled round me,
+growling low, I shivering the whiles.
+
+"What have we here?" asked the Second Black; for I made no doubt now but
+that my Company were of that Confederacy.
+
+"Kid loose," replied he who was to take me to supper. "Given the keepers
+the slip, and run down by Billy Boys' park. Aha!" and he whispered to
+his comrade ruffian.
+
+Out went the Lanterns again, and he who answered to the name of Jowler
+tightened his grasp, and bade me for a young Tyburn Token quicken my
+pace. So we walked and walked again, poor I as sore as a pilgrim
+tramping up the Hill to Louth--which I have many times seen in those
+parts--with Shards in his shoes. Then it must come, forsooth, to more
+whistling; and the same Play being over, we had one more Lantern to our
+Band, and one more Scurvy Companion as Black as a Flag,[K] who in their
+kennel Tongue was Mungo. And by and by we were joined by Surly, and
+Black Tom, and Grumps; and so with these five Men, who were pleased to
+be called as the Beasts are, I stumbled along, tired, and drowsy, and
+famishing, and thinking my journey would never come to an end.
+
+Surely it must have been long past midnight when we made a halt; and all
+the five lanterns being lit, and making so many dancing wheels of
+yellow, I found that we were still encircled by those tall trees with
+the twining arms. And Jowler--for it is useless to speak of my conductor
+according to Human Rule--gave me a rough pat on the shoulder, and bade
+me cheer up, for that I should have my supper very soon now. All five
+then joined in a whistle so sharp, so clear, and so well sustained, that
+it sounded well-nigh melodious; and to this there came, after the lapse
+of a few seconds, the noise as of a little peevish Terrier barking.
+
+"True as Touchwood," cried Black Jowler. "In, Billy Boys, and hey for
+fat and flagons."
+
+With this he takes me by the shoulders, telling me to fear naught, and
+spend my money like a gentleman, and bundles me before him till we came
+to something hard as board. This I presently found was a door; and in
+an instant I was in the midst of a kind of Tavern parlour, all lighted
+up with great candles stuck into lumps of clay, and face to face with
+the Fattest Woman I ever saw in my life.
+
+"Mother Moll Drum," quoth my conductor, "save you, and give me a quart
+of three threads, or I faint. Body o' me, was ever green plover so
+pulled as I was?"
+
+The Fat Woman he called Mother Moll Drum was to all seeming in no very
+blessed temper; for she bade Jowler go hang for a lean polecat, and be
+cursed meanwhile, and that she would draw him naught.
+
+"Come, come, Mother," Jowler said, making as though to appease her,
+"what be these tantrums? Come, draw; for I'm as thirsty as an
+hour-glass, poor wretch, that has felt sand run through his gullet any
+time these twenty years."
+
+"Draw for yourself, rogue," says Mother Drum; "there's naught I'll serve
+you with, unless, indeed, I were bar-woman at St. Giles's Pound, and had
+to froth you your last quart, as you went up the Heavy Hill to Tyburn."
+
+"We shall all go there in time--good time," breaks in a deep solemn
+voice, drawn somehow through the nose, and coming from the Man-Dog they
+called Grumps; "meanwhile, O greasy woman, let the beverage our brother
+asked for be drawn, and I, even Grumps, will partake thereof, and ask a
+blessing."
+
+"Woman yourself!" cries Moll Drum, in a rage. "Woman yourself, and T----
+in your teeth, and woman to the mother that bore you, and sat in the
+stocks for Lightness! Who are you, quotha, old reverend smock with the
+splay foot? Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will
+you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you
+moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of
+Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the
+swallow above."
+
+By this time Mother Drum was well-nigh out of breath, and panted, and
+looked so hot, that they might have put her up by Temple Bar on Queen
+Bess's birthnight for a Bonfire, and so saved Tar Barrels. And as she
+spoke she brandished a large Frying Pan, from which great drops of hot
+grease--smelling very savoury by the way--dropped on to the sanded
+floor. The other Blacks seemed in nowise disturbed by this Dispute, but
+were rather amused thereby, and gathered in a ring round Jowler and
+Grumps and the Fat Woman, laughing.
+
+"Never mind, Mother Drum," quoth one; "she was a pig-woman once in
+Bartlemy Fair, and lost her temper through the heat of a coal-fire
+roasting porkers. Was't not hot, Mother Drum? was not Tophet a kind of
+cool cellar to it?"
+
+It was Surly who spoke, and Mother Drum turns on him in a rage.
+
+"You lie, you pannierman's by-blow!" she cried; "you bony muckfowl, with
+the bony back sticking out like the ace of spades on the point of a
+small-sword! you lie, Bobchin, Changeling, Horseleech! 'Slid, you
+Shrovetide Cutpurse, I'll scald your hide with gravy, I will!"
+
+"Ware the pan, ware the pan!" all the Blacks cried out; for the Good
+Woman made a flourish as though she would have carried out her threat;
+whereupon my Man-Dog, Jowler, thought it was time to interpose, and
+spoke.
+
+"There's no harm in Mother Drum, but that her temper's as hot as her
+pan, and we are late to supper. Come, Mother, Draw for us, and save you
+still. I'll treat you to burnt brandy afterwards."
+
+"What did he call me Pig-Woman for?" she grumbled, but still half
+mollified. "What if I did waste my youth and prime in cooking of porkers
+in a booth; I am no cutpurse. I, I never shoved the tumbler for
+tail-drawing or poll-snatching on a levee-day.[L] But I will draw for
+you, and welcome my guests of the game."
+
+"And Supper, good Moll, Supper," added Jowler.
+
+"An you had not hindered me, it would have been ready upstairs. There
+are more upstairs besides you that hunger after the fat and the lean.
+But can you sup without a cook? Will venison run off the spit ready
+roasted, think you, like the pigs in Lubberland, that jump down your
+throat, and cry _wee wee_?"
+
+She began to bustle about, and summoned, by the name of Cicely
+Grip--adding thereto the epithet of "faggot"--a stout serving-lass, who
+might have been comely enough, but whose face and hands were very nearly
+as black as those of the Man-Dog's. This wench brought a number of brown
+jugs full of beer, and the Blacks took to drinking with much zest. Then
+Jowler, who seemed a kind of lieutenant, in some authority over them,
+gave the word of command to "Peel;" and they hastened to leave the room,
+which was but a mean sort of barn-like chamber, with bare walls, a
+wattled roof, and a number of rough wooden tables and settles, all
+littered with jugs and Tobacco pipes. So I and the Fat Woman and Jowler,
+Cicely Grip having betaken herself to the kitchen, were left together.
+
+"Cicely will dish up, Mother Drum," he says; "you have fried collops
+enow for us, I trow; and if more are wanted for the Billy Boys, you can
+to your pan again. You began your brandy pottage too early tonight,
+Mother. Let us have no more of your vapours 'twixt this and day-break,
+prithee. What would Captain Night say?"
+
+"Captain Night be hanged!"
+
+"He will be hanged, as our brother Surly has it, in good time, I doubt
+it not. Meanwhile, order must be kept at the Stag o' Tyne. Get you and
+draw the dram I promised you; and, Mother, wash me this little lad's
+face and hands, that he may sit down to meat with us in a seemly
+manner."
+
+"Who the Clink is he?" asked Mother Drum, eyeing me with no very Great
+Favour.
+
+"He says he is little Boy Jack," answered Mr. Jowler, gravely. "We will
+give him another name before we have done with him. Meantime he has a
+guinea in his pocket to pay his shot, and that's enough for the fat old
+Alewife of the Stag o' Tyne."
+
+"Fat again!" muttered Mother Drum. "Is it a 'Sizes matter to be full of
+flesh? I be fat indeed," she answered, with a sigh, "and must have a
+chair let out o' the sides for me, that these poor old hips may have
+play. And I, that was of so buxom a figure."
+
+"Never mind your Figure, Mother," remarked my Conductor, "but do my
+bidding. I'll e'en go and peel too;" and without more ado he leaves us.
+
+Madam Drum went into her kitchen and fetched forth a Tin Bowl full of
+hot suds, and with these she washed me as she had been directed. I bore
+it all unresistingly--likewise a scrubbing with a rough towel. Then,
+when my hair was kempt with an old Felting comb, almost toothless, I
+felt refreshed and hungrier than ever. But Mother Drum never ceased to
+complain of having been called fat.
+
+"Time was, my smooth-faced Coney," she said, "that I was as lithe and
+limber as you are, and was called Jaunty Peg. And now poor old Moll
+cooks collops for those that are born to dance jigs in chains for the
+north-east wind to play the fiddle to. Time was when a whole army
+followed me, when I beat the drum before the great Duke."
+
+"What Duke?" I asked, looking up at her great red face.
+
+"What Duke, milksop! Why, who should I mean but the Duke that won
+Hochstedt and Ramilies:--the Ace of Trumps, my dear, that saved the
+Queen of Hearts, the good Queen Anne, so bravely. What Duke should I
+mean but John o' Marlborough."
+
+"I have seen _him_," I said, with childish gravity.
+
+"Seen him! when and where, loblolly-boy? You're too young to have been a
+drummer."
+
+"I saw him," I answered, blushing and stammering; "I saw him when--when
+I was a little Gentleman."
+
+"Lord save us!" cries Mother Drum, bursting into a jolly laugh. "A
+Gentleman! since when, your Lordship, I pray? But we're all Gentlefolks
+here, I trow; and Captain Night's the Marquis of Aylesbury Jail. A
+Gentleman! oho!"
+
+Hereupon, and which, to my great relief, quitted me of the perturbation
+brought on by a Rash Admission, there came three knocks from above, and
+Mother Drum said hurriedly, "Supper, supper;" and opening a side-door,
+pushes me on to a staircase, and tells me to mount, and pull a reverence
+to the company I found at table.
+
+Twenty steps brought me to another door I found on the jar, and I passed
+into a great room with a roof of wooden joists, and a vast table in the
+middle set out with supper. There was no table-cloth; but there were
+plenty of meats smoking hot in great pewter dishes. I never saw, either,
+so many bottles and glasses on one board in my life; and besides these,
+there was good store of great shining Flagons, carved and chased, which
+I afterwards knew to be of Solid Silver.
+
+Round this table were gathered at least Twenty Men; and but for their
+voices I should never have known that five among them were my companions
+of just now. For all were attired in a very brave Manner, wore wigs and
+powder and embroidered waistcoats; although, what I thought strange,
+each man dined in boots, with a gold-laced hat on his head, and his
+Hanger by his side, and a brace of Pistols on the table beside him. Yet
+I must make two exceptions to this rule. He whom they called Surly, had
+on a full frizzed wig and a cassock and bands, that, but for his rascal
+face, would have put me in mind of the Parson at St. George's, Hanover
+Square, who always seemed to be so angry with me. Surly was Chaplain,
+and said Grace, and ate and drank more than any one there. Lastly, at
+the table's head, sat a thin, pale, proper kind of a man, wearing his
+own hair long, in a silken club, dressed in the pink of Fashion, as
+though he were bidden to a birthday, with a dandy rapier at his side,
+and instead of Pistols, a Black Velvet Visor laid by the side of his
+plate. He had very large blue eyes and very fair hair. He might have
+been some thirty-five years old, and the guests, who treated him with
+much deference, addressed him as Captain Night.
+
+Mr. Jowler, whose hat had as brave a cock as any there, made me sit by
+him; and, with three more knocks and the Parson's Grace, we all fell to
+supper. They helped me plentifully, and I ate my fill. Then my friend
+gave me a silver porringer full of wine-and-water. It was all very good;
+but I knew not what viands I was eating, and made bold to ask Jowler.
+
+"'Tis venison, boy, that was never shot by the King's keeper," he
+answered. "But, if you would be free of Charlwood Chase, and wish to get
+out yet with a whole skin, I should advise you to eat your meat and ask
+no questions."
+
+I was very much frightened at this, and said no more until the end of
+Supper. When they had finished, they fell to drinking of Healths, great
+bowls of Punch being brought to them for that purpose. The first toast
+was the King, and that fell to Jowler.
+
+"The King!" says he, rising.
+
+"Over the water?" they ask.
+
+"No," answers Jowler. "The King everywhere. King James, and God bless
+him."
+
+"I won't drink _that_," objects the Chaplain. "You know I am a King
+George man."
+
+"Drink the Foul Fiend, an' you will," retorts the Proposer. "You'd be
+stanch and true either way. Now, Billy Boys, the King!"
+
+And they fell to tumbling down on their knees, and drinking His Majesty
+in brimming bumpers. I joined in the ceremony perforce, although I knew
+nothing about King James, save that Monarch my Grandmother used to Speak
+about, who Withdrew himself from these kingdoms in the year 1688; and at
+Church 'twas King George they were wont to pray for, and not King James.
+And little did I ween that, in drinking this Great Person on my knees, I
+was disobeying the Precept of my dear dead Kinswoman.
+
+"I have a bad foot," quoth Captain Night, "and cannot stir from my
+chair; but I drink all healths that come from loyal hearts."
+
+Many more Healths followed. The Chaplain gave the Church, "and confusion
+to Old Rapine, that goes about robbing chancels of their chalices, and
+parsons of their dues, and the very poor-box of alms." And then they
+drank, "Vert and Venison," and then, "A black face, a white smock, and a
+red hand." And then they betook themselves to Roaring choruses, and
+Smoking and Drinking galore, until I fell fast asleep in my chair.
+
+I woke up not much before Noon the next day, in a neat little chamber
+very cleanly appointed; but found to my surprise that, in addition to my
+own clothes, there was laid by my bedside a little Smock or Gaberdine of
+coarse linen, and a bowl full of some sooty stuff that made me shudder
+to look at. And my Surprise was heightened into amazed astonishment
+when, having donned my own garments, and while curiously turning over
+the Gaberdine, there came a knock, and anon stepped into the room the
+same comely Servant-maid that had ridden with us in the Wagon six months
+since, on that sad journey to school, and that had been so kind to me in
+the way of new milk and cheesecakes.
+
+She was very smartly dressed, with a gay flowered apron, and a flycap
+all over glass-beads, like so many Blue-bottles. And she had a gold
+brooch in her stomacher, and fine thread hose, and red Heels to her
+shoes.
+
+She was as kind to me as ever, and told me that I was among those who
+would treat me well, and stand my friends, if I obeyed their commands.
