ing
enough to have her aid in another direction.

That aid was cheerfully given once upon a time when Savage came
dangerously near the scaffold. This prince of scamps and wanderer
among the beery precincts of pot-houses happened to stroll one night,
accompanied by two choice spirits (and himself full of spirits) into
a disreputable coffee-house near Charing Cross. The three men rudely
pushed their way into a parlour where some other roisterers were
drinking; the intrusion was naturally resented, and as each and every
one of the party chanced to be better filled with wine than with
politeness, a brawl was the consequence. Swords were drawn and Savage
killed a Mr. Sinclair, after which drunken act he cut the head of
a barmaid who tried to hold him. Then more swearing, shrieking and
sword-thrusting, a cry for soldiers, a flight from the coffee-house,
and an almost instant arrest. A pretty picture, was it not?

When Savage was put on trial for his life, he pleaded that the killing
of Sinclair was done in self-defence, and his acquittal would probably
have followed but for the shrewdness of the prosecution. This
prosecution was conducted by Francis Page, whose severity Pope
immortalised in the lines:

"Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage
Hard-words or hanging--if your judge be Page."

Page surely understood human nature, or that portion of it
appertaining to the average jurymen, and he disposed of Mr. Savage's
defence by one well-directed blow when he said to the good men and
true: "Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is
a very great man, a much greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the
jury; that he wears very fine clothes, much finer clothes than you
or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has abundance of money in his
pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but,
gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the
jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you, or me, gentlemen of
the jury."

Whereupon the defendant began to make a speech in his own behalf, but
his flow of eloquence was quenched by the judge, and the jury soon
found Savage as well as Gregory, one of his companions in the drunken
broil, to be guilty of murder. Many influences were now brought to
bear on Queen Caroline, consort of George II., to secure a pardon for
the rascal, but that good lady was for a time obdurate. She had heard
a few choice stories anent the man, and among th