uld like a hundred
guineas as well as another. But I cannot be of your mind for all that. I
should never think money would do me any good that had been the means of
bringing a Christian creature to the gallows."

"Poh, that is all my granny! Some folks must be hanged, to keep the
wheels of our state-folks a-going. Besides, I could forgive the fellow
all his other robberies, but that he should have been so hardened as to
break the house of his own master at last, that is too bad."

"Lord! lord!" replied the other, "I see you know nothing of the matter!
I will tell you how it was, as I learned it at the town. I question
whether he ever robbed his master at all. But, hark you! you must know
as how that squire Falkland was once tried for murder"--

"Yes, yes, we know that."

"Well, he was as innocent as the child unborn. But I supposes as how he
is a little soft or so. And so Kit Williams--Kit is a devilish cunning
fellow, you may judge that from his breaking prison no less than five
times,--so, I say, he threatened to bring his master to trial at
'size all over again, and so frightened him, and got money from him at
divers times. Till at last one squire Forester, a relation of t'other,
found it all out. And he made the hell of a rumpus, and sent away Kit to
prison in a twinky; and I believe he would have been hanged: for when
two squires lay their heads together, they do not much matter law, you
know; or else they twist the law to their own ends, I cannot exactly say
which; but it is much at one when the poor fellow's breath is out of his
body."

Though this story was very circumstantially told, and with a sufficient
detail of particulars, it did not pass unquestioned. Each man maintained
the justness of his own statement, and the dispute was long and
obstinately pursued. Historians and commentators at length withdrew
together. The terrors with which I was seized when this conversation
began, were extreme. I stole a sidelong glance to one quarter and
another, to observe if any man's attention was turned upon me. I
trembled as if in an ague-fit; and, at first, felt continual impulses to
quit the house, and take to my heels. I drew closer to my corner, held
aside my head, and seemed from time to time to undergo a total
revolution of the animal economy.

At length the tide of ideas turned. Perceiving they paid no attention to
me, the recollection of the full security my disguise afforded recurred
strongly to my thought