+And I, who, I confess, had by this time begun to look on the Blacks and
+their Ways with a kind of Schoolboy glee, rose, nothing loth, and donned
+the Strange Accoutrements my entertainers provided for me. The girl
+helped me to dress, smiling and giggling mightily the while; but, as I
+dressed, I could not help calling her by the name she had given me in
+the Wagon, and asking how she had come into that strange Place.
+
+"Hush, hush!" says she. "I'm Marian now, Maid Marian, that lives with
+Mother Drum, and serves the Gentlemen Blacks, and brings Captain Night
+his morning Draught. None of us are called by our real names at the Stag
+o' Tyne, my dear. We all are in No-man's-land."
+
+"But where is No-man's-land, and what is the Stag o' Tyne?" I asked, as
+she slipped the Gaberdine over my head.
+
+"No-man's-land is just in the left-hand top Corner of Charlwood Chase,
+after you have turned to the left, and gone as far forward as you can by
+taking two steps backward for every one straight on," answers the saucy
+hussy. "And the Stag o' Tyne's even a Christian House of Entertainment
+that Mother Drum keeps."
+
+"And who is Mother Drum?" I resumed, my eyes opening wider than ever.
+
+"A decent Alewife, much given to grease, and that cooks the King's
+Venison for Captain Night and his Gentlemen Blacks."
+
+"And Captain Night,--who is he?"
+
+"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies," she makes reply.
+"Captain Night is a Gentleman every inch of him, and as sure as Tom o'
+Ten Thousand."
+
+"And the Gentlemen Blacks?"
+
+"Your mighty particular," quoth she, regarding me with a comical look.
+"Well, my dear, since you are to be a Black yourself, and a Gentleman to
+boot, I don't mind telling you. The Gentlemen Blacks are all Bold
+Hearts, that like to kill the King's Venison without a Ranger's Warrant,
+and to eat of it without paying Fee nor Royalty, and that drink of the
+very best--"
+
+"And that have Dog-whips to lay about the shoulders of tattling minxes
+and curious urchins," cries, to my dismay, a voice behind us, and so to
+us--by his voice at least--Captain Night, but in his body no longer the
+same gay spark that I had seen the night before, or rather that morning
+early. He was as Black, and Hairy, and Savage-looking as any--as Jowler,
+or any one of that Dark Gang; and in no way differed from them, save
+that on the middle finger of his Right Hand there glittered from out all
+his Grease and Soot, a Great Diamond Ring.
+
+"Come," he cries, "Mistress Nimble Tongue, will you be giving your Red
+Rag a gallop yet, and Billy Boys waiting to break their Fast? Despatch,
+and set out the boy, as I bade you."
+
+"I am no kitchen-wench, I," answers the Maid of the Wagon, tossing her
+head. "Cicely o' the Cinders yonder will bring you to your umble-pie,
+and a Jack of small-beer to cool you, I trow. Was it live Charcoal or
+Seacoal embers that you swallowed last night, Captain, makes you so dry
+this morning?"
+
+"Never mind, Goody Slack Jaw," says Captain Night. "I shall be thirstier
+anon from listening to your prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, or is the
+sun to sink before we get hounds in leash?"
+
+Thus admonished, the girl takes me by the arm, and, without more ado,
+dips a rag in the pot of black pigment, and begins to smear all my
+hands, and face, and throat, with dabs of disguising shade. And, as she
+bade me do the same to my Garment, and never spare Soot, I fell to work
+too, making myself into the likeness of a Chimney-boy, till they might
+have taken me into a nursery to Frighten naughty children.
+
+Captain Night sat by himself on the side of the bed, idly clicking a
+pistol-lock till such time as he proceeded to load it, the which threw
+me into a cold tremor, not knowing but that it might be the Custom among
+the Gentlemen Blacks to blow out the brains in the morning of those they
+had feasted over-night. Yet, as there never was Schoolboy, I suppose,
+but delighted in Soiling of his raiment, and making himself as Black as
+any sweep in Whetstone Park, so did I begin to feel something like a
+Pleasure in being masqueraded up to this Disguise, and began to wish for
+a Pistol such as Captain Night had in his Hand, and such a Diamond Ring
+as he wore on his finger.
+
+"There!" cries the Maid of the Wagon, when I was well Blacked, surveying
+me approvingly. "You're a real imp of Charlwood Chase now. Ugh! thou
+young Rig! I'll kiss you when the Captain brings you home, and good soap
+and water takes off those mourning weeds before supper-time."
+
+She had clapped a great Deerskin cap on my head, and giving me a
+friendly pat, was going off, when I could not help asking her in a sly
+whisper what had become of the Pewterer of Pannier Alley.
+
+"What! you remember him, do you?" she returned, with a half-smile and a
+half-sigh. "Well, the Pewterer's here, and as black as you are."
+
+"But I thought you were to wed," I remarked.
+
+"Well!" she went on, almost fiercely, "cannot one wed at the Stag o'
+Tyne? We have a brave Chaplain down-stairs,--as good as a Fleet Parson
+any day, I wuss."
+
+"But the Pewterer?" I persisted.
+
+"I'll hang the Pewterer round thy neck!" she exclaimed in a pet. "The
+Pewterer was unfortunate in his business, and so took to the Road; and
+thus we have all come together in Charlwood Chase. But ask me no more
+questions, or Captain Night will be deadly angry. Look, he fumes
+already."
+
+She tripped away saying this, and in Time, I think; for indeed the
+Captain was beginning to show signs of impatience. She being gone, he
+took me on his knee, all Black as I was, and in a voice kind enough, but
+full of authority, bade me tell him all my History and the bare truth,
+else would he have me tied neck and heels and thrown to the fishes.
+
+So I told this strange Man all:--of Hanover Square, and my earliest
+childhood. Of the Unknown Lady, and her Behaviour and conversation, even
+to her Death. Of her Funeral, and the harsh bearing of Mistress Talmash
+and the Steward Cadwallader unto me in my Helplessness and Loneliness.
+Of my being smuggled away in a Wagon and sent to school to Gnawbit, and
+of the Barbarous cruelty with which I had been treated by that Monster.
+And finally, of the old Gentleman that used to cry, "Bear it! Bear it!"
+and of his giving me a Guinea, and bidding me run away.
+
+He listened to all I had to say, and then putting me down,
+
+"A strange story," he thoughtfully remarks, "and not learnt out of the
+storybooks either, or I sorely err. You have not a Lying Face, my man.
+Wait a while, and you'll wear a Mask thicker than all that screen of
+soot you have upon you now." But in this he was mistaken; for John
+Dangerous ever scorned deception, and through life has always acted
+fair and above-board.
+
+"And that Guinea," he continued. "Hast it still?"
+
+I answered that I had, producing it as I spoke, and that I was ready to
+pay my Reckoning, and to treat him and the others, in which, meseems,
+there spoke less of the little Runaway Schoolboy that had turned Sweep,
+than of the Little Gentleman that was wont to be a Patron to his
+Grandmother's lacqueys in Hanover Square.
+
+"Keep thy piece of Gold," he answers, with a smile. "Thou shalt pay thy
+footing soon enough. Or wilt thou go forth with thy Guinea and spend it,
+and be taken by thy Schoolmaster to be whipped, perchance to death?"
+
+I replied that I had the much rather stay with him, and the Gentlemen.
+
+"The less said of the 'Gentlemen' the better. However, 'tis all one: we
+are all Gentlemen at the Stag o' Tyne. Even thou art a Gentleman, little
+Ragamuff."
+
+"I am a Gentleman of long descent; and my fathers have fought and bled
+for the True King; and Norman blood's better than German puddle-mud," I
+replied, repeating well-nigh Mechanically that which my dear Kinswoman
+had said to me, and Instilled into me many and many a time. In my
+degraded Slavery, I had _well_-nigh forgotten the proud old words; but
+only once it chanced that they had risen up unbidden, when I was flouted
+and jeered at as Little Boy Jack by my schoolmates. Heaven help us, how
+villanously cruel are children to those who are of their own age and
+Poor and Friendless! What is it that makes young hearts so Hard? The
+boys Derided and mocked me more than ever for that I said I was a
+Gentleman; and by and by comes Gnawbit, and beats me black and blue--ay,
+and gory too--with a furze-stub, for telling of Lies, as he falsely
+said, the Ruffian.
+
+"Well," resumed Captain Night, "thou shalt stay with us, young
+Gentleman. But weigh it soberly, boy," he continued. "Thou art old
+enough to know black from white, and brass from gold. Be advised; know
+what we Blacks are. We are only Thieves that go about stealing the
+King's Deer in Charlwood Chase."
+
+I told him that I would abide by him and his Company; and with a grim
+smile he clapped me on the shoulder, and told me that now indeed I was a
+Gentleman Black, and Forest Free.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[K] "_My_ Flag" in the original MS.; but I put it down as a slip of the
+pen, and altered it--G. A. S.
+
+[L] Madam Drum, so far as I can make out the _argot_ of the day, here
+insinuated that her opponent had been corrected at the cart's tail for
+stealing swords out of the scabbards, and conveying wigs from the heads
+of their owners, two crimes which have become obsolete since the Quality
+have ceased to wear swords and periwigs.--G. A. S.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
+
+THE HISTORY OF MOTHER DRUM.
+
+
+DURING the long nights I remained at the Stag o' Tyne ere I was thought
+Worthy to join the Blacks in their nocturnal adventures, or was, by my
+Hardihood and powers of Endurance--poor little mite that I was--adjudged
+to be Forest Free, I remained under the charge of Ciceley of the
+Cindery, and of the corpulent Tapstress whom the Blacks called Mother
+Drum. These two women were very fond of gossiping with me; and
+especially did Mother Drum love to converse with me upon her own Career,
+which had been of the most Chequered, not to say Amazing nature. I have
+already hinted that at one time this Remarkable Woman had professed the
+Military Profession, in which she had shone with almost a Manly
+Brilliance; and from her various confidences--all delivered to me as
+they were in shreds and patches, and imparted at the oddest times and
+seasons--I was enabled to shape her (to me) diverting history into
+something like the following shape.
+
+"I was born, I think," quoth Mother Drum, "in the year 1660, being that
+of his happy Restoration to the throne of these Realms of his late
+Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second. My father was a small farmer,
+who fed his pigs and tended his potato gardens at the foot of the
+Wicklow Mountains, about twelve miles from the famous city of Dublin.
+His name was O' something, which it concerns you not to know, youngster,
+and he had the misfortune to be a Papist. I say the misfortune; for in
+those days, O well-a-day, as in these too, and more's the shame, to be a
+Papist meant being a poor, unfortunate creature continually Hunted up
+and down, Harassed and Harried far worse than any leathern-skinned Beast
+of Venery that the Gentlemen Blacks pursue in Charlwood Chase. He had
+suffered much under the iron rule" (these were not exactly Mother Drum's
+words, for her language was anything, as a rule, but well chosen; but I
+have polished up her style a little,) "of the cruel Usurper, Oliver
+Cromwell; that is to say the Redcoated Ironsides of that Bad Man had on
+three several occasions burnt his Shelling to the ground, stolen his
+Pigs, and grubbed up his potato ground. Once had they ran away with his
+wife, (my dear Mother), twice had they half-hanged him to a tree-branch,
+and at divers intervals had they tortured him by tying lighted matches
+between his fingers. When, however, His Sacred Majesty was happily
+restored there were hopes that the poor Romanists would enjoy a little
+Comfort and Tranquillity; but these Fond aspirations were speedily and
+cruelly dashed to the ground; for the Anglican Bishops and Clergy being
+put into possession of the Sees and Benefices of which they had been so
+long deprived, occupied themselves much more with Hounding Down those
+who did not live by the Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy, than in
+preaching Peace and Goodwill among all men. So the Papists had a worse
+time of it than ever. My Father, honest man, tried to temporise between
+the two parties, but was ever in danger of being shot by his own friends
+as a Traitor, even if he escaped half-hanging at the hands of the
+Protestants as a Recusant. Well, after all, Jack high or Jack low, the
+days must come to an end, and Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter must
+follow upon one another, and boys and girls were born to my father, and
+the pigs littered, and were sold at market, and the potatoes grew and
+were eaten whether Oliver Cromwell, or his son Dickon, or Charles
+Stuart--I beg pardon, His Sacred Majesty--was uppermost. Thus it was I
+came into the world in the Restoration year.
+
+"I was a bold, strapping, fearless kind of a girl, much fonder of
+Romping and Horse-play of the Tomboy order than of the Pursuits and
+Pastimes of my own sex. The difference was more remarkable, as you know
+the Irish girls are distinguished above all other Maidens in creation by
+an extreme Delicacy and Coyness, not to say Prudishness of Demeanour.
+But Betty--I was christened Elizabeth--was always gammocking and
+tousling with the Lads instead of holding by her Mother's apron, or
+demurely sitting by her spinning-wheel, or singing plaintive ballads to
+herself to the music of the Irish Harp, which, in my time, almost every
+Farmer's Daughter could Play. Before I was seven years old I could feed
+the pigs and dig up the potato ground. Before I was ten, I could catch a
+colt and ride him, barebacked and without bridle, holding on by his
+mane, round the green in front of my Father's Homestead. Before I was
+twelve, I was a match for any Boy of my own age at a bout of fisticuffs,
+ay, and at swinging a blackthorn so as to bring it down with a thwack
+on the softest part of a gossoon's crown. I knew little of spinning, or
+playing, or harping; but I could land a trout, and make good play with a
+pike. I could brew a jug of Punch, and at a jig could dance down the
+lithest gambriler of those parts, Dan Meagher, the Blind Piper of
+Swords. Those who knew me used to call me 'Brimstone Betty;' and in my
+own family I went by the name of the 'Bold Dragoon,' much to the
+miscontentment of my father, who tried hard to bring me to a more
+feminine habit of Body and frame of mind, both by affectionate
+expostulation, and by assiduous larruping with a stirrup leather. But
+'twas all of no use. At sixteen I was the greatest Tearcoat of the
+Country side; and Father Macanasser, the village priest, gave it as his
+opinion that I must either be married, or sent to Dublin into decent
+service, or go to Ruination.
