f his best wine? The
other tradesmen seized what was theirs and made off with remarks
appropriate to the occasion. And when John Paul and my man were divested
of their plumes, we were marched downstairs and out through a jeering
line of people to a hackney coach.

"Now, sirs, whereaway?" said the bailiff when we were got in beside one
of his men, and burning with the shame of it; "to the prison? Or I has a
very pleasant hotel for gentlemen in Castle Yard."

The frightful stories my dear grandfather had told me of the Fleet came
flooding into my head, and I shuddered and turned sick. I glanced at
John Paul.

"A guinea will not go far in a sponging-house," said he, and the
bailiff's man laughed.

The bailiff gave a direction we did not hear, and we drove off.
He proved a bluff fellow with a bloat yet not unkindly humour, and
despite his calling seemed to have something that was human in him.
He passed many a joke on that pitiful journey in an attempt to break our
despondency, urging us not to be downcast, and reminding us that the last
gentleman he had taken from Pall Mall was in over a thousand pounds, and
that our amount was a bagatelle. And when we had gone through Temple
Bar, instead of keeping on down Fleet Street, we jolted into Chancery
Lane. This roused me.

"My friend has warned you that he has no money," I said, "and no more
have I."

The bailiff regarded me shrewdly.

"Ay," he replied, "I know. But I has seen many stripes o' men in my
time, my masters, and I know them to trust, and them whose silver I must
feel or send to the Fleet."

I told him unreservedly my case, and that he must take his chance of
being paid; that I could not hear from America for three months at least.
He listened without much show of attention, shaking his head from side to
side.

"If you ever cheated a man, or the admiral here either, then I begin over
again," he broke in with decision; "it is the fine sparks from the clubs
I has to watch. You'll not worry, sir, about me. Take my oath I'll get
interest out of you on my money."

Unwilling as we both were to be beholden to a bailiff, the alternative of
the Fleet was too terrible to be thought of. And so we alighted after
him with a shiver at the sight of the ugly, grimy face of the house, and
the dirty windows all barred with double iron. In answer to a knock we
were presently admitted by a turnkey to a vestibule as black as a tomb,
and the heavy outer door was locked behind