He took especial delight in imposing this last task upon me, and in depicting, when I returned fresh from performing it, the penalties to which I had rendered myself liable. It may occur to some that when I passed through the streets with such papers in my hands I had an easy way out of my troubles; and could at any moment by conveying the letters to the Secretary's office procure the tyrant's arrest, and my own freedom. But besides the fact that his frequent change of lodging, his excellent information, and the legion of spies who served him, rendered it doubtful whether with the best will in the world the messengers would find him where I had left him, he frequently boasted--and the boast, if unfounded, added to my distrust of all with whom I came into contact--that the very tipsters and officers were in his pay, and that Cutts himself dared not arrest him! Besides, I more than suspected that often the letters he gave me were blank, and the errands harmless: and that the one and the other were feigned only for the purpose of trying me, or out of pure cruelty--to the end that when I returned he might describe with gusto the process of hanging, drawing, and quartering, and gloat over the horror with which I listened to his relation; a practice which he carried to such an extent as more than once to reduce me to tears of rage and anguish. Such was my life at home, where if my tyrant was not always at my elbow I was every hour obnoxious to his appearance; for early in our connection he forbade me to lock my door. Abroad I was scarcely more easy, seeing that, besides an impression I had that wherever I went I was dogged, there was scarcely an item of news which it fell to my lot to record that did not throw me into a panic. One day it would be Mr. Bear arrested on a charge of high treason, and in possession of I knew not what compromising letters: another, the suicide in the Temple of a gentleman to whom I myself had a week earlier taken a letter, and who had in my presence let fall expressions which led me to think him in the same evil case with me. Another day it would be an announcement that the Government had discovered a new Conspiracy; or that letters going for France had been seized in Romney Marshes; or that the Lancashire witnesses were speaking more candidly; or that Dr. Oates had been taken up and held to bail for a misdemeanour. All these and many other rumours punished me in turn; and filling my mind with the keenest apprehensions, must in a short time have rendered my life intolerable.