+
+"It chanced that one fine summer day, I was gammocking in a hayfield
+with another lass, a friend of mine, whom I had made almost as bold as
+myself. We had a cudgel apiece, and were playing at single-stick, in our
+mad-cap fashion, laughing and screaming like Bedlamites, meanwhile. Only
+a hedge separated us from the high-road to Dublin, which ran up hill,
+and by and by came toiling up the hill, sticking every other minute in a
+rut, or jolting into a hole--for the roads were in infamous condition
+about here, as, indeed, all over the kingdom of Ireland--a grand coach,
+all over painting and gilding, drawn by six grey horses, with flowing
+manes and tails. The two leading pair had postilions in liveries of blue
+and silver, and great badges of coats-of-arms, and the equipage was
+further attended by a couple of outriders or yeomen-prickers in the same
+rich livery, but with cutlasses at their sides, petronels in their
+holsters, and blunderbusses on their hips, to guard against Tories and
+Rapparees, who then infested the land, and cared little whether it was
+Daylight or Moonlight--whether it was in the Green tree or the Dry that
+they went about their thievish business. The personage to whom this
+grand coach belonged was a stout, Majestic old Gentleman with a
+monstrous black periwig, a bright star on his breast, and a broad blue
+ribbon crossing his plum-coloured velvet doublet. He had dismounted from
+his heavy coach, while the horses were fagging up hill, and by the help
+of a great crutch-staff of ebony, ornamented with silver, was toiling
+after them. Hearing our prattling and laughing, he looked over the hedge
+and saw us in the very thick of our mimic Combat. This seemed to divert
+him exceedingly; and although we, seeing so grand a gentleman looking at
+us, were for suspending our Tomfoolery, and stood, to say the truth,
+rather shamefaced than otherwise among the haycocks, he bade us with
+cheery and encouraging words to proceed, and laughed to see us so
+sparring at one another, till his sides shook again. But all the fire
+was taken out of our combat, by the presence of so unwonted a
+Spectator, and after a brief lapse we dropped cudgels, and stood staring
+and blushing, quite dashed and confused. Then he beckoned us towards him
+in a most affable manner, and we came awkwardly and timorously, yet
+still with great curiosity to know what was to follow, through a gap in
+the hedge, and so stood before him in the road. And then cries out one
+of the Yeomen-Prickers--'Wenches! drop your best curtsey to his Grace
+the Duke of O----.' It was, indeed, that famous nobleman, lately Lord
+Lieutenant, and still one of the highest, mightiest, and most puissant
+Princes in the Kingdom of Ireland. To be brief, he put a variety of
+questions to us, respecting our belongings, and at my answers seemed
+most condescendingly pleased, and at those of my playmate (whose name
+was Molly O'Flaherty, and who had red hair, and a cast in her eye), but
+moderately pleased. On her, therefore, he bestowed a gold piece, and so
+dismissed her; telling her to take care of what her Tom Boy pranks
+might lead her to. But to me, while conferring the like present, he was
+good enough to say that I was a spirited lass fit for better things, and
+that if my Father and Mother would bring me shortly to his House in
+Dublin, he would see what could be done, to the end of bettering my
+condition in life. Whereupon he was assisted to his seat by one of four
+running footmen that tramped by his side, and away he went in his coach
+and six, leaving me in great joy and contentment. In only a few minutes
+came after him, not toiling, but bursting up the hill, a whole plump of
+gallant cavaliers in buff coats, bright corslets, and embroidered
+bandoliers over them, wearing green plumes in their hats, and
+flourishing their broadswords in the sunshine. These were the gentlemen
+of his bodyguard. They questioned me as to my converse with his Grace,
+and when I told them, laughed and said that I was in luck.
+
+"The Duke of O---- meant me no harm, and I am sure did me none; and yet,
+my dear, I must date all my misfortunes from the time I was introduced
+to his Grace. You see that these gentlefolks have so much to think of,
+and are not in the habit of troubling their heads much as to what
+becomes of a poor peasant girl, after the whim which may have led them
+to patronize her has once passed over. My mother made me a new linsey
+woolsey petticoat, and a snood of scarlet frieze, and I was as fine as
+ninepence, with the first pair of stockings on that ever I had worn in
+my life, when I was taken to Dublin to a grand house by the Quay side,
+to be presented to his Grace. He had almost forgotten who I was, when
+his Groom of the Chamber procured us an audience. Then he remembered how
+he had laughed at my gambols with Molly O'Flaherty in the hayfield, and
+how they amused him, and how he thought my Romping ways might divert My
+Lady Duchess his Consort, who was a pining, puling, melancholic
+Temperament, and much afflicted with the Vapours, for want of something
+to do. So he was pleased to smile upon me again, and to give my mother
+five pounds, and to promise that I should be well bestowed in his
+household as a waiting-woman, or Bower-maiden, or some such like
+capacity; and then he made me a present, as though I were a puppy-dog,
+to Her Grace the Duchess, and having affairs of state to attend to,
+thought no more about 'Brimstone Betty.' My sprightly ways and random
+talk amused her Grace for awhile; but she had too many gewgaws and
+playthings, and I found, after not many days, that my popularity was on
+the wane, and that I could not hope to maintain it against the
+attractions of a French waiting-maid, a monkey, a parrot, a poodle, and
+a little Dwarfish boy-attendant that was half fiddler and half buffoon.
+So my consequence faded and faded, and I was sneered at and flouted as a
+young Savage and a young Irish by the English lacqueys about the House,
+and I sank from my Lady's keeping-room to the antechamber, and thence
+to the servant's hall, and thence, after a very brief lapse, to the
+kitchen, where I was very little better than a Scullish and
+Plate-washer, and not half so well entreated as Cicely of the Cinders is
+here. I pined and fretted; but time went on, and to my misfortune I was
+growing taller and shapelier. I had a very clear skin, and very black
+hair and eyes, and, though I say it that shouldn't, as neat a leg and
+foot as you would wish to see in a summer's day, and the men folk told
+me that I was comely. They only told me so, the false perfidious hounds,
+for my destruction.
+
+"Well, child, you are too young to understand these things; and I hope
+that when you grow up, you will not do to poor forlorn girls as I was
+done by. A dicing soldier fellow that was a hanger-on at my Lord Duke's
+house, and was called Captain, ran away with me. Of course I was at once
+discarded from the Great House as a good-for-nothing Light o' love, and
+was told that if ever I presumed to show my face on the Quay-side again
+I should be sent to the Spinning House, and whipped. They had better
+have taken care of me while I was with them. The Captain dressed me up
+in fine clothes for a month or so, and gave me paint and patches, and
+took me to the Playhouse with a mask on, and then he got stabbed in a
+broil after some gambling bout at a China House in Smock Alley, and I
+was left in the wide world with two satin sacques, a box of cosmetiques,
+a broken fan, two spade guineas, and little else besides what I stood
+upright in. Return to my Father and Mother I dared not; for I knew that
+the tidings of my misconduct had already been conveyed to them, and had
+half broken their hearts, and my offence was one that is unpardonable in
+the children of the poorest and humblest of the Irishry. There was
+Bitter Bread before me, if I chose to follow, as thousands of poor,
+cozened, betrayed creatures before me had done, a Naughty Life; but
+this, with unutterable Loathing and Scorn, I cast away from me; and
+having, from my Dare-devil Temper, a kind of Pride and High Stomach made
+me determine to earn my livelihood in a bold and original manner. They
+had taught me to read at the Great House (though I knew not great A from
+a bowl's foot when I came into it) and so one of the first things I had
+spelt out was a chap-book ballad of Mary Ambree, the female soldier,
+that was at the siege of Ghent, and went through all the wars in
+Flanders in Queen Bess's time. 'What woman has done, woman can do,'
+cries I to myself, surveying my bold and masculine lineaments, my
+flashing black eyes, and ruddy tint, my straight, stout limbs, and
+frank, dashing gait. Ah! I was very different to the fat, pursy, old
+ale-wife who discourses with you now--in the glass. Without more ado I
+cut off my long black hair close to my head, stained my hands with
+walnut juice, (for they had grown white and soft and plump from idling
+about in the Great House), and went off to a Crimp in the Liberty that
+was enlisting men (against the law, but here many things are done
+against both Law and Prophets), for the King of France's service.
+
+"This was in the year '80, and I was twenty years of age. King Louis had
+then no especial Brigade of Irish Troops--that famous corps not being
+formed until after the Revolution--and his Scotch Guards, a pinchbeck,
+purse-proud set of beggarly cavaliers, would not have any Irishry among
+them. I scorned to deny my lineage, and indeed my tongue would have soon
+betrayed me, had I done so; and the name I listed under was that of
+James Moriarty. One name is as good as another when you are going to the
+wars; and no name is, perchance, the best of any. As James Moriarty,
+after perfecting myself in musket-drill, and the pike-exercise, in our
+winter quarters at Dunkirk, I was entered in the Gardes Français, a
+portion of the renowned Maison du Roy, or Household Troops, and as such
+went through the second Rhenish campaign, taking my share, and a liberal
+one too, in killing my fellow-Christians, burning villages, and
+stealing poultry. Nay, through excessive precaution, lest my sex should
+be discovered, I made more pretensions than the rest of my Comrades to
+be considered a lady-killer, and the Captain of my Company, Monsieur de
+la Ribaldiere, did me the honour to say that no Farmer's Daughter was
+safe from 'Le Bel Irlandais,' or Handsome Irishman, as they called me.
+Heaven help us! From whom are the Farmer's daughters, or the Farmers
+themselves safe in war time?
+
+"When peace was declared, I found that I had risen to the dignity of
+Sergeant, and carried my Halberd with an assured strut and swagger,
+nobody dreaming that I was a wild Irish girl from the Wicklow Mountains.
+I might have risen, in time, to a commission and the Cross of St. Louis;
+but the piping times of peace turned all such brave grapes sour. I was
+glad enough, when the alternative was given me, of accompanying my
+Captain, Monsieur de la Ribaldiere, to Paris, as his Valet de Chambre,
+or of mouldering away, without hope of Promotion, in some country
+barrack, to choose the former, and led, for a year or two, a gay, easy
+life enough in the French Capital. But, alas! that which I had hidden
+from a whole army in the field, I could not keep a secret from one
+rubbishing, penniless, popinjay of a Captain in the Gardes Françaises. I
+told this miscreant, de la Ribaldiere, that I was a woman; for I was mad
+and vain enough to Love him. These are matters again, child, that you
+cannot understand; but I have said enough when I declare that if ever
+there was power in the Curse of Cromwell to blight a Wicked Man, that
+curse ought to light upon Henri de la Ribaldiere.
+
+"I took a disgust to the male attire after this; but being yet in the
+prime of my womanhood, and as fond as ever of athletic diversions, I
+engaged myself to a French mountebank posture-master to dance Corantoes
+on the Tight and Slack Rope, accompanying myself meanwhile by reveilles
+on the Drum, an instrument in which I had become a proficient. The
+Posture Master, finding out afterwards that I was agile and Valiant, not
+only at Dancing but at Fighting, must needs have me wield the broadsword
+and the quarterstaff against all comers on a public platform; and, as
+the Irish Amazon, I achieved great success, and had my Employer not been
+a thief, should have gained much money. He was in the habit, not only of
+robbing his woman-performers, but of beating them; but I promise you the
+first time the villain offered to slash at me with his dog-whip, I had
+him under the jaw with my fist in the handsomest manner, and then
+tripping up his heels, and hurling him down on his own stage, and
+(having a right piece of ashplant in my grip) I did so curry his hide in
+sight of a full audience, that he howled for mercy, and the groundlings,
+who thought it part of the show, clapped their hands till they were sore
+and shouted till they were hoarse. Our engagement came to an end after
+this, and in a somewhat disagreeable manner for me; for the
+Posture-Master happened to be the by-blow of a Doctor of the Sorbonne,
+who was brother to an Abbé, who was brother to an opera-dancer, who had
+interest with a cardinal, who was uncle to a gentleman of the Chamber,
+who was one of Père la Chaise's pet penitents; and this Reverend Father,
+having the King's ear, denounced me to his Majesty as a Spy, a Heretic,
+a Jansenist, a _Coureuse_, and all sorts of things; and by a _lettre de
+Cachet_, as they call their warrants, I was sent off to the prison of
+the Madelonettes, there to diet on bread and water, to be herded with
+the vilest of my sex, to card wool, and to receive, morning and evening,
+the Discipline (as they call it) of Leathern thongs, ten to a handful,
+and three blood-knots in each. I grew sick of being tawed for offences I
+had never committed, and so made bold one morning to try and strangle
+the Mother of the Workroom, who sat over us with a rattan, while we
+carded wool. Upon which I was bound to a post, and received more
+stripes, my lad, in an hour than ever your Schoolmaster gave you in a
+week. That same night I tried to burn the prison down; and then they put
+me in the dark dungeon called La Grande Force, with six inches of water
+in it and any number of rats. I was threatened with prosecution at their
+old Bailey, or Chatelet, with the Question (that is, the torture)
+ordinary and extraordinary, with the galleys for life as a wind-up, even
+if I escaped the gibbet in the place de Grève. Luckily for me, at this
+time the Gentleman of the Chamber fell into disgrace with Father la
+Chaise for eating a Chicken Sausage in Lent; and to spite him and the
+Minister, and the Cardinal and the Opera Dancer, and the Abbé and the
+Doctor of the Sorbonne, and the Posture Master all together, His
+Reverence, having his Majesty's ear, moves the Most Christian King to
+Clemency, and a Royal warrant comes down to the Madelonettes, and I was
+sent about my business with strict injunctions not to show myself again
+in Paris, under penalty of the Pillory, branding on the cheek with a
+red-hot iron, and the galleys in perpetuity.
+
+"I had been nearly ten years abroad, and having, by the charity of some
+Ladies of the Irish Convent in Paris, found means to quit France, landed
+one morning in the year '90 at Wapping, below London. I had never been
+in England before, and mighty little I thought of it when I became
+acquainted with that proud, belly-god country. I found that there was
+little enough to be done to make a poor Irishwoman able to earn her own
+living; and that there was besides a prejudice against natives of
+Ireland, both on account of their Extraction and their Religion, which
+made the high and mighty English unwilling to employ them, either as
+day-labourers or as domestic servants. For awhile, getting into loose
+company, I went about the country to wakes and Fairs, picking up a
+livelihood by Rope-dancing, back and broadsword fighting, and now and
+then sword swallowing and fire eating; but since my misadventure with
+the Posture Master I had taken a dislike to the Mountebank life, and
+could not settle down to it again. My old love for soldiering revived
+again, and being at Plymouth where a Recruiting Party was beating up for
+King William's service in his Irish wars, took a convenient opportunity
+of quitting my female apparel, resuming that of a man, and listing in
+Lord Millwood's Regiment of Foot as a private Fusilier. As I knew my
+drill, and made no secret of my having served in the Maison du Roy, I
+was looked upon rather as a good prize, for in war time 'tis Soldiers
+and Soldiers only that are of real value, and they may have served the
+very Devil himself so that they can trail a pike and cast a grenade:
+'tis all one to the Recruiting Captain. He wants men--not loblolly
+boys--and so long as he gets them he cares not a doit where they come
+from.
