ral 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