t the next
moment seemed ready to crush me.

The behaviour of this incomparable and amiable old man cut me to the
heart. It was a dreadful prognostic for all my future life. But, as I
have just observed, my conductors entered, and another subject called
imperiously upon my attention. I could have been content, mortified as I
was at this instant, to have been shut up in some impenetrable solitude,
and to have wrapped myself in inconsolable misery. But the grief I
endured had not such power over me as that I could be content to risk
the being led to the gallows. The love of life, and still more a hatred
against oppression, steeled my heart against that species of inertness.
In the scene that had just passed I had indulged, as I have said, in a
wantonness and luxury of refinement. It was time that indulgence should
be brought to a period. It was dangerous to trifle any more upon the
brink of fate; and, penetrated as I was with sadness by the result of my
last attempt, I was little disposed to unnecessary circumambulation.

I was exactly in the temper in which the gentlemen who had me in their
power would have desired to find me. Accordingly we entered immediately
upon business; and, after some chaffering, they agreed to accept eleven
guineas as the price of my freedom. To preserve however the chariness of
their reputation, they insisted upon conducting me with them for a few
miles on the outside of a stage-coach. They then pretended that the road
they had to travel lay in a cross country direction; and, having
quitted the vehicle, they suffered me, almost as soon as it was out of
sight, to shake off this troublesome association, and follow my own
inclinations. It may be worth remarking by the way, that these fellows
outwitted themselves at their own trade. They had laid hold of me at
first under the idea of a prize of a hundred guineas; they had since
been glad to accept a composition of eleven: but if they had retained me
a little longer in their possession, they would have found the
possibility of acquiring the sum that had originally excited their
pursuit, upon a different score.

The mischances that had befallen me, in my late attempt to escape from
my pursuers by sea, deterred me from the thought of repeating that
experiment. I therefore once more returned to the suggestion of hiding
myself, at least for the present, amongst the crowds of the metropolis.
Meanwhile, I by no means thought proper to venture by the dire