+
+"I suppose I fought as bravely as my neighbours throughout that last
+Irish Campaign, in which the unhappy King James made so desperate an
+effort to regain his crown. When King William and the Marshal Duke of
+Schomberg had made an end of him, and the poor dethroned Monarch had
+gotten away to St. Germains-en-Laye, there to eke out the remains of his
+days as a kind of Monk, Millwood's Foot was sent back to England, and
+put upon the Peace Establishment. That is to say the officers got half
+pay, and the private men were told that for the next eighteen months
+they should have sixpence a day, and that after that, unless another war
+came, they must shift for themselves. I preferred shifting for myself at
+once to having any of their measly doles after valiant and faithful
+service; and so, having gathered a very pretty penny out of Plunder
+while with King William's army, I became a woman again, and opened a
+Coffee House and Spirit Shop at Chelsea. My curious adventures had by
+this time come to be pretty well known; and setting up at the sign of
+the Amazon's Head, with a picture of myself, in full fighting dress
+splitting an Irish Rapparee with my bayonet, I grew into some renown.
+The Quality much frequented my house, and some of the book-making
+gentlemen about Grub Street were good enough to dish up my exploits in a
+shilling pamphlet, called 'The Life of Elizabeth O----, _alias_ James
+Moriarty, the new Mary Ambree, or the Grenadier.' At Chelsea I remained
+until the year 1704, but lost much by trusting the Quality, and bad
+debts among the Gentlemen of the Army. Besides this, I was foolish
+enough to get married to a worthless, drunken fellow, my own countryman,
+who had been Fence Master in the Life-Guards, and he very speedily ate
+me out of House and Home, giving me continual Black Eyes, besides.
+
+"Thus, when the Great War of the Succession broke out, and the English
+army, commanded by the Great Duke of Marlborough, being allied with the
+Imperialists under Prince Eugene, and the forces of their High
+Mightinesses the Dutchmen, went at it Hammer and Tongs about the Spanish
+succession with King Lewis of France, I, who had always been fond of the
+army, resolved to give up pot-walloping and take another turn under
+canvas. It was, however, too late in the day for me to think of again
+taking the part of a bold Grenadier. I had become somewhat of a
+Character, and (my old proficiency with the Sticks remaining by me) had
+earned among the Gentlemen of the Army the cant name of Mother
+Drum--that by which, to my sorrow, I am now known. And as Mother Drum,
+suttler and baggage-wagon woman in the train of the great John
+Churchill, I drank and swore, and sold aquavitĉ, and plundered when I
+could, and was flogged when I was taken in the fact (for the
+Provost-Marshal is no respecter of sex), at Blenheim and Ramilies, and
+Malplaquet and Oudenarde, and throughout those glorious Campaigns of
+which I could talk to you till doomsday. I came back to England at the
+Peace of Utrecht, and set up another Tavern, and married another
+husband, more worthless and more drunken than the first one, and then
+went bankrupt and turned washerwoman, and then got into trouble about a
+gentleman's silver-hilted Rapier, for which I lay long in hold, and was
+sent for five years to the Plantations; and at last here I am, old and
+fat and good for nothing, but to throw to the crows as carrion--Mother
+Drum, God save us all! as bold as brass, and as tough as leather, and
+'the miserablest old 'oman that ever stepped.'"
+
+This last part of her adventures I have not polished up, and they are
+Mother Drum's own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE NINTH.
+
+THE END OF MY ADVENTURES AMONG THE BLACKS.
+
+
+WERE I to give vent to that Garrulity which grows upon us Veterans with
+Gout and the Gravel, and the kindred Ailments of Age, this Account of my
+Life would never reach beyond the record of Boyhood. For from the first
+Flower of my freshest childhood to the time that I became toward the
+more serious Business of the World, I think I could set down Day by Day,
+and well-nigh Hour by Hour, all the things that have occurred to me. How
+is it that I preserve so keen a Remembrance of a little lad's joys and
+sorrows, when I can scarcely recall how many times I have suffered
+Shipwreck in later age, or tell how many Sansfoy Miscreants, caring
+neither for Heaven or man a Point, I have slain? Nay, from what cause
+does it proceed that I, upon whom the broken reliques of my
+Schoolmaster's former Cruelty are yet Green, and who can conjure up all
+the events that bore upon my Running away into Charlwood Chase, even to
+the doggish names of the Blacks, their ribald talk, and the fleering of
+the Women they had about them, find it sore travail to remember what I
+had for dinner yesterday, what friends I conversed with, what Tavern I
+supped at, what news I read in the Gazette? But 'tis the knowledge of
+that overweening Craving to count up the trivial Things of my Youth that
+warns me to use despatch, even if the chronicle of my after doings be
+but a short summary or sketch of so many Perils by Land and Sea. And for
+this manner of the remotest things being the more distinct and dilated
+upon, let me put it to a Man of keen vision, if whirling along a High
+Road in a rapid carriage, he has not marked, first, that the Palings
+and Milestones close by have passed beneath him in a confused and
+jarring swiftness; next, that the Trees, Hedges, &c., of the middle-plan
+(as the limners call it) have moved slower and with more Deliberation,
+yet somewhat Fitfully, and encroaching on each other's outlines; whereas
+the extreme distance in Clouds, Mountains, far-off Hillsides, and the
+like, have seemed remote, indeed, but stationary, clear, and
+unchangeable; so that you could count the fissures in the hoar rocks,
+and the very sheep still feeding on the smooth slopes, even as they fed
+fifty years ago? And who (let his later life have been ever so
+fortunate) does not preferably dwell on that sharp prospect so clearly
+yet so light looming through the Long Avenue of years?
+
+It was not, I will frankly admit, a very righteous beginning to a young
+life to be hail-fellow well-met with a Gang of Deerstealers, and to go
+careering about the King's Forest in quest of Venison which belonged to
+the Crown. Often have I felt remorseful for so having wronged his
+Majesty (whom Heaven preserve for the safety of these distraught
+kingdoms); but what was I, an' it please you, to do? Little Boy Jack was
+just Little Boy Beggar; and for want of proper Training he became Little
+Boy Thief. Not that I ever pilfered aught. I was no Candle-snuffer
+filcher, and, save in the matter of Fat Bucks, the rest of our gang
+were, indeed, passing honest. Part of the Venison we killed (mostly with
+a larger kind of Bird-Bolt, or Arbalist Crossbow, for through fear of
+the keepers we used as little powder and ball as possible) we ate for
+our Sustenance; for rogues must eat and drink as well as other folks.
+The greater portion, however, was discreetly conveyed, in carts covered
+over with garden-stuff, to the market-towns of Uxbridge, Windsor, and
+Reading, and sold, under the coat-tail as we called it, to Higglers who
+were in our secret. Sometimes our Merchandise was taken right into
+London, where we found a good Market with the Fishmongers dwelling about
+Lincoln's Inn, and who, as they did considerable traffic with the
+Nobility and Gentry, of whom they took Park Venison, giving them Fish in
+exchange, were not likely to be suspected of unlawful dealings, or at
+least were able to make a colourable pretext of Honest Trade to such
+Constables and Market Conners who had a right to question them about
+their barterings. From the Fishmongers we took sometimes money and
+sometimes rich apparel--the cast-off clothes, indeed, of the Nobility,
+birthday suits or the like, which were not good enough for the Players
+of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn, forsooth, to strut about in on their
+tragedy-boards, and which they had therefore bestowed upon their
+domestics to sell. For our Blacks loved to quit their bewrayed apparel
+at supper-time, and to dress themselves as bravely as when I first
+tasted their ill-gotten meat at the Stag o' Tyne. From the Higglers too,
+we would as willingly take Wine, Strong Waters, and Tobacco, in exchange
+for our fat and lean, as money; for the Currency of the Realm was then
+most wofully clipped and defaced, and our Brethren had a wholesome
+avoidance of meddling with Bank Bills. When, from time to time, one of
+us ventured to a Market-town, well made-up as a decent Yeoman or
+Merchant's Rider, 'twas always payment on the Nail and in sounding money
+for the reckoning. We ran no scores, and paid in no paper.
+
+It was long ere I found out that the Wagon in which I had travelled from
+the Hercules' Pillars, to be delivered over to Gnawbit, was conducted by
+one of the most trusted Confederates of our Company; that he took
+Venison to town for them, and brought them back the Account in specie or
+needments as they required. And although I am loth to think that the
+pretty Servant Maid was altogether deceiving me when she told me she was
+going to see her Grandmother, I fancy that she knew Charlwood Chase, and
+the gentry that inhabited it, as well as she knew the Pewterer in Panyer
+Alley. He went a-pewtering no more, if ever he had been 'prentice or
+done journeywork for that trade, but was neither more nor less than one
+of the Blacks, and Mistress Slyboots, his Flame, kept him company.
+Although I hope, I am sure, that they were Married by the Chaplain; for,
+rough as I am, I had ever a Hatred of Unlawful Passions, and when I am
+summoned on a Jury, always listen to the King's Proclamation against
+Vice and Immorality with much gusto and savour.
+
+I stayed with the Blacks in Charlwood Chase until I grew to be a sturdy
+lad of twelve years of age. I went out with them and followed their
+naughty courses, and have stricken down many a fat Buck in my time. Ours
+was the most jovial but the most perilous of lives. The Keepers were
+always on our track; and sometimes the Sheriff would call out the Posse
+Comitatis, and he and half the beef-fed tenant-farmers of the
+country-side would come horsing and hoofing it about the glades to catch
+us. For weeks together in each year we dared not keep our rendezvous at
+the Stag, but were fain to hide in Brakes and Hollow Trees, listening to
+the pursuit as it grew hot and heavy around us; and often with no better
+Victuals than Pig's-meat and Ditch-water. But then the search would
+begin to lag; and two or three of the great Squires round about being
+well terrified by letters written in a liquid designed to counterfeit
+Blood, with a great Skull and Cross-bones scrawled at the bottom, the
+whole signed "Captain Night," and telling them that if they dared to
+meddle with the Blacks their Lives should pay for it, we were left quiet
+for a season, and could return to our Haunt, there to feast and carouse
+according to custom. Nor am I slow to believe that some of the tolerance
+we met with was due to our being known to the County Gentry as stanch
+Tories, and as stanch detesters of the House of Hanover (I speak, of
+course, of my companions, for I was of years too tender to have any
+politics). We never killed a Deer but on the nearest tree some one of us
+out with his Jack-knife and carved on the bark of it, "Slain by King
+James's order;" or, if there were no time for so long a legend, or the
+Beast was stricken in the Open, a simple K. J. (which the Hanover Rats
+understood well enough, whether cut in the trunk or the turf) sufficed.
+The Country Gentlemen were then of a very furious way of thinking
+concerning the rights of the present Illustrious House to the Throne;
+but Times do alter, and so likewise do Men's Thoughts and Opinions, and
+I dare swear there is no Brunswicker or Church of England man more leal
+at this present writing than John Dangerous.
+
+Captain Night, to whom I was a kind of Page or Henchman, used me with
+much tenderness. Whenever at supper the tongues grew too loosened, and
+wild talk, and of the wickedese, began to jingle among the bottles and
+glasses, he would bid me Withdraw, and go keep company for a time with
+Mistress Slyboots. Captain Night was a man of parts and even of letters;
+and I often wondered why he, who seemed so well fitted to Shine even
+among the Great, should pass his time among Rogues, and take the thing
+that was not his. He was often absent from us for many days, sometimes
+for nigh a month; and would return sunburnt and travel-stained, as
+though he had been journeying in Foreign Parts. He was always very
+thoughtful and reserved after these Gaddings about; and Mistress
+Slyboots, the Maid, used to say that he was in Love, and had been
+playing the gallant to some fine Madam. But I thought otherwise: for at
+this season it was his custom to bring back a Valise full to the very
+brim of letters and papers, the which he would take Days to read and
+re-read, noting and seemingly copying some, but burning the greater
+portion. At this season he would refrain from joining the Gang, and
+honourably forswore his share of their plunder, always giving Mother
+Drum a broad piece for each night's Supper, Bottle, and Bed. But when
+his pressing business was over, no man was keener in the chase, or
+brought down the quarry so skilfully as Captain Night. He loved to have
+me with him, to talk to and Question me; and it was one day, after I had
+told him that the Initial letter D was the only clue to my Grandmother's
+name, which I had seen graven on her Coffin-plate, he must needs tell me
+that if she were Madam (or rather Lady) D----, I must needs, as a
+Kinsman, be D---- too, and that he would piece out the name, and call me
+Dangerous. So that I was Little Boy Jack no more, and John Dangerous I
+have been from that day to this. Not but what my Ancestry and Belongings
+might warrant me in assuming another title, than which--so far as
+lineage counts--Bourbon or Nassau could not rank much higher. But the
+name of Dangerous has pleased me alway; it has stood me in stead in many
+a hard pass, and I am content to abide by it now that my locks are gray,
+and the walls of this my battered old tenement are crumbling into
+decay.
+
+'Twas I alone that was privileged to stay with Captain Night when he was
+doing Secretary's work among his papers; for, save when Mistress
+Slyboots came up to him--discreetly tapping at the door first, you may
+be sure--with a cup of ale and a toast, he would abide no other company.
+And on such days I wore not my Black Disguisement, but the better
+clothes he had provided for me,--a little Riding Suit of red drugget,
+silver-laced, and a cock to my hat like a Military Officer,--and felt
+myself as grand as you please. I never dared speak to him until he spoke
+to me; but used to sit quietly enough sharpening bolts or twisting
+bowstrings, or cleaning his Pistols, or furbishing up his Hanger and
+Belt, or suchlike boyish pastime-labour. He was careful to burn every
+paper that he Discarded after taking it from the Valise; but once, and
+once only, a scrap remained unconsumed on the hearth, the which, with my
+ape-like curiosity of half-a-score summers, I must needs spell over,
+although I got small good therefrom. 'Twas but the top of a letter, and
+all the writing I could make out ran,
+
+                                     "St. Germains, August the twelfth.
