I was led, stupified by the result of my trial, back to the prison. When I regained the use of my faculties, my awful situation became horridly apparent. There was I, an innocent and injured man, condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of the law. For endeavouring to gain possession of my own, I was about to become a spectacle for the fish-fags and costermongers of London,--to have my name handed down to posterity by that undying trumpeter of evil-doers, Mr. Catnach, of the Seven-dials, who alternately delights the public with "three yards long of every new song, and all for a penny," and "the last dying speech and confession" of those who, dreading to be bed-ridden, and possessing an unconquerable aversion to doctors' stuff and virtue, have danced upon nothing, and died with their shoes on. "How often," thought I, "have I seen a withered hag kneeling at the rails of an area, exciting the sympathies and curiosity of servants of all-work, and greasy melting cooks, by the recital of atrocities that the hand of man never executed. 'Here's a full, true, and 'tickler account of a horrid murder, which was performed in the New-cut, Lambeth, on the body of a baked-'tater manufacturer, who was savagely and inhumanly murdered by that ferocious and hard-hearted villain, Benjamin Burker;--here you have the account how, arter putting a poor man's plaister, composed of pitch and bird-lime, over the unhappy _indivigual's mouf_ until the breath was out on his body, he shoved him into the oven, and lived seven days and nights on baked taters and the manyfacterers.' Thus might I be misrepresented. The thought was madness!"