not get two false
witnesses against them at that time--were Mr. Ireland, Mr. Grove and Mr.
Pickering, and I looked upon them with infinite compassion, to see how
they would bear themselves. Mr. Pickering I had never seen before; so I
could not tell whether or no he bore himself as usual. But the two
others I had seen again and again; yet, with respect to them both I
remembered principally that occasion when Mr. Ireland had entertained
his mother and sister in Mr. Fenwick's lodging on that one night he was
in town, and gone off with them into the dark so merrily; and Mr. Grove
had brought up the chocolate in white cups, and we had all been merry
together. Now they stood here in the dock together, and answered to
their names cheerfully and courageously; and I could see that neither
anguish of heart nor the fear of death had availed to change their
countenances in the leastest degree. They stood there, scarcely moving,
except once or twice to whisper to one another, while Dr. Oates told his
lying tale.

It was now for the first time that I understood how shrewdly, and yet
how clumsily now and then, the man had weaved together his information.
He spoke with an abundance of detail that astonished me; he spoke of
names and places with the greatest precision; he related how himself had
been sent from St. Omer's with fifty pounds promised him, to kill Dr.
Tonge who had lately translated a book from the French named "The
Jesuits' Morals"; he spoke of a chapel in Mrs. Sanders' house, at
Wild-House, where he had been present, he said, at a piece of
conspiring; and so forth continually, interlarding his tale with bursts
of adjuration and piety and indignation, so evidently feigned--though
with something of the Puritan manner in it--that I marvelled that any
man could be deceived who did not wish to be; and all with his vile
accent. He spoke much also, as Mr. Whitbread had told me that he would,
of the consult of the Fathers--of all that is, who had the _jus
suffragii_ in England--that had been held at the White Horse Tavern in
the Strand, in April; pretending that at this the murder of the King was
again decided upon, and designed too, in all particulars; how Mr.
Pickering and Mr. Grove had been deputed to do the killing in St. James'
Park with screwed pistols, as His Majesty walked there, or if not there,
at Newmarket or Windsor; and how commissions had been given to various
persons (whom he named), which they were to hold in the