The time was now nearly elapsed that was prescribed for our stay, and
orders for weighing anchor were every moment expected, when we were
hailed by a boat from the shore, with two other men in it besides those
that rowed. They entered our vessel in an instant. They were officers
of justice. The passengers, five persons besides myself, were ordered
upon deck for examination. I was inexpressibly disturbed at the
occurrence of such a circumstance in so unseasonable a moment. I took it
for granted that it was of me they were in search. Was it possible that,
by any unaccountable accident, they should have got an intimation of my
disguise? It was infinitely more distressing to encounter them upon this
narrow stage, and under these pointed circumstances, than, as I had
before encountered my pursuers, under the appearance of an indifferent
person. My recollection however did not forsake me. I confided in my
conscious disguise and my Irish brogue, as a rock of dependence against
all accidents.
No sooner did we appear upon deck than, to my great consternation, I
could observe the attention of our guests principally turned upon me.
They asked a few frivolous questions of such of my fellow passengers as
happened to be nearest to them; and then, turning to me, enquired my
name, who I was, whence I came, and what had brought me there? I had
scarcely opened my mouth to reply, when, with one consent, they laid
hold of me, said I was their prisoner, and declared that my accent,
together with the correspondence of my person, would be sufficient to
convict me before any court in England. I was hurried out of the vessel
into the boat in which they came, and seated between them, as if by way
of precaution, lest I should spring overboard, and by any means escape
them.
I now took it for granted that I was once more in the power of Mr.
Falkland; and the idea was insupportably mortifying and oppressive to my
imagination. Escape from his pursuit, freedom from his tyranny, were
objects upon which my whole soul was bent. Could no human ingenuity and
exertion effect them? Did his power reach through all space, and his
eye penetrate every concealment? Was he like that mysterious being, to
protect us from whose fierce revenge mountains and hills, we are told,
might fall on us in vain? No idea is more heart-sickening and tremendous
than this. But, in my case, it was not a subject of reasoning or of
faith; I could derive no comfort, either directly from the unbelief
which, upon religious subjects, some men avow to their own minds; or
secretly from the remoteness and incomprehensibility of the conception:
it was an affair of sense; I felt the fangs of the tiger striking deep
into my heart.
But though this impression was at first exceedingly strong, and
accompanied with its usual attendants of dejection and pusillanimity, my
mind soon began, as it were mechanically, to turn upon the consideration
of the distance between this sea-port and my county prison, and the
various opportunities of escape that might offer themselves in the
interval. My first duty was to avoid betraying myself, more than it
might afterwards appear I was betrayed already. It was possible that,
though apprehended, my apprehension might have been determined on upon
some slight score, and that, by my dexterity, I might render my
dismission as sudden as my arrest had been. It was even possible that I
had been seized through a mistake, and that the present measure might
have no connection with Mr. Falkland's affair. Upon every supposition,
it was my business to gain information. In my passage from the ship to
the town I did not utter a word. My conductors commented on my
sulkiness; but remarked that it would avail me nothing--I should
infallibly swing, as it was never known that any body got off who was
tried for robbing his majesty's mail. It is difficult to conceive the
lightness of heart which was communicated to me by these words: I
persisted however in the silence I had meditated. From the rest of their
conversation, which was sufficiently voluble, I learned that the mail
from Edinburgh to London had been robbed about ten days before by two
Irishmen, that one of them was already secured, and that I was taken up
upon suspicion of being the other. They had a description of his person,
which, though, as I afterwards found, it disagreed from mine in several
material articles, appeared to them to tally to the minutest tittle. The
intelligence that the whole proceeding against me was founded in a
mistake, took an oppressive load from my mind. I believed that I should
immediately be able to establish my innocence, to the satisfaction of
any magistrate in the kingdom; and though crossed in my plans, and
thwarted in my design of quitting the island, even after I was already
at sea, this was but a trifling inconvenience compared with what I had
had but too much reason to fear.
As soon as we came ashore, I was conducted to the house of a justice of
peace, a man who had formerly been the captain of a collier, but who,
having been successful in the world, had quitted this wandering life,
and for some years had had the honour to represent his majesty's person.
We were detained for some time in a sort of anti-room, waiting his
reverence's leisure. The persons by whom I had been taken up were
experienced in their trade, and insisted upon employing this interval in
searching me, in presence of two of his worship's servants. They found
upon me fifteen guineas and some silver. They required me to strip
myself perfectly naked, that they might examine whether I had bank-notes
concealed any where about my person. They took up the detached parcels
of my miserable attire as I threw it from me, and felt them one by one,
to discover whether the articles of which they were in search might by
any device be sewn up in them. To all this I submitted without
murmuring. It might probably come to the same thing at last; and summary
justice was sufficiently coincident with my views, my principal object
being to get as soon as possible out of the clutches of the respectable
persons who now had me in custody.
