id 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 disclosures with respect to the smasher's
system. I confess that I would have been hanged before I would have done
so, after having reaped the profit of it; that is, I think so now, seated
comfortably in my inn, with my bottle of champagne before me. He,
however, did not show himself carrion; he would not betray his
companions, who had behaved very handsomely to him, having given the son
of a lord, a great barrister, not a hundred-pound forged bill, but a
hundred hard guineas, to plead his cause, and another ten, to induce him,
after pleading, to put his hand to his breast, and say, that, upon his
honour, he believed the prisoner at the bar to be an honest and injured
man. No: I am glad to be able to say, that my father did not show
himself exactly carrion, though I could almost have wished he had let
himself--. However, I am here with my bottle of champagne and the Romany
Rye, and he was in his cell, with bread and water and the prison
chaplain. He took an affectionate leave of me before he was sent away,
giving me three out of five guineas, all the money he had left. He was a
kind man, but not exactly fitted to fill my grandfather's shoes. I
afterwards learned that he died of fever, as he was being carried across
the sea.

'During the 'sizes, I had made acquaintance with old Fulcher. I was in
the town on my father's account, and he was th