him--a free gift--for nothing. He swore at me; telling me to keep my
Punch, for that he was suited already. I begged him to tell me how I
could requite him for his kindness, whereupon, with the most dreadful
oath I ever heard, he bade me come and see him hanged when his time was
come. I wrung his hand, and told him I would, and I kept my word. The
night before the day he was hanged at H . . ., I harnessed a Suffolk
Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had offered to him, which I
have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to
Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten
miles. I arrived at H . . . just in the nick of time. There was the
ugly jail--the scaffold--and there upon it stood the only friend I ever
had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the
midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for,
I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, 'God Almighty bless
you, Jack!' The dying man turned his pale grim face towards me--for his
face was always somewhat grim, do you see--nodded and said, or I thought
I heard him say, 'All right, old chap.' The next moment . . . my eyes
water. He had a high heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines,
lost his half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the
throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had. But he had
good qualities, and I know for certain that he never did half the bad
things laid to his charge; for example, he never bribed Tom Oliver to
fight cross, as it was said he did, on the day of the awful
thunder-storm. Ned Flatnose fairly beat Tom Oliver, for though Ned was
not what's called a good fighter, he had a particular blow, which if he
could put in he was sure to win. His right shoulder, do you see, was two
inches farther back than it ought to have been, and consequently his
right fist generally fell short; but if he could swing himself round, and
put in a blow with that right arm, he could kill or take away the senses
of anybody in the world. It was by putting in that blow in his second
fight with Spring that he beat noble Tom. Spring beat him like a sack in
the first battle, but in the second Ned Painter--for that was his real
name--contrived to put in his blow, and took the senses out of Spring;
and in like manner he took the senses out of Tom Oliver.

"Well, some are born to be hanged, and some are not; a