titude of
sins to account for, he had a wife and a large family of children, who
depended upon his earnings for support.

The tallest of these young gentlemen then asked him, in a hoarse tone of
voice, what was his heaviest sin? He replied, committing his lodger, a
poor carver and gilder, to the Marshalsea, for rent due to him, which
the badness of the times, and his business in particular, would not
enable him to pay. He said, he would not have confined him so long, but
in revenge for a severe beating he gave him one day when they fell to
loggerheads and boxed. He further told them, the poor man had been six
months in captivity; and that he understood from a friend of his, the
other day, that he made out but a miserable living by making brewers'
pegs, bungs for their barrels, and watchmakers' skewers.

The young gentleman then told him, that if he did not instantly sign his
discharge, which he would write, he might rest assured of no mitigation
of the dreadful punishment he would go through in a few minutes; for
those he had seen come out of his coach were his harpies in disguise,
and were now in readiness to bear him to the infernal regions.

The trembling villain, without the least hesitation, complied. One of
the scholars fortunately having a pen and ink, the King of Terrors wrote
the discharge in a fair leaf of his pocket-book, as well as he could in
the dark, and then made the coachman sign it.

Having so done, the scholars told him he might go for the present, and
that he would find his coach in less than an hour in Piccadilly or
Oxford Street.

One of the youths then mounted the box, while the others got within, and
away they drove to the Marshalsea, but in the way they stopped till they
had taken off their disguise.

The youth who had the discharge, after making a collection among the
others, went into the prison, and gave the poor fellow what set him at
liberty the next morning.

The scholars then drove on to Oxford Street, congratulating themselves
on the success of their adventure, and all happy to a degree of rapture
at being instrumental in obtaining the captive's liberty.

About a quarter of an hour after they quitted the coach, they observed
the coachman arrive; who mounted the box, and drove home, muttering the
bitterest execrations, and damning his father confessor for bilking him
of half a guinea which he gave him that morning for an absolution, that
was to have rubbed out the entire score of