This operation was scarcely completed, before we were directed to be
ushered into his worship's apartment. My accusers opened the charge, and
told him they had been ordered to this town, upon an intimation that one
of the persons who robbed the Edinburgh mail was to be found here; and
that they had taken me on board a vessel which was by this time under
sail for Ireland. "Well," says his worship, "that is your story; now let
us hear what account the gentleman gives of himself. What is your
name--ha, sirrah? and from what part of Tipperary are you pleased to
come?" I had already taken my determination upon this article; and the
moment I learned the particulars of the charge against me, resolved, for
the present at least, to lay aside my Irish accent, and speak my native
tongue. This I had done in the very few words I had spoken to my
conductors in the anti-room: they started at the metamorphosis; but they
had gone too far for it to be possible they should retract, in
consistence with their honour. I now told the justice that I was no
Irishman, nor had ever been in that country: I was a native of England.
This occasioned a consulting of the deposition in which my person was
supposed to be described, and which my conductors had brought with them
for their direction. To be sure, that required that the offender should
be an Irishman.
Observing his worship hesitate, I thought this was the time to push the
matter a little further. I referred to the paper, and showed that the
description neither tallied as to height nor complexion. But then it did
as to years and the colour of the hair; and it was not this gentleman's
habit, as he informed me, to squabble about trifles, or to let a man's
neck out of the halter for a pretended flaw of a few inches in his
stature. "If a man were too short," he said, "there was no remedy like a
little stretching." The miscalculation in my case happened to be the
opposite way, but his reverence did not think proper to lose his jest.
Upon the whole, he was somewhat at a loss how to proceed.
My conductors observed this, and began to tremble for the reward, which,
two hours ago, they thought as good as in their own pocket. To retain me
in custody they judged to be a safe speculation; if it turned out a
mistake at last, they felt little apprehension of a suit for false
imprisonment from a poor man, accoutred as I was, in rags. They
therefore urged his worship to comply with their views. They told him
that to be sure the evidence against me did not prove so strong as for
their part they heartily wished it had, but that there were a number of
suspicious circumstances respecting me. When I was brought up to them
upon the deck of the vessel, I spoke as fine an Irish brogue as one
shall hear in a summer's day; and now, all at once, there was not the
least particle of it left. In searching me they had found upon me
fifteen guineas, how should a poor beggar lad, such as I appeared, come
honestly by fifteen guineas? Besides, when they had stripped me naked,
though my dress was so shabby my skin had all the sleekness of a
gentleman. In fine, for what purpose could a poor beggar, who had never
been in Ireland in his life, want to transport himself to that country?
It was as clear as the sun that I was no better than I should be. This
reasoning, together with some significant winks and gestures between the
justice and the plaintiffs, brought him over to their way of thinking.
He said, I must go to Warwick, where it seems the other robber was at
present in custody, and be confronted with him; and if then every thing
appeared fair and satisfactory, I should be discharged.
No intelligence could be more terrible than that which was contained in
these words. That I, who had found the whole country in arms against me,
who was exposed to a pursuit so peculiarly vigilant and penetrating,
should now be dragged to the very centre of the kingdom, without power
of accommodating myself to circumstances, and under the immediate
custody of the officers of justice, seemed to my ears almost the same
thing as if he had pronounced upon me a sentence of death! I strenuously
urged the injustice of this proceeding. I observed to the magistrate,
that it was impossible I should be the person at whom the description
pointed. It required an Irishman; I was no Irishman. It described a
person shorter than I; a circumstance of all others the least capable of
being counterfeited. There was not the slightest reason for detaining me
in custody. I had been already disappointed of my voyage, and lost the
money I had paid, down, through the officiousness of these gentlemen in
apprehending me. I assured his worship, that every delay, under my
circumstances, was of the utmost importance to me. It was impossible to
devise a greater injury to be inflicted on me, than the proposal that,
instead of being permitted to proceed upon my voyage, I should be sent,
under arrest, into the heart of the kingdom.
My remonstrances were vain. The justice was by no means inclined to
digest the being expostulated with in this manner by a person in the
habiliments of a beggar. In the midst of my address he would have
silenced me for my impertinence, but that I spoke with an earnestness
with which he was wholly unable to contend. When I had finished, he told
me it was all to no purpose, and that it might have been better for me,
if I had shown myself less insolent. It was clear that I was a vagabond
and a suspicious person. The more earnest I showed myself to get off,
the more reason there was he should keep me fast. Perhaps, after all, I
should turn out to be the felon in question. But, if I was not that, he
had no doubt I was worse; a poacher, or, for what he knew, a murderer.