+
+"MY DEAR" ...
+
+and here it broke off, and baffled me.
+
+Whenever Captain Night went a hunting, I attended upon him; but when he
+was away, I was confided to the care of Jowler, who, albeit much given
+to babble in his liquor, was about the most discreet (the Chaplain
+always excepted) among the Gang. In the dead season, when Venison was
+not to be had, or was nothing worth for the Market if it had been
+killed, we lived mostly on dried meats and cured salmon; the first
+prepared by Mother Drum and her maid, the last furnished us by our good
+friends and Chapmen the Fishmongers about Lincoln's Inn. And during this
+same Dead Season, I am glad to say that my Master did not suffer me to
+remain idle; but, besides taking some pains in tutoring me himself,
+moved our Chaplain, all of whose humane letters had not been washed out
+by burnt Brandy or fumed out by Tobacco (to the use of which he was
+immoderately given), to put me through a course of daily instruction. I
+had had some Latin beaten into me by Gnawbit, when he had nothing of
+more moment to bestir himself about, and had attained a decent
+proficiency in reading and writing. Under the Chaplain of the Blacks,
+who swore at me grievously, but never, under the direst forbidding, laid
+finger on me, I became a current scholar enough of my own tongue, with
+just such a little smattering of the Latin as helped me at a pinch in
+some of the Secret Dealings of my later career. But Salt Water has done
+its work upon my Lily's Grammar; and although I yield to no man in the
+Faculty of saying what I mean, ay, and of writing it down in good plain
+English ('tis true that of your nominatives and genitives and stuff, I
+know nothing), I question if I could tell you the Latin for a pair of
+riding-boots.
+
+There was a paltry parcel of books at the Stag o' Tyne, and these I read
+over and over again at my leisure. There was a History of the
+Persecutions undergone by the Quakers, and Bishop Sprat's Narrative of
+the Conspiracy of Blackhead and the others against him. There was Foxe's
+Martyrs, and God's Revenge against Murder (a very grim tome), and Mr.
+Daniel Defoe's Life of Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack. These, with two
+or three Play-books, and a Novel of Mrs. Aphra Behn (very scurrilous), a
+few Ballads, and some ridiculous Chap-books about Knights and Fairies
+and Dragons, made up the tattered and torn library of our house in
+Charlwood Chase. 'Twas good enough, you may say, for a nest of
+Deerstealers. Well, there might have been a worse one; but these, I can
+aver, with English and Foreign newspapers and letters, and my Bible in
+later life, have been all the reading that John Dangerous can boast of.
+Which makes me so mad against your fine Scholars and Scribblers, who,
+because they can turn verse and make Te-to-tum into Greek, must needs
+sneer at me at the Coffee House, and make a butt of an honest man who
+has been from one end of the world to the other, and has fought his way
+through it to Fortune and Honour.
+
+I was in the twelfth year of my age, when a great change overtook me in
+my career. Moved, as it would seem, to exceeding Anger and implacable
+Disgust by the carryings-on of Captain Night and his merry men in
+Charlwood Chase, the King's Ministers put forth a Proclamation against
+us, promising heavy Blood Money to any who would deliver us, or any one
+member of the Gang, into the hands of Authority. This Proclamation came
+at first to little. There was no sending a troop of horse into the
+Chase, and the husbandmen of the country-side were too good Friends of
+ours to play the Judas. We were not Highway Robbers. Not one of our band
+had ever taken to or been taken from the Road. Rascals of the Cartouche
+and Macheath kidney we Disdained. We were neither Foot-pads nor
+Cut-purses, nay, nor Smugglers nor Rick-burners. We were only
+Unfortunate Gentlemen, who much did need, and who had suffered much for
+our politics and our religion, and had no other means of earning a
+livelihood than by killing the King's Deer. Those peasants whom we came
+across Feared us, indeed, as they would the very Fiend, but bore us no
+malice; for we always treated them with civility, and not rarely gave
+them the Umbles and other inferior parts of the Deer, against their poor
+Christenings and Lyings-in. And through these means, and some small
+money presents our Captain would make to their wives and callow brats,
+it came to pass that Mother Drum had seldom cause to brew aught but the
+smallest beer, for morning Drinking; for though we had to pay for our
+Wine and Ardent Drinks, the cellar of the Stag o' Tyne was always
+handsomely furnished with barrels of strong ale, which Lobbin Clout or
+Colin Mayfly, the Hind or the Plough-churl, would bring us secretly by
+night in their Wains for gratitude. I know not where they got the malt
+from, but there was narrow a fault to find with the Brew. I recollect
+its savour now with a sweet tooth, condemned as I am to the inky
+Hog's-wash which the Londoners call Porter; and indeed it is fit for
+Porters to drink, but not for Gentlemen. These Peasants used to tremble
+all over with terror when they came to the Stag o' Tyne; but they were
+always hospitably made welcome, and sent away with full gizzards, ay,
+and with full heads too, and by potions to which the louts were but
+little used.
+
+We had no fear of treachery from these Chawbacons, but we had Enemies in
+the Chase nevertheless. Here dwelt a vagabond tribe of Bastard Verderers
+and Charcoal-burners, savage, ignorant, brutish Wretches, as
+superstitious as the Manilla Creoles. They were one-half gipsies, and
+one half, or perhaps a quarter, trade-fallen whippers-in and keepers
+that had been stripped of their livery. They picked up their sorry crust
+by burning of charcoal, and carting of dead wood to farmers for to
+consume in their ingles. Now and again, when any of the Quality came to
+hunt in the Chase, the Head Keeper would make use of a score or so of
+them as beaters and rabble-prickers of the game; but nine months out of
+the twelve they rather starved than lived. These Charcoal-burners hated
+us Blacks, first, because in our sable disguise we rather imitated their
+own Beastly appearance--for the varlets never washed from Candlemas to
+Shrovetide; next, because we were Gentlemen; and lastly, because we
+would not suffer them to catch Deer for themselves in pitfalls and
+springes. Nay, a True Gentleman Black meeting a "Coaley," as we called
+the charcoal fellows, with so much as a hare, a rabbit, or a pheasant
+with him, let alone venison, would ofttimes give him a sackful of sore
+bones to carry as well as a game-bag. No "Coaley" was ever let to slake
+his thirst at the Stag o' Tyne. The poor wretches had a miserable hovel
+of an inn to their own part on the western outskirts of the Chase, a
+place by the sign of the Hand and Hatchet, where they ate their
+rye-bread and drank their sour Clink, when they could muster coppers
+enough for a twopenny carouse.
+
+This Proclamation, of which at first we made light, was speedily
+followed by a real live Act of Parliament, which is yet, I have been
+told, Law, and is known as the "Black Act."[M] The most dreadful
+punishments were denounced against us by the Houses of Lords and
+Commons, and the Blood Money was doubled. One of the most noted
+Thief-takers of that day--almost as great a one as Jonathan Wild--comes
+down post, and sets up his Standard at Reading, as though he had been
+King William on the banks of the Boyne. With him he brings a mangy Rout
+of Constables and Bailiff's Followers, and other kennel-ranging
+vagabonds; and now nothing must serve him but to beg of the Commanding
+Officer at Windsor (my Lord Treherne) for a loan of two companies of the
+Foot Guards, who, nothing loth for field-sport and extra pay, were
+placed, with their captain and all--more shame for a Gentleman to mix in
+such Hangman's work!--under Mr. Thief-taker's orders. He and his
+Bandogs, ay, and his Grenadiers, might have hunted us through Charlwood
+Chase until Doomsday but for the treachery of the "Coaleys." 'Twas one
+of their number,--named, or rather nicknamed, "the Beau," because he
+washed his face on Sunday, and was therefore held to be of the first
+fashion,--who earned eighty pounds by revealing the hour when the whole
+Gang of Blacks might be pounced upon at the Stag o' Tyne. The infamous
+wretch goes to Aylesbury,--for our part of the Chase was in the county
+of Bucks,--and my Thief-taking gentleman from Reading meets him--a
+pretty couple; and he makes oath before Mr. Justice Cribfee (who should
+have set him in the Stocks, or delivered him over to the Beadle for a
+vagrant); and after a fine to-do of Sheriff's business and swearing in
+of special constables, the end of it was, that a whole Rout of them,
+Sheriff, Javelin-men, and Headboroughs and all, with the Grenadiers at
+their back, came upon us unawares one moonlight night as we were merrily
+supping at the Stag.
+
+'Twas no use showing Fight perhaps, for we were undermanned, some of us
+being away on the scent, for we suspected some foul play. The constables
+and other clod-hopping Alguazils were all armed to the teeth with Bills
+and Blunderbusses, Pistols and Hangers; but had they worn all the
+weapons in the Horse Armoury in the Tower, it would not have saved them
+from shivering in their shoes when "Hard and sharp" was the word, and
+an encounter with the terrible Blacks had to be endured. We should have
+made mince-meat of them all, and perhaps hanged up one or two of them
+outside the inn as an extra signpost. But we were not only unarmed, we
+were overmatched, my hearties. There were the Redcoats, burn them! How
+many times in my life have I been foiled and baffled by those miscreated
+men-machines in scarlet blanketing! No use in a stout Heart, no use in a
+strong Hand, no use in a sharp Sword, or a pair of barkers with teeth
+that never fail, when you have to do with a Soldier. Do! What are you to
+do with him? There he is, with his shaven face and his hair powdered, as
+if he were going to a fourpenny fandango at Bagnigge Wells. There he is,
+as obstinate as a Pig, and as firm as a Rock, with his confounded bright
+firelock, bayonet, and crossbelts. There he is, immoveable and
+unconquerable, defying the boldest of Smugglers, the bravest of
+Gentlemen Rovers, and, by the Lord Harry, _he eats you up_. Always give
+the Redcoats a wide berth, my dear, and the Grenadiers more than all.
+
+Unequal as were the odds, with all these Roaring Dragons in scarlet
+baize on our trail, we had still a most desperate fight for it. While
+the mob of Constables kept cowering in the bar-room down-stairs, crying
+out to us to surrender in the King's name,--I believe that one poor
+creature, the Justice of Peace, after getting himself well walled up in
+a corner with chairs and tables, began to quaver out the King's
+Proclamation against the Blacks,--the plaguy Soldiers came blundering up
+both pair of stairs, and fell upon us Billy Boys tooth and nail. 'Slid!
+my blood simmers when I think of it. Over went the tables and settles!
+Smash went trenchers and cups and glasses! Clink-a-clink went
+sword-blades and bayonets! "And don't fire, my lads!" cries out the
+Soldier-officer to his Grannies. "We want all these rogues to hang up at
+Aylesbury Gaol."
+
+"Rogue yourself, and back to your Mother!" cries Captain Night, very
+pale; but I never saw him look Bolder or Handsomer. "Rogue in your
+Tripes, you Hanover Rat!" and he shortens his sword and rushes on the
+Soldier-officer.
+
+The Grenadier Captain was brave enough, but he was but a smockfaced lad
+fresh from the Mall and St. James's Guard-room, and he had no chance
+against a steady practised Swordsman and Forest Blood, as Captain Night
+was. We all thought he would make short work of the Soldier-officer. He
+had him in a corner, and the Chaplain, a-top of whom was a Grenadier
+trying to throttle or capture him, or both, exclaims, "Give him the
+grace-blow, my dear; give it him under the fifth rib!" when Captain
+Night cries, "Go home to your mother, Milksop!" and he catches his own
+sword by the hilt, hits his Enemy a blow on the right wrist enough to
+numb it for a month, twists his fingers in his cravat, flings him on one
+side, and right into the middle of a punch-bowl, and then, upon my word,
+he himself jumps out of Window, shouting out, "Follow me, little Jack
+Dangerous!"
+
+I wished for nothing better, and had already my leg on the sill, when
+two great hulking Grenadiers seized hold of me. 'Twas then, for the
+first time, that I earned a just claim and title to the name of
+Dangerous; for a little dirk I was armed with being wrested from me by
+Soldier number one, who eggs on his comrade to collar the young Fox-cub,
+as he calls me, I seize a heavy Stone Demijohn fall of brandy, and smash
+it goes on the head of Soldier number two. He falls with a dismal groan,
+the blood and brandy running in equal measure from his head, and the
+first Soldier runs his bayonet through me.
+
+Luckily, 'twas but a flesh-wound in the flank, and no vital part was
+touched. It was enough for me, however, poor Urchin,--enough to make me
+tumble down in a dead faint; and when I came to myself, I found that I
+had been removed to the bar-room down-stairs, where I made one of
+nineteen Blacks, all prisoners to the King for stealing his Deer, and
+all bound hand and foot with Ropes.
+
+"Never mind their hurting your wrists, young Hempseed," chuckled one of
+the scaldpated constable rogues who was guarding us. "You'll have enough
+to tighten your gullet after 'Sizes, as sure as eggs is eggs."
+
+"Nay, brother Grimstock, the elf's too young to be hanged," puts in
+another constable, with somewhat of a charitable visage.
+
+"Too young!" echoes he addressed as Grimstock. "'Twas bred in the bone
+in him, the varmint, and the Gallows Fever will come out in the flesh.
+Too young! he was weaned on rue, and rode between his Father's legs
+(that swung) i' the cart to Tyburn, and never sailed a cockboat but in
+Execution Dock. My tobacco-box to a tester an' he dance not on nothing
+if he comes to holding up his hand before Judge Blackcap, that never
+spared but one in the Calendar, and then 'twas by Mistake."
