Were it not for his dastardly treatment of the women who gave him their love, the fate of John Hadfield would seem hard. He was not hanged for swindling John Crump out of £50--which indeed the value of his carriage and its contents, left behind at Keswick, would have more than cancelled--but for attempting to swindle him under the fictitious name of Colonel Hope. Thus by assuming the character of another man he became entangled in one of the fine-spun meshes of the law, and was held guilty of an intention to defraud. Our great-grandfathers, who, with the assistance of Sir Alexander Thomson, could hang an old woman for stealing a few potatoes in a bread riot, thought it expedient also to kill a man who obtained £50 by telling a lie. There is much truth in the proposition, which has been stated with such inaccuracy by De Quincey, that, but for his heartless conduct to Mary of Buttermere, John Hadfield might have escaped the gallows. It is probable that Mr Crump would have been loth to advertise himself as a credulous dupe, unless he had thought that it was his duty to give evidence against a heartless seducer. Parson Nicholson, also, would have had no reason to depart from the attitude he had taken up before he was aware that he had officiated at a bigamous marriage. [Illustration: MARY of BUTTERMERE. _Sketched from Life July 1800_] Notwithstanding that his career was marked by so many villainies, John Hadfield is in many respects an admirable rascal. Setting aside his behaviour towards women--if that is possible even for a moment--he played a part which required infinite tact and magnificent courage. Although occasionally he robbed a man who was not rich, yet until the crime of Buttermere such an occurrence was in the nature of an accident, and was rather the fault of the wronged one for putting himself in the path. Like Claude Duval, the Keswick impostor was in the main merciful towards the impecunious; not indeed for conscience sake, but because he believed that his rightful place was among the wealthy. A hunter of big game, dukes, members of Parliament, and prosperous merchants were his proper prey! And the man who could maintain a decent social position for twenty years, in spite of the heavy handicaps of poverty and lowly birth, and could compel those whom one of his class should have met only as a lackey to receive him on equal terms, was more than a common trickster. An insatiable love of pleasure robbed him of all foresight and prudence, or such a consummate liar might have climbed high. Even as he was--had an earl been his father--he might have gone down to posterity as one of the greatest diplomats the world has ever seen.