rest of my companions had entirely
forgotten how friendless and deserted I was. But, just as we were going
back to Gaol, up comes to the spikes of the Dock a gentleman with a red
face, and a vast bushy powdered wig, like a cauliflower in curls. He
wore a silk cassock and sash, and was the Ordinary; but he had
forgotten, I think, to come into the Prison and read prayers to us. He
kept those ministrations against such time as the Cart was ready, and
the Tree decked with its hempen garland. This gentlemen beckons me, and
asks if I have any Counsellor. I told him, No; and that I had no
Friends ayont Mother Drum, and she was laid up, sick of a pair of sore
shoulders. He goes back to the Bench and confers with the Gentlemen, and
by and by the Clerk of the Arraigns calls out that, through the Humanity
of the Sheriff, the prisoner John Dangerous was to have Counsel Assigned
to him. But it would have been more Humane, I think, to have let the
Court and the World know that I was a poor neglected Castaway, knowing
scarcely my right Hand from my left, and that all I had done had been in
that Blindfoldedness of Ignorance which can scarcely, I trust, be called
Sin.

Back, however, we went to Gaol, and a great Rout there was made that
night by Mrs. Macphilader for the payment of all arrears of Fees and
Garnish to her; for, you see, being a prudent Woman, she feared lest
some of the prisoners should be Acquitted, or Discharged on
proclamation. And our Gang of Blacks, for whose aid their friends in
ambush--and they had friends in all kinds of holes and corners, as I
afterwards discovered to my surprise--had mostly bountifully come
forward, did not trouble themselves much about the peril they were in,
but bestowed themselves of making a Roaring Night. And hindered by none
in Authority,--for the Gaolers and Turnkeys in those days were not above
drinking, and smoking, and singing, and dicing with their charges,--they
did keep it up so merrily and so roaringly, that the best part of the
night was spent before drowsiness came over Aylesbury Gaol.

Then the next day to Court, and there the Judges as before, and Sir John
the High Sheriff, and the Counsel for the Crown and for us, and twelve
honest gentlemen in a box by themselves, that were of the Petty Jury, to
try us; and, I am ashamed to say, a great store of Ladies, all in
ribbons and patches and laces and fine clothes, that sate some on the
Bench beside the Judges, and others in the bod