s, they had
delivered certain horses, but they had seen no part of the money
transaction; the fellow, whether from design or not, having taken me
aside into a retired place, where he had paid me the three spurious
notes, and induced me to change the fourth, which throughout the affair
was what bore most materially against me. How matters might have
terminated I do not know, I might have gone to prison, and I might have
been--just then, when I most needed a friend, and least expected to find
one, for though amongst those present there were several who were my
neighbours, and who had professed friendship for me, none of them when
they saw that I needed support and encouragement, came forward to yield
me any, but, on the contrary, appeared by their looks to enjoy my terror
and confusion--just then a friend entered the room in the person of the
surgeon of the neighbourhood, the father of him who has attended you; he
was not on very intimate terms with me, but he had occasionally spoken to
me, and had attended my father in his dying illness, and chancing to hear
that I was in trouble, he now hastened to assist me. After a short
preamble, in which he apologized to the bench for interfering, he begged
to be informed of the state of the case, whereupon the matter was laid
before him in all its details. He was not slow in taking a fair view of
it, and spoke well and eloquently in my behalf--insisting on the
improbability that a person of my habits and position would be wilfully
mixed up with a transaction like that of which it appeared I was
suspected--adding, that as he was fully convinced of my innocence, he was
ready to enter into any surety with respect to my appearance at any time
to answer anything which might be laid to my charge. This last
observation had particular effect, and as he was a person universally
respected, both for his skill in his profession and his general
demeanour, people began to think that a person in whom he took an
interest could scarcely be concerned in anything criminal, and though my
friend the magistrate--I call him so ironically--made two or three
demurs, it was at last agreed between him and his brethren of the bench,
that, for the present, I should be merely called upon to enter into my
own recognizance for the sum of two hundred pounds, to appear whenever it
should be deemed requisite to enter into any further investigation of the
matter.

"So I was permitted to depart from the tribunal o