of Justice Gobble,
than Captain Crowe, seizing him by the hand, exclaimed, "Body o' me!
Doctor, thou'rt come up in the nick of time to lend us a hand in putting
about.--We're a little in the stays here--but howsomever we've got a good
pilot, who knows the coast; and can weather the point, as the saying is.
As for the enemy's vessel, she has had a shot or two already athwart her
forefoot; the next, I do suppose, will strike the hull, and then you will
see her taken all a-back." The doctor, who perfectly understood his
dialect, assured him he might depend upon his assistance; and, advancing
to the knight, accosted him in these words: "Sir Launcelot Greaves, your
most humble servant--when I saw a crowd at the door, I little thought of
finding you within, treated with such indignity--yet I can't help being
pleased with an opportunity of proving the esteem and veneration I have
for your person and character.--You will do me particular pleasure in
commanding my best services."

Our adventurer thanked him for this instance of his friendship, which he
told him he would use without hesitation; and desired he would procure
immediate bail for him and his two friends, who had been imprisoned
contrary to law, without any cause assigned.

During this short dialogue, the justice, who had heard of Sir Launcelot's
family and fortune, though an utter stranger to his person, was seized
with such pangs of terror and compunction, as a grovelling mind may be
supposed to have felt in such circumstances; and they seemed to produce
the same unsavoury effects that are so humorously delineated by the
inimitable Hogarth, in his print of Felix on his tribunal, done in the
Dutch style. Nevertheless, seeing Fillet retire to execute the knight's
commands, he recollected himself so far as to tell the prisoners, there
was no occasion to give themselves any farther trouble, for he would
release them without bail or mainprise. Then discarding all the
insolence from his features, and assuming an aspect of the most humble
adulation, he begged the knight ten thousand pardons for the freedoms he
had taken, which were entirely owing to his ignorance of Sir Launcelot's
quality.

"Yes, I'll assure you, sir," said the wife, "my husband would have bit
off his tongue rather than say black is the white of your eye, if so be
he had known your capacity.--Thank God, we have been used to deal with
gentlefolks, and many's the good pound we have lost by them; but wha