'And this time, too, it was a watch which was our ruin. How often did I
warn him: "Jack," I would say, "take all the money you can. Guineas tell
no tale. But leave the watches in their owners' fobs." Alas! he did not
heed my words, and the last man he ever stopped on the road was that
pompous rascal, Dr. Bell, then chaplain to the Princess Amelia. "Give me
your money," screamed Jack, "and take no notice or I'll blow your
brains out." And the doctor gave him all that he had, the mean-spirited
devil-dodger, and it was no more than eighteenpence. Now what should a
man of courage do with eighteenpence? So poor Jack was forced to seize
the parson's watch and trinkets as well, and thus it was that a second
time we faced the Blind Beak.
When Jack brought home the watch, I was seized with a shuddering
presentiment, and I would have given the world to throw it out of the
window. But I could not bear to see him pinched with hunger, and he
had already tossed the doctor's eighteenpence to a beggar woman. So
I trudged off to the pawnbroker's, to get what price I could, and I
bethought me that none would know me for what I was so far away as
Oxford Street. But the monster behind the counter had a quick suspicion,
though I swear I looked as innocent as a babe; he discovered the owner
of the watch, and infamously followed me to my house.
'The next day we were both arrested, and once more we stood in the hot,
stifling Court of the Old Bailey. Jack was radiant as ever, the one
spot of colour and gaiety in that close, sodden atmosphere. When we were
taken from Bow Street a thousand people formed our guard of honour, and
for a month we were the twin wonders of London. The lightest word, the
fleetest smile of the renowned highwayman, threw the world into a fit
of excitement, and a glimpse of Rann was worth a king's ransom. I could
look upon him all day for nothing! And I knew what a fever of fear
throbbed behind his mask of happy contempt. Yet bravely he played the
part unto the very end. If the toasts of London were determined to gaze
at him, he assured them they should have a proper salve for their
eyes. So he dressed himself as a light-hearted sportsman. His coat and
waistcoat were of pea-green cloth; his buckskin breeches were spotlessly
new, and all tricked out with the famous strings; his hat was bound
round with silver cords; and even the ushers of the Court were touched
to courtesy. He would whisper to me, as we stood in the dock, "Cheer up,
my girl. I have ordered the best supper that Covent Garden can provide,
and we will make merry to-night when this foolish old judge has done his
duty." The supper was never eaten. Through the weary afternoon we waited
for acquittal. The autumn sun sank in hopeless gloom. The wretched lamps
twinkled through the jaded air of the court-house. In an hour I lived
a thousand years of misery, and when the sentence was read, the words
carried no sense to my withered brain. It was only in my cell I realised
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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