Prythee, sit down, dear Moll; sit thee down, good child, all will be well.' And so the colonel proceeds with amazing volubility, and we sympathise with this admirable father of twenty-seven children under so cruel a hardship. But—not to follow the trial—the colonel culminated under the most trying circumstances. His dying speech is superb. He is honourably confessing his sins, but his natural instinct asserts itself. He cannot but admit, in common honesty, that he is a model character, and speaks under his gallows as if he were the good apprentice just arrived at the mayoralty. He admits, indeed, that he occasionally gave way to swearing, though he 'hated and loathed' the sin when he observed it; but he was—it was the source of all his troubles—of a 'hasty nature.' But he was brought up in an honest family in the good old times, and laments the bad times that have since come in. He has been a devoted loyalist; he has lived civilly and honestly at the upper end of Cheapside as became a freeman of the Company of Drapers; he was never known to be 'disguised in drink;' a small cup of cider in the morning, and two little glasses of sack and one of claret at dinner, were enough for him; he was a constant churchgoer, and of such delicate propriety of behaviour that he never 'saw a man in church with his hat on but it troubled him very much' (a phrase which reminds us of Johnson's famous friend); 'there must be,' he is sure, when he thinks of all his virtues, 'a thousand sorrowful souls and weeping eyes' for him this day. The attendant clergy are a little scandalised at this peculiar kind of penitence; and he is good enough to declare that he 'disclaims any desert of his own'—a sentiment which we feel to be a graceful concession, but not to be too strictly interpreted. The hangman is obliged to put the rope round his neck. '_Dost thou mean to choke me, fellow?_' exclaims the indignant colonel. 'What a simple fellow is this! how long have you been executioner that you know not how to put the knot?' He then utters some pious ejaculations, and as he is assuming the fatal cap, sees a lady at a window; he kisses his hand to her, and says, 'Your servant, Mistress;' and so pulling down the cap, the brave colonel vanishes, as the reporter tells us, with a very undaunted carriage to his last breath.