kshire, where my father, disguised as a Quaker, attempted to pass a
forged note. The note was shown to this individual, who pronounced it a
forgery, it being exactly similar to those for which the young man had
been in trouble, and which he had seen. My father, however, being
supposed a respectable man, because he was dressed as a Quaker--the very
reason, by the-bye, why anybody who knew aught of the Quakers would have
suspected him to be a rogue--would have been let go, had I not made my
appearance, dressed as his footboy. The friend of the young man looked
at my eye, and seized hold of my father, who made a desperate resistance,
I assisting him, as in duty bound. Being, however, overpowered by
numbers, he bade me by a look, and a word or two in Latin, to make myself
scarce. Though my heart was fit to break, I obeyed my father, who was
speedily committed. I followed him to the county town in which he was
lodged, where shortly after I saw him tried, convicted, and condemned. I
then, having made friends with the jailor's wife, visited him in his
cell, where I found him very much cast down. He said that my mother had
appeared to him in a dream, and talked to him about a resurrection and
Christ Jesus; there was a Bible before him, and he told me the chaplain
had just been praying with him. He reproached himself much, saying, he
was afraid he had been my ruin, by teaching me bad habits. I told him
not to say any such thing, for that I had been the cause of his, owing to
the misfortune of my eye. He begged me to give over all unlawful
pursuits, saying, that if persisted in, they were sure of bringing a
person to destruction. I advised him to try and make his escape:
proposing, that when the turnkey came to let me out, he should knock him
down, and fight his way out, offering to assist him; showing him a small
saw, with which one of our companions, who was in the neighbourhood, had
provided me, and with which he could have cut through his fetters in five
minutes; but he told me he had no wish to escape, and was quite willing
to die. I was rather hard at that time; I am not very soft now; and I
felt rather ashamed of my father's want of what I called spirit. He was
not executed after all; for the chaplain, who was connected with a great
family, stood his friend, and got his sentence commuted, as they call it,
to transportation; and in order to make the matter easy, he induced my
father to make some valuable disclosu