+
+These were not very comfortable news for me, poor manacled wretch; and
+with a great bayonet-wound in my side to boot, that had been but
+clumsily dressed by a village Leech, who was, I suspect, a Farrier and
+Cow Doctor as well. But I have always found, in this life's whirligig,
+that when your Case is at the worst (unless a Man indeed Dies, when
+there is nothing more to be done), it is pretty sure to mend, if you lie
+quiet and let things take their chance. I could not be much worse off
+than I was, wounded and friendless, and a captive; and so I held my
+tongue, and let them use me as they would. Some scant comfort was it,
+however, to find, when the battle-field was gone over, that, besides the
+Grenadier whose crown I had cracked, another had been pistolled by
+Jowler, and and lay mortally wounded, and Groaning Dismally. Poor Jowler
+himself would never pistol Foe more. He was dead; for the Men of War,
+furious at our desperate Resistance, at the worsting of their
+fine-feathered officer (who was mumbling of his bruised hand as a
+down-trodden Hound would its paw, and cursing meanwhile, which Dogs use
+not to do), and driven to Mad Rage by the escape of Captain Night, had
+fired pell-mell into a Group of which Jowler made one, and so killed
+him. A bullet through his brain set him clean quit of all indictments
+under the Black Act, before our Sovereign Lord the King. Likewise was it
+a matter of rejoicing for our party that, after long seeking the Traitor
+Coaley, the wretched "Beau" was found duly strangled, and completely a
+corpse on the staircase. There was something curious about the manner of
+justice coming to this villain. The Deed had been done with no weapon
+more Lethal than an old Stocking; yet so tightly was it tied round his
+false neck, that it had to be cut off piecemeal, and even then the ribs
+of the worsted were found to be Imbedded, and to have made Furrows in
+his flesh. Now it is certain that we Blacks had not laid about us with
+old Wives' hose, any more than we had lunged at our enemies with
+knitting-needles. There, however, was Monsieur Judas, as dead as a
+Dolphin two hours on deck. Lord, what an ugly countenance had the losel
+when they came to wash the charcoal off him! As to who had forestalled
+the Hangman in his office, no certain testimony could be given. I have
+always found at Sea, when any doubts arise as to the why and the
+wherefore of a gentleman's death, that the best way to settle accounts
+is to fling him overboard; but on dry land your plaguy Dead Body is a
+sore Stumbling Block, and Impediment, always turning up when it is not
+Wanted, and bringing other Gentlemen into all kinds of trouble.
+Crowner's Quest was held on the "Beau;" and I only wonder that they did
+not bring it in murder against Me. The jury sat a long time without
+making up their minds, till the Parish constable ordered them in a bowl
+of Flip, upon which they proceeded to bring in a verdict of Wilful
+Murder against some person or persons unknown. I can scarcely, to this
+day, bring myself to suspect my pretty maid, that should have married
+the Pewterer, of such a bold Act, and the rather believe that it was the
+girl Grip and her Mistress that worked off the Spy and Traitor between
+them. Not that Mother Drum would have needed any assistance in the mere
+doing of the thing. She was a Mutton-fisted woman, and as strong in the
+forearm as a Bridewell correctioner.
+
+Oh, the dreary journey we made that morning to Aylesbury! The Men Blacks
+were tied back to back, and thrown into such carts as could be pressed
+into the service from the farmsteads on the skirts of the Chase. One of
+the constables must needs offer, the Scoundrel, to take horse and go
+borrow a cartload of fetters from the gaoler at Reading; but he was
+overruled, and Ropes were thought strong enough to confine us. There was
+no chance, alas! of any rescue; for those of our comrades who had been
+fortunate enough through absence to avoid capture, had doubtless by this
+time scent of the Soldiers, and there was no kicking against those
+bright Firelocks and Bayonets. Yet had there been another escape. Cicely
+Grip and Mother Drum were taken, but the pretty maid I loved so for her
+kindness to me when I was Forlorn had shown a clean pair of heels, and
+was nowhere to be found. Good luck to her, I thought. Perchance she has
+met with Captain Night, and they are Safe and Sound by this time, and
+off to Foreign Parts. For in all this I declare I saw nothing Wrong, and
+held, in my baby logic, that we Blacks had all been very harshly
+entreated by the Constables and Redcoats, and that it was a shame to use
+us so. Mother Drum, the Wench, and my poor wounded Self, were put into
+one cart together, and through Humanity, a Sergeant (for the Constables
+would not have done it) bade his men litter down some straw for us to
+lie upon. There was a ragged Tilt too over the cart; and thinks I, in a
+Gruesome manner, "The first time you rode on straw under a Tilt, Jack,
+you were going to school, and now, 'ifegs, you are going to be Hanged."
+For it was settled on all sides, and even he with the Charitable
+Countenance came to be of that mind at last, that my fate was to die by
+the Cord.
+
+"Why," says one, "you've half-brained Corporal Foss with the Demijohn;
+never did liquor get into a pretty man's head so soon and so deep.
+They'll stretch your neck for this, my poult,--they will."
+
+The Sergeant interposing, said that perhaps, if interest were made for
+me, I might be spared an Indictment, and let to go and serve the King as
+a Drummer till I was old enough to carry a firelock. But at this the
+soldiers shook their heads; for Captain Poppingjay, their officer, was,
+it seems, still in a towering rage at having had his fine-lady's hand so
+wofully mauled by Captain Night, and vowed vengeance against the whole
+crew of poachers and their whelp, as he must needs be Polite enough to
+call me.
+
+This Fine Gentleman had been provided with a Horse by the Sheriff, and,
+as he rode by the cart where I and Drum and the Girl were jogging on, he
+spies me under the Tilt, and in his cruel manner makes a cut at me with
+his riding wand, calling me a young spawn of Thievery and Rebellion.
+
+"You coward," I cried in a passion; "you daren't a' done that if my
+hands were loose, and I hadn't this baggonet-wound in me."
+
+"Shame to hit the boy," growled the charitable Constable, who was on
+horseback too.
+
+The Soldier-officer turned round quickly to see who had spoken; but the
+Sergeant, who watched him, pointed with his halbert to the Constable,
+and he returned the Captain's glance with a sturdy mien. So my Fine
+Gentleman reins in his beast and lets us pass, eyeing his hand, which
+was all wrapped up in Bandages, and muttering that it was well none of
+his own fellows had given him this sauciness.
+
+The day was a dreadful one. How many times our train halted to bait I
+know not; but this I know, that I fainted often from Agony of my wound
+and the uneasy motion of my carriage. It is a wonder that I ever came to
+my journey's end alive, and in all likelihood never should, but for the
+unceasing care and solicitude of the two poor women who were with me,
+Prisoners like myself, but full of merciful kindness for one who was in
+a sorer strait than they. By earnest pleading did Mother Drum persuade
+the Head Constable--who, the nearer we got to gaol the more authority he
+took, and the less he seemed to think of our soldier escort--to allow
+her hands to be unbound that she might minister unto me; and also did
+she obtain so much grace as for some of the Money belonging unto her,
+and which had been seized at the Stag o' Tyne, to be spent in buying of
+a bottle of brandy at one of our halting-places, with which she not only
+comforted herself and her afflicted Maid, but, mingling it with water,
+cooled my parched tongue and bathed my forehead.
+
+Brandy was the only medicament this good soul knew; and more lives she
+averred, had been saved by Right Nantz than lost by bad B. W.; but still
+brandy was not precisely the kind of physic to give a Patient who before
+Sundown was in a Raging Fever. But 'twas all one to the Law; and coming
+at last to my journey's end, we were all, the wounded and the whole,
+flung into Gaol to answer for it at the 'Sizes.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[M] See the Statutes at Large. The Black Act was repealed mainly
+through the exertions of Sir James Macintosh, early in the present
+century. Under its clauses the going about "disguised or blackened in
+pursuit of game" was made felony without benefit of clergy; the
+punishment thereof death.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TENTH.
+
+I AM VERY NEAR BEING HANGED.
+
+
+OUR prison was surely the most loathsome hole that Human beings were
+ever immured in. It was a Horrible and Shameful Place, conspicuous for
+such even in those days, when every prison was a place of Horror and
+Shame. 'Twas one of the King's Prisons,--one of His Majesty's
+Gaols,--the county had nothing to do with it; and the Keeper thereof was
+a Woman. Say a Tigress rather; but Mrs. Macphilader wore a hoop and
+lappets and gold ear-rings, and was dubbed "Madam" by her Underlings.
+Here you might at any time have seen poor Wretches chained to the floor
+of reeking dungeons, their arms, legs, necks even, laden with irons,
+themselves abused, beaten, jeered at, drenched with pailfuls of foul
+water, and more than three-quarter starved, merely for not being able to
+pay Garnish to the Gaoleress, or comply with other her exorbitant
+demands. Fetters, indeed, were common and Fashionable Wear in the Gaol.
+'Twas pleaded that the walls of the prison were so rotten through age,
+and the means of guarding the prisoners--for they could not be always
+calling in the Grenadiers--so limited, that they must needs put the poor
+creatures in the bilboes, or run the chance of their escaping every day
+in the week. Thus it came to pass, even, that they were tried in
+Fetters, and sometimes could not hold up their hands (weakened besides
+by the Gaol Distemper), at the bidding of the Clerk of the Arraigns, for
+the weight of the Manacles that were upon them. And it is to the famous
+and admirable Mr. John Howard that we owe the putting down of this last
+Abomination.
+
+We lay so long in this dreadful place before a Gaol Delivery was made,
+that my wound, bad as it was, had ample time to heal, leaving only a
+great indented cicatrix, as though some Giant had forced his finger into
+my flesh, and of which I shall never be rid. Two more of our gang died
+of the Gaol Fever before Assize time; one was so fortunate as to break
+prison, file the irons off his legs, and get clear away; and another
+(who was always of a Melancholy turn) hanged himself one morning, in a
+halter made from strips of his blanket knotted together. The rest of us
+were knocked about by the Turnkeys, or abused by the Gaoleress, Mrs.
+Macphilader, pretty much as they liked. We were, however, not so badly
+off as some of the poor prisoners--sheep-stealers, footpads, vagrom men
+and women, and the like, or even as some of the poor Debtors--many of
+whom lay here incarcerate years after they had discharged the Demands of
+their Creditors against them, and only because they could not pay their
+Fees. We Blacks were always well supplied with money; and money could
+purchase almost any thing in a prison in those days. Roast meats, and
+wine and beer and punch, pipes and tobacco, and playing cards and
+song-books,--all these were to be had by Gentlemen Prisoners; the
+Gaoleress taking a heavy toll, and making a mighty profit from all these
+luxurious things. But there was one thing that money could not buy,
+namely, cleanly lodging; for the State Room, a hole of a place, very
+meanly furnished, where your great Smugglers or ruffling Highwaymen were
+sometimes lodged, at a guinea a day for their accommodation, was only so
+much better from the common room in so far as the prisoner had bed and
+board to himself; but for nastiness and creeping things--which I wonder,
+so numerous were they, did not crawl away with the whole prison bodily:
+but 'tis hard to find those that are unanimous, even vermin.--For all
+that made the Gaol most thoroughly hateful and dreadful, there was not a
+pin to choose between the State Room, the Common Side, and the Rat's
+Larder, Clink, or Dark Dungeon, where the Poor were confined in
+wantonness, and the Stubborn were kept sometimes for punishment; for
+Madam Gaoleress had a will of her own, and would brook no incivilities
+from her Lodgers; so sure is it, that falling out one day on the
+disputed Question of a bottle of Aquavitĉ on which toll had not been
+paid, she calls one of the Turnkeys and bids him clap Mother Drum into
+the Stocks (that stood in the Prison Yard) for an hour or two, for the
+cooling of her temper. But this had just the contrary effect; for the
+whilom Hostess of the Stag o' Tyne, enraged at the Indignity offered to
+her, did so bemaul and bewray Madam Macphilader with her tongue, shaking
+her fist at her meanwhile, that the Gaoleress in a fury clawed at least
+two handfuls of M. Drum's hair from her head, not without getting some
+smart clapperclawing in the face; whereupon she cries out "Murther" and
+"Mutiny" and "Prisonrupt," and sends post-haste for Justice Palmworm,
+her gossip indeed, and one of those trading magistrates that so
+disgraced our bench before Mr. Henry Fielding the writer stirred up
+Authority to put some order therein. The Justice comes; and he and the
+Gaoleress, after cracking a bottle of mulled port between them, poor
+Mother Drum was brought up before his Worship for mutinous conduct. The
+Justice would willingly have compounded the case, for Lucre was his only
+love; but 'twas vengeance the Gaoleress hankered after; and the end of
+it was that poor Mother Drum was triced up at the post that was by the
+Stocks, and had a dozen and a half from a cat with indeed but three
+tails, but that, I warrant, hurt pretty nigh as sharply as nine would
+have done in weaker hands; for 'twas the Gaoleress that played the
+Beadle and laid on the Scourge.
+
+At length, when I was quite tired out, and, knowing nothing of the
+course of Law, began to think that we were doomed to perpetual
+Imprisonment, His Majesty's Judges of Assize came upon their circuit,
+and those whom the Fever and Want and the Duresse of their Keeper had
+spared were put upon their trial. By this time I was thought well
+enough, though as gaunt as a Hound, to be put in the same Gaol-bird's
+trim as my companions; so a pair of Woman's fetters--ay, my friends, the
+women wore fetters in those days--were put upon me; and the whole of us,
+all shackled as we were, found ourselves, one fine Monday morning, in
+the Dock, having been driven thereinto very much after the fashion of a
+flock of sheep. The Court was crowded, for the case against the Blacks
+had made a prodigious stir; and the King's Attorney, the most furious
+Person for talking a Fellow-creature's Life away that ever I remember to
+have seen or heard, came down especially from London to prosecute us.
+Neither he nor His Lordship the Judge, in his charge to the Grand Jury,
+had any but the worst of words to give us; and folks began to say that
+this would be another Bloody Assize; that the Shire Hall had need to be
+hung with scarlet, as when Jeffreys was on the bench; and that as short
+work would be made of us as of the Rebels in the West. And I did not
+much care, for I was sick of lying in hold, amidst Evil Odours, and with
+a green wound. It came even to whispering that one of us at least would
+be made a Gibbeting-in-chains example for killing the Grenadier, if that
+Act could be fixed on any particular Black. And half in jest, half in
+earnest, the Woman-Keeper told me on the morning of the Assizes that,
+young as I was (not yet twelve years of age), my bones might rattle in a
+birdcage in the midst of Charlwood Chase; for if I could brain one
+Grenadier, I could kill another. But yet, being so weary of the Life, I
+did not much Care.
+
+It was still somewhat of a Relief to me to come into the Dock, and look
+upon State and Rich Clothes (in which I have always taken a
+Gentleman-like pleasure), in the stead of all the dirt and squalor which
+for so long had been my surrounding. There were the Judges all ranged, a
+Terrible show, in their brave Scarlet Robes and Fur Tippets, with great
+monstrous Wigs, and the King's Arms behind them under a Canopy, done in
+Carver's work, gilt. They frowned on us dreadfully when we came trooping
+into the Dock, bringing all manner of Deadly pestilential Fumes with us
+from the Gaol yonder, and which not all the rue, rosemary, and marjoram
+strewn on the Dock-ledge, nor the hot vinegar sprinkled about the Court,
+could mitigate. The middle Judge, who was old, and had a split lip and a
+fang protruding from it, shook his head at me, and put on such an Awful
+face, that for a moment my scared thoughts went back to the Clergyman at
+St. George's, Hanover Square, that was wont to be so angry with me in
+his Sermons. Ah, how different was the lamentable Hole in the which I
+now found myself cheek by jowl with Felons and Caravats, to the great
+red-baize Pew in which I had sat so often a Little Gentleman! He to the
+right of the middle Judge was a very sleepy gentleman, and scarcely ever
+woke up during the proceedings, save once towards one of the clock,
+when he turned to his Lordship (whom I had at once set down as Mr.
