ever
planned; and how could I be such an ass as to expect to carry through a job that
had two in it? But we know how to come by them both, if they are wanted, that's
one good thing.«
    Accordingly, like a defeated general, sad and sulky, he led back his
discomfited forces to the metropolis, and dismissed them for the night.
    The next morning early, he was under the necessity of making his report to
the sitting magistrate of the day. The gentleman who occupied the chair of
office on this occasion (for the bailies, Anglicè, aldermen, take it by
rotation) chanced to be the same by whom Butler was committed, a person very
generally respected among his fellow-citizens. Something he was of a humorist,
and rather deficient in general education; but acute, patient, and upright,
possessed of a fortune acquired by honest industry which made him perfectly
independent; and, in short, very happily qualified to support the respectability
of the office which he held.
    Mr. Middleburgh had just taken his seat, and was debating in an animated
manner, with one of his colleagues, the doubtful chances of a game at golf which
they had played the day before, when a letter was delivered to him, addressed
»For Bailie Middleburgh; These: to be forwarded with speed.« It contained these
words: -
 
        »Sir, - I know you to be a sensible and a considerate magistrate, and
        one who, as such, will be content to worship God, though the devil bid
        you. I therefore expect that, notwithstanding the signature of this
        letter acknowledges my share in an action, which, in a proper time and
        place, I would not fear either to avow or to justify, you will not on
        that account reject what evidence I place before you. The clergyman,
        Butler, is innocent of all but involuntary presence at an action which
        he wanted spirit to approve of, and from which he endeavoured, with his
        best set phrases, to dissuade us. But it was not for him that it is my
        hint to speak. There is a woman in your jail, fallen under the edge of a
        law so cruel, that it has hung by the wall like unscoured armour, for
        twenty years, and is now brought down and whetted to spill the blood of
        the most beautiful and most innocent creature whom the walls of a prison
        ever girdled in. Her sister knows of her innocence, as she communicated
        to her that she was betrayed by a villain. - O that high Heaven
 
Would put in every