y might take would be of no consequence;
and he might go to Highgate, to Edinburgh, to Constantinople, nay, down
a well, and no soul would care to ask whither he had gone.

These points Mr. Hayes had not considered duly. The latter case had been
put to him, and annoyed him, as we have seen; the former had actually
been pressed upon him by Mrs. Hayes herself; who, in almost the only
communication she had had with him since their last quarrel, had asked
him, angrily, in the presence of Wood and her son, whether he had dared
to utter such lies, and how it came to pass that the neighbours looked
scornfully at her, and avoided her?

To this charge Mr. Hayes pleaded, very meekly, that he was not guilty;
and young Billings, taking him by the collar, and clinching his fist in
his face, swore a dreadful oath that he would have the life of him if
he dared abuse his mother. Mrs. Hayes then spoke of the general report
abroad, that he was going to desert her; which, if he attempted to do,
Mr. Billings vowed that he would follow him to Jerusalem and have his
blood. These threats, and the insolent language of young Billings,
rather calmed Hayes than agitated him: he longed to be on his journey;
but he began to hope that no obstacle would be placed in the way of
it. For the first time since many days, he began to enjoy a feeling
something akin to security, and could look with tolerable confidence
towards a comfortable completion of his own schemes of treason.

These points being duly settled, we are now arrived, O public, at a
point for which the author's soul hath been yearning ever since this
history commenced. We are now come, O critic, to a stage of the work
when this tale begins to assume an appearance so interestingly horrific,
that you must have a heart of stone if you are not interested by it.
O candid and discerning reader, who art sick of the hideous scenes of
brutal bloodshed which have of late come forth from pens of certain
eminent wits,[*] if you turn away disgusted from the book, remember that
this passage hath not been written for you, or such as you, who have
taste to know and hate the style in which it hath been composed; but
for the public, which hath no such taste:--for the public, which can
patronise four different representations of Jack Sheppard,--for the
public whom its literary providers have gorged with blood and foul
Newgate garbage,--and to whom we poor creatures, humbly following at
the tail of our great