. The justice was by no means inclined to
digest the being expostulated with in this manner by a person in the habiliments
of a beggar. In the midst of my address he would have silenced me for my
impertinence, but that I spoke with an earnestness with which he was wholly
unable to contend. When I had finished, he told me that it was all to no
purpose, and that it might have been better for me if I had shown myself less
insolent. It was clear that I was a vagabond and a suspicious person. The more
earnest I showed myself to get off, the more reason there was he should keep me
fast. Perhaps after all I should turn out to be the felon in question. But, if I
was not that, he had no doubt I was worse; a poacher, or for what he knew a
murderer. He had a kind of a notion that he had seen my face before about some
such affair; out of all doubt I was an old offender. He had it in his choice to
send me to hard labour as a vagrant upon the strength of my appearance and the
contradictions in my story, or to order me to Warwick; and out of the
spontaneous goodness of his disposition he chose the milder side of the
alternative. He could assure me I should not slip through his fingers. It was of
more benefit to his majesty's government to hang one such fellow as he suspected
me to be, than out of mistaken tenderness to concern oneself for the good of all
the beggars in the nation.
    Finding it was impossible to work, in the way I desired, on a man, so fully
impressed with his own dignity and importance and my utter insignificance, I
claimed that at least the money taken from my person should be restored to me.
This was granted. His worship perhaps suspected that he had stretched a point in
what he had already done, and was therefore the less unwilling to relax in this
incidental circumstance. My conductors did not oppose themselves to this
indulgence, for a reason that will appear in the sequel. The justice however
enlarged upon his clemency in this proceeding. He did not know whether he was
not exceeding the spirit of his commission in complying with my demand. So much
money in my possession could not be honestly come by. But it was his temper to
soften, as far as could be done with propriety, the strict letter of the law.
    There were cogent reasons why the gentlemen who had originally taken me into
custody, chose that I should continue in their custody when my examination was
over