+Justice Blackcap, and was in truth that Dread Functionary), saying,
+"Brother, is it dinner-time?" But his Lordship to the left, who had an
+old white face like a sheep, and his wig all awry, was of a more
+placable demeanour, and looked at me, poor luckless Outcast, with some
+interest. I saw him turn his head and whisper to the gentleman they told
+me was the High Sheriff, and who sat on the Bench alongside the Judges,
+very fine, in a robe and gold chain, and with a great sheathed sword
+behind him, resting on a silver goblet. Then the High Sheriff took to
+reading over the Calendar, and shrugged his shoulders, whereupon I
+indulged in some Hope. Then he leans over to Mr. Clerk of the Arraigns,
+pointing me out, and seemingly asking him some question about me; but
+that gentleman hands him up a couple of parchments, and my quick Ear
+(for the Court was but small) caught the words, "There are two
+Indictments against him, Sir John." Whereupon they looked at me no more,
+save with a Stern and Sorrowful Gravity; and the Hope I had nourished
+for a moment departed from me. Yet then, as afterwards, and as now, I
+found (although then too babyish to reason about it), that, bad as we
+say the World is, it is difficult to come upon Three Men together in it
+but that one is Good and Merciful.
+
+I feel that my disclaimer notwithstanding the Bark of my Narrative is
+running down the stream of a Garrulous talkativeness; but I shall be
+more brief anon. And what would you have? If there be any circumstances
+which should entitle a man to give chapter and verse, they must surely
+be those under which he was Tried for his Life.
+
+The first day we only held up our hands, and heard the Indictment
+against us read. Some of us who were Moneyed had retained Counsellors
+from London to cross-question the witnesses; for to speak to the Jury
+in aid of Prisoners, who could not often speak for themselves, the
+Gentlemen of the Law were not then permitted. And this I have ever held
+to be a crying Injustice. There was no one, however, not so much as a
+Pettifogger, to lift tongue, or pen, or finger, to save little Jack
+Dangerous from the Rope. My Protector, Captain Night, was at large;
+Jowler, my first friend among the Blacks, was dead; and, as Misery is
+apt to make men Selfish, the rest of my companions had entirely
+forgotten how friendless and deserted I was. But, just as we were going
+back to Gaol, up comes to the spikes of the Dock a gentleman with a red
+face, and a vast bushy powdered wig, like a cauliflower in curls. He
+wore a silk cassock and sash, and was the Ordinary; but he had
+forgotten, I think, to come into the Prison and read prayers to us. He
+kept those ministrations against such time as the Cart was ready, and
+the Tree decked with its hempen garland. This gentlemen beckons me, and
+asks if I have any Counsellor. I told him, No; and that I had no
+Friends ayont Mother Drum, and she was laid up, sick of a pair of sore
+shoulders. He goes back to the Bench and confers with the Gentlemen, and
+by and by the Clerk of the Arraigns calls out that, through the Humanity
+of the Sheriff, the prisoner John Dangerous was to have Counsel Assigned
+to him. But it would have been more Humane, I think, to have let the
+Court and the World know that I was a poor neglected Castaway, knowing
+scarcely my right Hand from my left, and that all I had done had been in
+that Blindfoldedness of Ignorance which can scarcely, I trust, be called
+Sin.
+
+Back, however, we went to Gaol, and a great Rout there was made that
+night by Mrs. Macphilader for the payment of all arrears of Fees and
+Garnish to her; for, you see, being a prudent Woman, she feared lest
+some of the prisoners should be Acquitted, or Discharged on
+proclamation. And our Gang of Blacks, for whose aid their friends in
+ambush--and they had friends in all kinds of holes and corners, as I
+afterwards discovered to my surprise--had mostly bountifully come
+forward, did not trouble themselves much about the peril they were in,
+but bestowed themselves of making a Roaring Night. And hindered by none
+in Authority,--for the Gaolers and Turnkeys in those days were not above
+drinking, and smoking, and singing, and dicing with their charges,--they
+did keep it up so merrily and so roaringly, that the best part of the
+night was spent before drowsiness came over Aylesbury Gaol.
+
+Then the next day to Court, and there the Judges as before, and Sir John
+the High Sheriff, and the Counsel for the Crown and for us, and twelve
+honest gentlemen in a box by themselves, that were of the Petty Jury, to
+try us; and, I am ashamed to say, a great store of Ladies, all in
+ribbons and patches and laces and fine clothes, that sate some on the
+Bench beside the Judges, and others in the body of the Court among the
+Counsel, and stared at us miserable objects in the Dock as though we had
+been a Galantee Show. It is some years now since I have entered a Court
+of Criminal Justice, and I do hope that this Indecent and Uncivil
+Behaviour of well-bred Women coming to gaze on Criminals for their
+diversion has utterly given way before the Benevolence and good taste of
+a polite Age.
+
+When, at the last, I was told to plead, and at the bidding of an Officer
+of the Court, who stood underneath me, had pleaded Not Guilty, and had
+been asked how I would be tried, and had answered, likewise at his
+bidding, "By God and my Country," and when after that the Clerk of the
+Arraigns had prayed Heaven--and I am sure I needed it, and thanked him
+heartily at the time, kind Gentleman, thinking that he meant it, and not
+knowing that it was a mere Legal Form--to send me a good
+Deliverance,--the Judge bids me, to my great surprise, to Stand By. I
+thought at first that they were going to have Mercy on me, and would
+have down on my knees in gratitude to them. But it was not so; and the
+sleepy old Judge, suddenly waking up, told me that there were two
+Indictments against me, and that I should have the honour of being tried
+separately. Goodness save us! I was looked upon as one of the most
+desperate of the Gang, and was to be tried, not only under the Black
+Act, but that, not having the fear of God before my eyes, but being
+moved by the instigation of the Devil, I had, against the peace of our
+Sovereign Lord the King, attempted feloniously to kill, slay, and murder
+one John Foss, a Corporal in his Majesty's Regiment of Grenadier
+Footguards, by striking him, the said John Foss, over the back, breast,
+hips, loins, shoulders, thighs, legs, feet, arms, and fingers, with a
+certain deadly and lethal weapon, to wit, with a demijohn of Brandy.
+
+I was put back and kept all day in the prison. At evening came in my
+comrades, and from them I learnt that the case had gone dead against
+them from the beginning, that the Jury had found them guilty under the
+Statute without leaving the box; and that, as the felony was one without
+the benefit of Clergy, Judge Blackcap had put on a wig as black as his
+name, and sentenced every man Jack of them to be hanged on the Monday
+week next following.
+
+So then it came to my turn to be tried. The ordeal on the first
+Indictment was very short; for, at the Judge's bidding, the Jury
+acquitted me of trying to murder Corporal Foss before I had been ten
+minutes in the dock. I did not understand the proceedings in the least
+at that time; but I was told afterwards that the clever legal gentleman
+who had drawn up the Indictment against me, while very particularly
+setting down the parts of the body on which I might have struck Corporal
+Foss, omitted to specify the one place, namely, his head, on which I did
+hit him. Counsel for the Crown endeavoured, indeed, to prove that a
+splinter from the broken demijohn had grazed the corporal's finger, but
+the evidence for this fell dead. And, again, it coming out that I was
+arraigned as John Danger, whereas I had given the name of John
+Dangerous, to which I had perhaps no more right than to that of the Pope
+of Rome, the Judge roundly tells the Jury that the Indictment is bad in
+law, and I was forthwith acquitted as aforesaid.
+
+But I was not scot-free. There was that other Indictment under the Black
+Act; and in that, alas, there was no flaw. The Solemn Court freed
+itself, to be sure, of the Mockery of finding a child under twelve years
+Guilty of the attempted murder of a Grenadier six feet high; but no less
+did the witnesses swear, and the Judge sum up, and Counsel for the Crown
+insist, and my Counsel feebly deny, and the Jury at last fatally find
+against me, that I had gone about armed and Disguised by night, and
+wandered up and down in the King's Forests, and stolen his Deer, and
+Goodness can tell what besides; and so, being found guilty, the middle
+Judge puts on his black cap again, and tells me that I am to be hanged
+on Monday week by the neck.
+
+He did not say any thing about my youth, or about my utter loneliness,
+or about the evil examples which had brought me to this Pass. Perhaps it
+was not his Duty, but that of the Ordinary, to tell me so. The Hanging
+was his department, the praying belonged to his Reverence. They led me
+back to prison, feeling rather hot and sick after the words I had
+listened to about being "hanged by the neck until I was dead," but still
+not caring much; for I could not rightly understand why all these fine
+gentlemen should be at the pains of Butchering me merely because I had
+run away from school (being so cruelly entreated by Gnawbit), and, to
+save myself from starvation, had joined the Blacks.
+
+Being to Die, it seemed for the first time to occur to them that I was
+not as the rest of the poor souls that were doomed to death, and that
+it behoved them to treat me rather as a lamb that is doomed for the
+slaughter than as a great overgrown Bullock to be knocked down by the
+Butcher's Pole-axe. So they put me away from the rest of my companions,
+and bestowed me in a sorry little chamber, where I had a truckle-bed to
+myself. Dear old Mother Drum, being still under disgrace, was not
+suffered to come near me. Her trial, with that of Cicely Grip, for
+harbouring armed and disguised men, under the Black Act, which was
+likewise a felony, was not to come on till the next session. I believe
+that the Great Gentlemen at Whitehall were, for a long time after my
+conviction, in a mind for Hanging me. 'Twas thought a small matter then
+to stretch the neck of a Boy of Twelve, and children even smaller than I
+had worn the white Nightcap, and smelt the Nosegay in the Cart. Indeed,
+I think the Ordinary wanted me to be Finished according to Law, that he
+might preach a Sermon on it, and liken me to one of the Children that
+mocked the Prophet, and was so eaten up by the She-Bears that came out
+of a Wood. When I think on the Reverend and Pious Persons who now attend
+our Criminals in their last unhappy Moments, and strive to bring them to
+a Sense of their Sins, it gives me the Goose-flesh to remember the
+Profane and Riotous Parsons who, for a Mean Stipend, did the contemned
+work of Gaol Chaplains in the days I speak of. Even while the Hangman
+was getting into proper Trim, and fashioning his tools for the
+slaughter, these callous Clergymen would be smoking and drinking with
+the keepers in the Lodge, talking now of a Main at Cocks and now of him
+who was to suffer on the Morrow, fleering and jesting, with the Church
+Service in one sleeve of their cassock and a Bottle Screw or a Pack of
+Cards in the other. And the Condemned persons, too, did not take the
+matter in a much more serious light. They had their Brandy and Tobacco
+even in their Dismal Hold, and thought much less of Mercy and
+Forgiveness than of the ease they would have from their Irons being
+stricken off, or the comfort they would gain from a last bellyful of
+Meat. I have not come to be sixty-eight years of age without observing
+somewhat of the Things that have passed around me; and one of the best
+signs of the Times in which I live (and due in great part to the Humane
+and Benignant complexion of his Majesty) is the falling off in
+bloodthirsty and cruel Punishments. If a Dozen or so are hanged after
+each Gaol Delivery at the Old Baily, and a score or more whipped or
+burnt in the Hand, what are such workings of justice compared with the
+Waste of Life that was used to be practised under the two last monarchs?
+At home 'twas all pressing to death those who would not plead, hanging,
+drawing, and quartering (how often have I sickened to see the
+pitch-seethed members of my Fellow-creatures on the spikes of Temple Bar
+and London Bridge!), taking out the entrails of those convict of Treason
+(as witness Colonel Towneley, Mr. Dawson, and many more unfortunate
+gentlemen on Kennington Common), to say nothing of the burning alive of
+women for petty treason,--and to kill a husband or coin a groat were
+alike Treasonable,--the Scourging of the same wretched creatures in
+Public till the blood ran from their shoulders and soaked the knots of
+the Beadle's lash; the cartings, brandings, and dolorous Imprisonments
+which were then inflicted for the slightest of offences. Why, I have
+seen a man stand in the Pillory in the Seven Dials (to be certain, he
+was a secure scoundrel), and the Mob, not satisfied, must take him out,
+strip him to the buff, stone him, cast him down, root up the pillory,
+and trample him under foot, till, being Rescued by the constables, he
+has been taken back to Newgate, and has died in the Hackney Coach
+conveying him thither. Oh, 'tis woe to think of the Horrors that were
+then done in the name of the Law and Justice, not only in this country
+but in Foreign Parts,--with their Breakings on the Wheel, Questions
+Ordinary and Extraordinary, Bastinadoes, Carcans, Wooden horses, Burning
+alive too (for vending of Irreligious Books), and the like Barbarities.
+Let me tell you likewise, that, for all the evil name gotten by the
+Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions,--for which I entertain, as a
+Protestant, due Detestation and Abhorrence,--the darkest deeds ever done
+by the so called Holy Office in their Torture Chambers were not half so
+cruel as those performed with the full cognisance and approbation of
+authority, in open places, and in pursuance of the sentence of the Civil
+Judges. But a term has come to these wickednesses. The admirable Mr.
