a most miserable plight, the roads being exceedingly foul, and folks
more humoured of nights to drowse in their chimnies than to sit in a
draughty barn and witness our performances; and then, about the middle
of February we, in a kind of desperation, got back again to London, only
to find that we must go forth again, the town still lying in ruins, and
no one disposed to any kind of amusement, except in high places, where
such actors as we were held in contempt. So we, with our hearts in our
boots, as one may say, set out again to seek our fortunes on the
Cambridge road, and here, with no better luck than elsewhere, for at
Tottenham Cross we had the mischance to set fire to the barn wherein we
were playing, by a candle falling in some loose straw, whereby we did
injury to the extent of some shilling or two, for which the farmer would
have us pay a pound, and Jack Dawson stoutly refusing to satisfy his
demand he sends for the constable, who locks us all up in the cage that
night, to take us before the magistrate in the morning. And we found to
our cost that this magistrate had as little justice as mercy in his
composition; for though he lent a patient ear to the farmer's case, he
would not listen to Jack Dawson's argument, which was good enough, being
to the effect that we had not as much as a pound amongst us, and that he
would rather be hanged than pay it if he had; and when Ned Herring
(seeing the kind of Puritanical fellow he was) urged that, since the
damage was not done by any design of ours, it must be regarded as a
visitation of Providence, he says: "Very good. If it be the will of
Providence that one should be scourged, I take it as the Divine purpose
that I should finish the business by scourging the other"; and therewith
he orders the constable to take what money we have from our pockets and
clap us in the stocks till sundown for payment of the difference. So in
the stocks we three poor men were stuck for six mortal hours, which was
a wicked, cruel thing indeed, with the wind blowing a sort of rainy snow
about our ears; and there I do think we must have perished of cold and
vexation but that our little Moll brought us a sheet for a cover, and
tired not in giving us kind words of comfort.

At five o'clock the constable unlocked us from our vile confinement, and
I do believe we should have fallen upon him and done him a mischief for
his pains there and then, but that we were all frozen as stiff as stones
with sit