elves in the
interval. My first duty was to avoid betraying myself, more than it
might afterwards appear I was betrayed already. It was possible that,
though apprehended, my apprehension might have been determined on upon
some slight score, and that, by my dexterity, I might render my
dismission as sudden as my arrest had been. It was even possible that I
had been seized through a mistake, and that the present measure might
have no connection with Mr. Falkland's affair. Upon every supposition,
it was my business to gain information. In my passage from the ship to
the town I did not utter a word. My conductors commented on my
sulkiness; but remarked that it would avail me nothing--I should
infallibly swing, as it was never known that any body got off who was
tried for robbing his majesty's mail. It is difficult to conceive the
lightness of heart which was communicated to me by these words: I
persisted however in the silence I had meditated. From the rest of their
conversation, which was sufficiently voluble, I learned that the mail
from Edinburgh to London had been robbed about ten days before by two
Irishmen, that one of them was already secured, and that I was taken up
upon suspicion of being the other. They had a description of his person,
which, though, as I afterwards found, it disagreed from mine in several
material articles, appeared to them to tally to the minutest tittle. The
intelligence that the whole proceeding against me was founded in a
mistake, took an oppressive load from my mind. I believed that I should
immediately be able to establish my innocence, to the satisfaction of
any magistrate in the kingdom; and though crossed in my plans, and
thwarted in my design of quitting the island, even after I was already
at sea, this was but a trifling inconvenience compared with what I had
had but too much reason to fear.

As soon as we came ashore, I was conducted to the house of a justice of
peace, a man who had formerly been the captain of a collier, but who,
having been successful in the world, had quitted this wandering life,
and for some years had had the honour to represent his majesty's person.
We were detained for some time in a sort of anti-room, waiting his
reverence's leisure. The persons by whom I had been taken up were
experienced in their trade, and insisted upon employing this interval in
searching me, in presence of two of his worship's servants. They found
upon me fifteen guineas and some silver. T