Ambrose and Stephen exchanged a passionate
embrace, feeling what it was to be still left to one another. The
jester too shook his nephew's hand, saying, "Boy, boy, the blessing of
such as I is scarce worth the having, but I would thy mother could see
thee this day."

Stephen was left with these words and his brother's look to bear him
through a trying time.

For the "Captain of Newgate" was an autocrat, who looked on his captives
as compulsory lodgers, out of whom he was entitled to wring as much as
possible--as indeed he had no other salary, nor means of maintaining his
underlings, a state of things which lasted for two hundred years longer,
until the days of James Oglethorpe and John Howard. Even in the rare
cases of acquittals, the prisoner could not be released till he had paid
his fees, and that Giles Headley should have been borne off from the
scaffold itself in debt to him was an invasion of his privileges, which
did not dispose him to be favourable to any one connected with that
affair; and he liked to show his power and dignity even to an alderman.

He was found sitting in a comfortable tapestried chamber, handsomely
dressed in orange and brown, and with a smooth sleek countenance and the
appearance of a good-natured substantial citizen.

He only half rose from his big carved chair, and touched without
removing his cap, to greet the alderman, as he observed, without the
accustomed prefix of your worship--"So, you are come about your
prentice's fees and dues. By Saint Peter of the Fetters, 'tis an
irksome matter to have such a troop of idle, mischievous, dainty
striplings thrust on one, giving more trouble, and making more call and
outcry than twice as many honest thieves and pickpurses."

"Be assured, sir, they will scarce trouble you longer than they can
help," said Master Headley.

"Yea, the Duke and my Lord Edmund are making brief work of them," quoth
the jailer. "Ha!" with an oath, "what's that? Nought will daunt those
lads till the hangman is at their throats."

For it was a real hurrah that reached his ears. The jester had got all
the boys round him in the court, and was bidding them keep up a good
heart, for their lives were safe, and their mothers would beg them off.
Their shouts did not tend to increase the captain's good humour, and
though he certainly would not have let out Alderman Headley's remaining
apprentice without his fee, he made as great a favour of permission, and
charged as