"Precisely, Mr. Jenkins," the constable answered. "You are a man of sense. For my part," he continued, looking round a little defiantly, "I am no Whig, and I am not for meddling with Court gentlemen, and least of all lawyers. And if you will take my advice, Mr. D----, you will be satisfied to lay this young jail-bird by the heels; and if he does not speak before the rope is round his neck, it is not likely that you will get your money other ways. But, lord," the good man went on, standing back from me, to view me the better, "he is young to be such a villain! It is 'broke and entered,' too, and so he will swing for it." And he took off his hat and wiped his bald head, while he gazed at me between pity and admiration. Mrs. D----, who was very far from sharing either of these feelings, would have had me taken at once before a Justice and committed. But the constable, partly to prove his importance, and partly, I believe, to give me a chance of disclosing where the money lay, before it was too late, would have the house and garden searched, and all the boys examined; under the impression that I might have had one of these for my accomplice. Naturally, however, nothing came of this, except the discovery that I had been out of nights lately; which had scarcely been made when who should appear on the scene, in an unlucky hour for me, but the gentleman who had identified me outside the gaming room at the "Rose." As he had come for the very purpose of laying a complaint against me, his story destroyed the last scrap of my credit, by exhibiting me as a secret rake; and this removing all doubt of my guilt, if any were still entertained even by Mrs. Harris, it was determined to convey me, dinner over, to Sir Baldwin Winston's, at Abbot's Stanstead, to be committed; the two Justices who resided in Ware being at the moment disabled. All this time, and while my fate was being decided, I listened to one and another in a dull despair, which deprived me of the power to defend myself; and from which nothing less than Mrs. D----'s atrocious proposal to flog me, until I gave up the money, could draw me, and that only for a moment. Conscious of my guilt, and seized in the act and on the scene of my crime, I beheld only the near and certain prospect of punishment; while I had not the temptation to tell all, and inform against my crafty accomplice, to which a knowledge of her destination must have exposed me. Besides--and I think a great part of my apathy was due to this--I still felt the stunning effects of the blow which her cruel treachery had dealt me. I saw her in her true light; and as I sat, weeping silently, and seeming to those who watched me, little moved, I was thinking at least as much of the past and my love, and her craft, as of the fate that lay before me.