+Howard before named (whom I have often met in my travels, as he, good
+man, with nothing but a Biscuit and a few Raisins in his pocket, went up
+and down Europe Doing Good, smiling at Fever and tapping Pestilence on
+the cheek),--this Blessed Worthy has lightened the captive's fetters,
+and cleansed his dungeon, and given him Light and Air. Then I hear at
+the Coffee House that the great Judge, Sir William Blackstone, has given
+his caveat against the Frequency of Capital Punishment for small
+offences; and as His Majesty is notoriously averse from signing more
+than six Death Warrants at once (the old King used to say at council, in
+his German English, "Vere is de Dyin' speech man dat hang de Rogue for
+me?" meaning the Recorder with his Report, and seeming, in a sort, eager
+to despatch that awful Business, of which the present Prince is so
+Tender), I think that we have every cause to Bless the Times and Reign
+we live in. For surely 'tis but affected Softness of Heart, and Mock,
+Sickly Sentiment, to maintain that Highwaymen, Horse-stealers, and other
+hardened villains, do not deserve the Tree, and do not righteously
+Suffer for their misdeeds; or that wanton women do not deserve bodily
+correction, so long as it be done within Bridewell Walls, and not in
+front of the Sessions House, for the ribald Populace to stare at. Truly
+our present code is a merciful one, although I do not hold that the
+Extreme Penalty of the law should be exacted for such offences as
+cutting down growing trees, forging hat-stamps, or stealing above the
+value of a Shilling, or even of forty; nevertheless crime must be kept
+under, that is certain.[N]
+
+At all events, they didn't hang John Dangerous. For a time, as I have
+said, the Great Gentlemen at Whitehall hesitated. I have heard that
+Justice Blackcap, being asked to intercede for me, did, with a scurril
+jest, tell Mr. Secretary that I was a young Imp of the Evil One, and
+that a little Hanging would do me no harm. Five, indeed, of my miserable
+companions were put to death, at different points on the borders of
+Charlwood Chase, and one, the unlucky Chaplain, met his fate before the
+door of the Stag o' Tyne. The rest of the Blacks, of whom, to my joy, I
+shall have no further occasion to speak, were sent to be Slaves in the
+American Plantations.
+
+I had lain in Gaol more than a month after my Sentence, when Mr.
+Shapcott, a good Quaker Gentleman of the place (who had suffered much
+for Conscience' sake, and was very Pitifully inclined to all those who
+were in Affliction), began to take some interest in my unhappy Self;
+calling me a strayed Lamb, a brand to be snatched from the burning, and
+the like. And he, by the humane connivance of the Mayor and other
+Justices, was now permitted to have access unto me, and to conciliate
+the Keeper, Mrs. Macphilader, by money-presents, to treat me with some
+kindness. Also he brought me many Good Books, in thin paper covers; the
+which, although I could understand but very little of their Saving
+Truths, yet caused me to shed many Tears, more Sweet than Bitter, and to
+acknowledge, when taxed with it in a Soothing way, that my former Manner
+of Life had been most Wicked. But I should do this good man foul
+injustice, were I to let it stand that his benevolence to me was
+confined to books. He and (ever remembered) Mistress Shapcott, his Meek
+and Pious Partner, and his daughter, Wingrace Shapcott (a tall and
+straight young woman, as Beautiful as an Angel), were continually
+bringing me Comforts and Needments, both in Raiment and Food. It churns
+my Old Heart now to think of that Beautiful Girl, sitting beside me in
+my dank Prison Room, the tears streaming from her mild eyes, calling me
+by Endearing names, and ever and anon taking my hand in hers, and
+sinking on her knees to the sodden floor (with no thought of soiling her
+kirtle), while with profound Fervour she prayed for the conversion of
+errant Me. Sure there are Hearts of Gold among those Broadbrims and
+their fair strait-laced Daughters. Many a Merchant's Money-bags I have
+spared for the sake of Mr. Barzillai Shapcott (late of Aylesbury). Many
+a Fair Woman have I intermitted from my Furious Will in remembrance of
+the good that was shown me, in the old time, by that pale, strait-gowned
+Wingrace yonder, with her meek Face and welling Eyes. Of my deep and
+grievous Sins they told me enow, but they forbore to Terrify me with
+Frightful Images of Unforgiving Wrath; speaking to me of Forgiveness
+alway, rather than of Torment. And once, when I had gotten, through
+favour of the Keeper, Mr. Dredlincourt his book on Death (and had half
+frightened myself into fits by reading the Apparition of Mrs. Veal),
+these good people must needs take it from me, telling me that such
+strong meat was not fit for Babes, and gave me in its place a pretty
+little chap-book, called "Joy for Friendly Friends." But that I am old
+and battered, and black as a Guinea Negro with sins, I would go join
+the Quakers now. Never mind their broad-brims, and theeing and thouing.
+I tell you, man, that they have hearts as soft as toast-and-butter, and
+that they do more good in a day than my Lord Bishop (with his
+coach-horses, forsooth!) does in a year. And oh, the pleasure of
+devalising one of these Proud Prelates, as I--that is some of my
+Friends--have done scores of times!
+
+Nothing would suit the good Shapcotts but that I should write in mine
+own hand a Petition to the King's Majesty. The Magistrates, who now
+began to take some interest in me, were for having it drawn up by their
+Town Clerk, and me only to put my Mark to it; for they would not give a
+poor little Hangdog of a Black any credit of Clergy. But being told that
+I could both read and write, after a Fashion, it was agreed that I was
+to have myself the scrivening of the Document; they giving me some Forms
+and Hints for beginning and ending, and bidding me con my Bible, and
+choose such texts as I thought bore on my Unhappy Condition. And after
+Great Endeavours and many painful days, and calling all my little
+Scholarship under my Grandmother, the kind old schoolmistress of
+Foubert's Passage, Gnawbit (burn him!), and Captain Night, I succeeded
+in producing the following. I give it word for word as I wrote it,
+having kept a copy; but I need not say that, as a Gentleman of Fortune,
+my Style and Spelling are not now so Barbarous and Uncouth.
+
+This was my Petition to His Majesty:
+
+      "The Humble Pettyshon of Jon Dangerous now a prisinner
+         under centense off Deth in His Maggesty's Gayle at
+         Alesbury to his Maggesty Gorge by the grease of God
+         King of Grate Briton Frans and Eyearland Deffender
+         off the Fathe Showeth That yore Petetioner which I
+         am Unfortunate enuff to be mixed up in this
+         business Me and the others wich have suffered was
+         Cast by the Jewry and Justis Blackcapp he ses that
+         as a Warming and Eggsample i am to be Hanged by the
+         Nek till you are Ded and the Lord have Mercy upon
+         his Soul Great Sur your Maggesty the Book ses that
+         wen the wicked man turneth away from his Wickedness
+         wich he have committed and doeth that wich is
+         Lawful and Rite he shall save his Sole alive
+         Therefore deer Great Sur wich a repreive would fall
+         like Thunder upon a Contrite Hart and am most
+         sorrowful under the Black Act wich it is true I
+         took the deere but was led to it Deere Sur wich
+         Mungo and others was repreeved at the Tree and sent
+         to the Plantations but am not twelve yeeres old And
+         have always been a Prottestant Great Sur i shall be
+         happy to serve his Maggesty by see or land and if
+         the Grannydeere he had not Vexed me but had no
+         other way being in a Korner and all Fiting and so i
+         up with the demmyjon which i hoap he is better And
+         your Petishioner will ever pray your Maggesty's
+         loving Subject and Servant
+
+                                            JON DANGEROUS.
+
+         My Granmother was a Lady of Quality and lived in
+         her own House in Hannover Squair and was used after
+         her Deth very cruelly by one Mistress Tallmash and
+         Kadwallader which was the Stoard and was sent in a
+         Waggin like a Beggar Deere Sur Mr. Gnawbit he used
+         me shameful wich I was Blak and Blue and the Old
+         Gentleman he ses you Run away ses he into Charwood
+         chaise and join the Blaks Deere Sur this is All
+         which Captain Nite would sware but as eloped I am
+         now lying here many weekes Deere Sur I shood like
+         to be hanged in Wite for I am Innocent leastways of
+         meaning to kill the Grannydeere."
+
+This was a Curious kind of Schoolboy letter. Different I take it from
+those one gets from a Brother, asking for a Crown, a Pony, or a
+Plumcake. But my Schools had been of the hardest, and this was _my_
+Holiday letter.
+
+When the Mayor read it, he burst out a-laughing, and says that no such
+Thieves' Flash must be sent to the Foot of the Throne. But Mr. Shapcott
+told him that he would not have one word altered; that he would not even
+strike out the paragraph where I had been irreverent enough to quote a
+Text (and spell it badly); and that what I had written, and naught else,
+should go to the King. He took it to London himself, and his Majesty
+being much elated by some successes in Germany, and the Discovery of a
+Jacobite Plot, and moved moreover by the intercession of a Foreign Lady,
+that was his favourite, and who vowed that the little Deer-Stealer's
+Petition was Monstrous Droll, and almost as good as a Play,--His Majesty
+was graciously pleased to remit my Sentence, on condition of my
+transporting myself for life to His Majesty's Plantations in North
+America.
+
+As to my transporting "myself," that was a Fiction. I was henceforth as
+much a Slave to my own Countrymen as I was in after days to the Moors.
+The Shapcotts would willingly have provided me with the means of going
+to the uttermost ends of the World, but that was not the way the thing
+was to be done. Flesh and Blood were bought and sold in those days, and
+it did not much matter about the colour. By that strange Laxity which
+then tempered the severity of the Laws, I was permitted, for many days
+after my Fate was settled, to remain in a kind of semi-Enlargement. I
+suppose that Mr. Shapcott gave bail for me; but I was taken into his
+Family, and treated with the most Loving Kindness, till the fearful
+intelligence came that I, with two hundred other Convicts, had been
+"Taken up" for Transportation by Sir Basil Hopwood, a rich Merchant and
+Alderman of London, who paid a certain Sum a head for us to the King's
+Government for taking us to America, where he might make what profit he
+pleased, by selling our wretched Carcasses to be Slaves to the Planters.
+
+Oh, the terrible Parting! but there was no other Way, and it had to be
+Endured. My kind friends made me up a packet of Necessaries for the
+Voyage, and with a Heavy Heart I bade them farewell. These good people
+are all Dead; but their woman-servant, Ruth, a pure soul, of great
+Serenity of Countenance, still lives; and every Christmas does the
+Carrier convey for me to Aylesbury a Hamper full of the Good Things of
+this Life, and Ten Golden Guineas. And I know that this Good and
+Faithful Servant (who has been well provided for) just touches the
+Kissing-crust of one of the Pies my Lilias has made for her, and that
+she goes straight with the rest, Money and Cates, to the Gaol, and
+therewith relieves the Debtors (whom Heaven deliver out of their
+Captivity!). And it is more seemly that she rather than I should do
+this thing, seeing that there are those who will not believe that after
+a Hard Life a man can keep a fleshy heart, and who would be apt to dub
+me Hypocrite if these Doles came from me directly.
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[N] Captain Dangerous, it will be seen, was, in regard to our criminal
+code, somewhat in advance of the ideas of his age, but he was scarcely
+on a level with those of our own, and, I think, would have perused with
+some surprise the speeches of Mr. Ewart and the _Vacation Thoughts on
+Capital Punishments_ of the late Mr. Commissioner Phillips.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+MESSRS. TINSLEY BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WORKS IN THE PRESS.
+
+In the Press, in 2 vols., 8vo,
+
+      ABEKOUTA: AND AN EXPLORATION OF THE CAMEROON MOUNTAINS.
+
+                 By CAPTAIN RICHARD F. BURTON,
+       Author of "A Pilgrimage to Elmedinah and Meccah," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                   In the Press, in 2 vols.
+
+                          MARTIN POLE.
+
+                         By JOHN SAUNDERS,
+               Author of "Abel Drake's Wife," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Now ready, a New and Cheaper Edition, in 1 vol., price 6s.
+
+                       LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
+
+                  By the Author of "Aurora Floyd."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+            In the Press, in 3 vols., post 8vo,
+
+                MY WANDERINGS IN WEST AFRICA:
+                FROM LIVERPOOL TO FERNANDO PO.
+
+                         By F. R. G. S.            [_Ready in April._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+               In the Press, in 3 vols., post 8vo,
+
+                          ALTOGETHER WRONG.
+
+             By the Author of "The World's Furniture."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          In the Press, a New Edition, price 6s., uniform with
+                         "Guy Livingstone."
+
+                           BARREN HONOUR.
+
+     By the Author of "Guy Livingstone," "Sword and Gown," &c.
+
+
+
+
+    WORKS JUST PUBLISHED, AND IN CIRCULATION AT ALL THE LIBRARIES.
+
+
+          NOTICE.--_"Aurora Floyd," by the Author of "Lady
+          Audley's Secret," the Fifth Edition, is now READY
+          at all the Libraries, in 3 vols._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+               This day, at every library, in 3 vols.
+
+                   THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD.
+
+                     By J. SHERIDAN LE FANU.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+              Now ready, at every Library, in 3 vols.
+
+                        A TANGLED SKEIN.
+
+                     By ALBANY FONBLANQUE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+              Now ready, the Five-Shilling Edition of
+
+                        GUY LIVINGSTONE.
+
+         By the Author of "Barren Honour," "Sword and Gown."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                    Now ready, in 2 vols.
+
+                  THE LITERATURE OF SOCIETY.
+
+                       By GRACE WHARTON,
+         One of the Authors of "The Queens of Society," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          Now ready, at all the Libraries, in 1 vol. 8vo,
+
+               THE PUBLIC LIFE OF LORD MACAULAY.
+
+                  By FREDERICK ARNOLD, B.A.,
+                  Of Christ Church, Oxford.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+       TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page xix, "85" changed to "87"
+
+Page xix, "124" changed to "126"
+
+Page 10, "ha" changed to "had" (Dangerous had suffered)
+
+Page 10, "nee" changed to "need" (was no need)
+
+Page 11, "le" changed to "let" (a mercy to let)
+
+Page 48, "inkeepers" changed to "innkeepers" (the innkeepers were used)
+
+Page 48, "achievments" changed to "achievements" (achievements of his
+arms)
+
+Page 121, "corse" changed to "corpse" (corpse of my)
+
+Page 144, "wont" changed to "won't" (I won't tell him)
+
+Page 193, word "to" inserted into text. (he whispered to his)
+
+Page 221, "bring" changed to "being" (being a poor)
+
+Page 247, "recal" changed to "recall" (can scarcely recall)
+
+Page 295, "Beneh" changed to "Bench" (Bench and confers)
+
+Varied hyphenation was retained. antechambers, ante-chambers; atop,
+a-top; cheesecakes, cheese-cakes; Cockpit, Cock-pit; Footguards,
+Foot-guards; Gatehouse, Gate-house; nowadays, now-a-days; Shrovetide,
+Shrove-tide.
+
+The text also uses servants' hall and servant's hall.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Adventures of Captain
+Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3, by George Augustus Sala
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN DANGEROUS, VOL. 1 OF 3 ***
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+***** This file should be named 26667-8.txt or 26667-8.zip *****
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