most dreadful
oath I ever heard, he bade me come and see him hanged when his time was
come. I wrung his hand, and told him I would, and I kept my word. The
night before the day he was hanged at H---, I harnessed a Suffolk Punch
to my light gig, the same Punch which I had offered to him, which I have
ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to
Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten
miles. I arrived at H--- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly
jail--the scaffold--and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in
the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of
the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood
up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, 'God Almighty bless you,
Jack!' The dying man turned his pale grim face towards me--for his face
was always somewhat grim, do you see--nodded and said, or I thought I
heard him say, 'All right, old chap.' The next moment--my eyes water. He
had a high heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines, lost his half-
pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the throat of a
villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had. But he had good
qualities, and I know for certain that he never did half the bad things
laid to his charge; for example, he never bribed Tom Oliver to fight
cross, as it was said he did on the day of the awful thunder-storm. Ned
Flatnose fairly beat Tom Oliver, for though Ned was not what's called a
good fighter, he had a particular blow, which if he could put in he was
sure to win. His right shoulder, do you see, was two inches farther back
than it ought to have been, and consequently his right fist generally
fell short; but if he could swing himself round, and put in a blow with
that right arm, he could kill or take away the senses of anybody in the
world. It was by putting in that blow in his second fight with Spring
that he beat noble Tom. Spring beat him like a sack in the first battle,
but in the second Ned Painter--for that was his real name--contrived to
put in his blow, and took the senses out of Spring; and in like manner he
took the senses out of Tom Oliver.

"Well, some are born to be hanged, and some are not; and many of those
who are not hanged are much worse than those who are. Jack, with many a
good quality, is hanged, whilst that fellow of a lord, who wanted to get
the horse from you at about two-thirds of his