ired an Irishman; I was no Irishman. It described a
person shorter than I; a circumstance of all others the least capable of
being counterfeited. There was not the slightest reason for detaining me
in custody. I had been already disappointed of my voyage, and lost the
money I had paid, down, through the officiousness of these gentlemen in
apprehending me. I assured his worship, that every delay, under my
circumstances, was of the utmost importance to me. It was impossible to
devise a greater injury to be inflicted on me, than the proposal that,
instead of being permitted to proceed upon my voyage, I should be sent,
under arrest, into the heart of the kingdom.

My remonstrances were vain. The justice was by no means inclined to
digest the being expostulated with in this manner by a person in the
habiliments of a beggar. In the midst of my address he would have
silenced me for my impertinence, but that I spoke with an earnestness
with which he was wholly unable to contend. When I had finished, he told
me it was all to no purpose, and that it might have been better for me,
if I had shown myself less insolent. It was clear that I was a vagabond
and a suspicious person. The more earnest I showed myself to get off,
the more reason there was he should keep me fast. Perhaps, after all, I
should turn out to be the felon in question. But, if I was not that, he
had no doubt I was worse; a poacher, or, for what he knew, a murderer.
He had a kind of a notion that he had seen my face before about some
such affair; out of all doubt I was an old offender. He had it in his
choice to send me to hard labour as a vagrant, upon the strength of my
appearance and the contradictions in my story, or to order me to
Warwick; and, out of the spontaneous goodness of his disposition, he
chose the milder side of the alternative. He could assure me I should
not slip through his fingers. It was of more benefit to his majesty's
government to hang one such fellow as he suspected me to be, than, out
of mistaken tenderness, to concern one's self for the good of all the
beggars in the nation.

Finding it was impossible to work, in the way I desired, on a man so
fully impressed with his own dignity and importance and my utter
insignificance, I claimed that, at least, the money taken from my person
should be restored to me. This was granted. His worship perhaps
suspected that he had stretched a point in what he had already done,
and was therefore the less un