creature from justice only so long as
clemency seemed profitable. At the first hint of disobedience Blueskin
was committed to Newgate. When he had stood his trial, and was being
taken to the Condemned Hole, he beckoned to Wild as though to a
conference, and cut his throat with a penknife. The assembled rogues and
turnkeys thought their Jonathan dead at last, and rejoiced exceedingly
therein. Straightway the poet of Newgate's Garland leaped into verse:

Then hopeless of life,
He drew his penknife,
And made a sad widow of Jonathan's wife.
But forty pounds paid her, her grief shall appease,
And every man round me may rob, if he please.

But Jonathan recovered, and Molly, his wife, was destined a second time
to win the conspicuous honour that belongs to a hempen widow.

As his career drew to its appointed close, Fortune withheld her smiles.
'People got so peery,' complained the great man, 'that ingenious
men were put to dreadful shifts.' And then, highest tribute to his
greatness, an Act of Parliament was passed which made it a capital
offence 'for a prig to steal with the hands of other people'; and in the
increase of public vigilance his undoing became certain. On the 2nd of
January, 1725, a day not easy to forget, a creature of Wild's spoke
with fifty yards of lace, worth L40, at his Captain's bidding, and Wild,
having otherwise disposed of the plunder, was charged on the 10th of
March that he 'did feloniously receive of Katharine Stetham ten guineas
on account and under colour of helping the said Katharine Stetham to
the said lace again, and did not then, nor any time since, discover
or apprehend, or cause to be apprehended and brought to Justice, the
persons that committed the said felony.' Thus runs the indictment, and,
to the inexpressible relief of lesser men, Jonathan Wild was condemned
to the gallows.

Thereupon he had serious thoughts of 'putting his house in order'; with
an ironical smile he demanded an explanation of the text: 'Cursed is
every one that hangeth on a tree'; but, presently reflecting that 'his
Time was but short in this World, he improved it to the best advantage
in Eating, Drinking, Swearing, Cursing, and talking to his Visitants.'
For all his bragging, drink alone preserved his courage: 'he was very
restless in the Condemned Hole,' though 'he gave little or no attention
to the condemned Sermon which the purblind Ordinary preach