He had a kind of a notion that he had seen my face before about some
such affair; out of all doubt I was an old offender. He had it in his
choice to send me to hard labour as a vagrant, upon the strength of my
appearance and the contradictions in my story, or to order me to
Warwick; and, out of the spontaneous goodness of his disposition, he
chose the milder side of the alternative. He could assure me I should
not slip through his fingers. It was of more benefit to his majesty's
government to hang one such fellow as he suspected me to be, than, out
of mistaken tenderness, to concern one's self for the good of all the
beggars in the nation.
Finding it was impossible to work, in the way I desired, on a man so
fully impressed with his own dignity and importance and my utter
insignificance, I claimed that, at least, the money taken from my person
should be restored to me. This was granted. His worship perhaps
suspected that he had stretched a point in what he had already done,
and was therefore the less unwilling to relax in this incidental
circumstance. My conductors did not oppose themselves to this
indulgence, for a reason that will appear in the sequel. The justice
however enlarged upon his clemency in this proceeding. He did not know
whether he was not exceeding the spirit of his commission in complying
with my demand. So much money in my possession could not be honestly
come by. But it was his temper to soften, as far as could be done with
propriety, the strict letter of the law.
There were cogent reasons why the gentlemen who had originally taken me
into custody, chose that I should continue in their custody when my
examination was over. Every man is, in his different mode, susceptible
to a sense of honour; and they did not choose to encounter the disgrace
that would accrue to them, if justice had been done. Every man is in
some degree influenced by the love of power; and they were willing I
should owe any benefit I received, to their sovereign grace and
benignity, and not to the mere reason of the case. It was not however an
unsubstantial honour and barren power that formed the objects of their
pursuit: no, their views were deeper than that. In a word, though they
chose that I should retire from the seat of justice, as I had come
before it, a prisoner, yet the tenor of my examination had obliged them,
in spite of themselves, to suspect that I was innocent of the charge
alleged against me. Apprehensive therefore that the hundred guineas
which had been offered as a reward for taking the robber was completely
out of the question in the present business, they were contented to
strike at smaller game. Having conducted me to an inn, and given
directions respecting a vehicle for the journey, they took me aside,
while one of them addressed me in the following manner:--
"You see, my lad, how the case stands: hey for Warwick is the word I and
when we are got there, what may happen then I will not pretend for to
say. Whether you are innocent or no is no business of mine; but you are
not such a chicken as to suppose, if so be as you are innocent, that
that will make your game altogether sure. You say your business calls
you another way, and as how you are in haste: I scorns to cross any man
in his concerns, if I can help it. If therefore you will give us them
there fifteen shiners, why snug is the word. They are of no use to you;
a beggar, you know, is always at home. For the matter of that, we could
have had them in the way of business, as you saw, at the justice's. But
I am a man of principle; I loves to do things above board, and scorns to
extort a shilling from any man."
He who is tinctured with principles of moral discrimination is apt upon
occasion to be run away with by his feelings in that respect, and to
forget the immediate interest of the moment. I confess, that the first
sentiment excited in my mind by this overture was that of indignation. I
was irresistibly impelled to give utterance to this feeling, and
postpone for a moment the consideration of the future. I replied with
the severity which so base a proceeding appeared to deserve. My
bear-leaders were considerably surprised with my firmness, but seemed to
think it beneath them to contest with me the principles I delivered. He
who had made the overture contented himself with replying, "Well, well,
my lad, do as you will; you are not the first man that has been hanged
rather than part with a few guineas." His words did not pass unheeded by
me. They were strikingly applicable to my situation, and I was
determined not to suffer the occasion to escape me unimproved.
The pride of these gentlemen however was too great to admit of further
parley for the present. They left me abruptly; having first ordered an
old man, the father of the landlady, to stay in the room with me while
they were absent. The old man they ordered, for security, to lock the
door, and put the key in his pocket; at the same time mentioning below
stairs the station in which they had left me, that the people of the
house might have an eye upon what went forward, and not suffer me to
escape. What was the intention of this manoeuvre I am unable certainly
to pronounce. Probably it was a sort of compromise between their pride
and their avarice; being desirous, for some reason or other, to drop me
as soon as convenient, and therefore determining to wait the result of
my private meditations on the proposal they had made.