e plaint of somebody, who
said I owed him some money. Now, an appearance had not been entered, and
judgment had gone by default, and execution had been obtained against me.
The Sheriff of Middlesex (who is popularly, though erroneously, supposed
to be incessantly running up and down in his bailiwick) had had a writ of
_fieri facias_, vulgarly termed a _fi. fa._ against my goods; but hearing,
or satisfying himself by adroit espionage, that I had _no_ goods, he had
made a return of _nulla bona_. Then had he invoked the aid of a more
subtle and potential instrument, likewise on parchment, called a _capias
ad satisfaciendum_, abbreviated in legal parlance into _ca. sa._, against
my body. This writ he had confided to Aminadab, his man; and Aminadab,
running, as he was in duty bound to do, up and down in his section of the
bailiwick, had come across me, and had made me the captive of his bow and
spear. He called it, less metaphorically, "nabbing me."

Mr. Aminadab (tall, aquiline-nosed, oleaginous, somewhat dirty; clad in a
green Newmarket coat, a crimson velvet waistcoat, a purple satin neckcloth
with gold flowers, two watch-guards, and four diamond rings)--Mr. Aminadab
proposed that "something should be done." Would I go to White-cross-street
at once I or to Blowman's, in Cursitor-street? or would I just step into
Peele's Coffee-house for a moment? Mr. Aminadab was perfectly polite, and
indefatigably suggestive.

The capture had been made in Fleet-street; so we stepped into Peele's, and
while Mr. Aminadab sipped the pint of wine which he had obligingly
suggested I should order, I began to look my position in the face.
Execution taken out for forty-five pounds nine and ninepence. _Ca. sa._, a
guinea; _fi. fa._, a guinea; capture, a guinea; those were all the costs
as _yet_. Now, some days after I was served with the writ, I had paid the
plaintiff's lawyer, on account, thirty pounds. In the innocence of my
heart, I imagined that, by the County Court Act, I could not be arrested
for the balance, it being under twenty pounds. Mr. Aminadab laughed with
contemptuous pity.

"We don't do business that way," said he; "we goes in for the whole lot,
and then you pleads your set-off, you know."

The long and the short of the matter was, that I had eighteen pounds,
twelve shillings, and ninepence, to pay, before my friend in the purple
neckcloth would relinquish his grasp; and that to satisfy the demand, I
had exactly the sum of two