I had been near a year in the work, and I had plied it so well that the clerk, or headman, either flattered me or did really believe that I behaved very well. But I was terribly frighted to hear myself called out aloud, just as they used to call for such as had done some misdemeanour, and were to be lashed or otherwise corrected. I came in like a malefactor indeed, and thought I looked like one just taken in the fact and carried before the justice; and indeed when I came in, for I was carried into an inner room or parlour in the house to him (his discourse to the rest was in a large hall, where he sat in a seat like a lord judge upon the bench, or a petty king upon his throne); when I came in, I say, he ordered his man to withdraw, and I standing half naked and bare-headed, with my haugh, or hoe, in my hand (the posture and figure I was in at my work), near the door, he bade me lay down my hoe and come nearer. Then he began to look a little less stern and terrible than I fancied him to look before, or, perhaps, both his countenance then and before might be to my imagination differing from what they really were; for we do not always judge those things by the real temper of the person, but by the measure of our apprehensions. “Hark ye, young man, how old are you?” says my master; and so our dialogue began. _Jacque_. Indeed, sir, I do not know. _Mast_. What is your name? _Jacque_. They call me Colonel[4] here, but my name is Jacque, an’t please your worship. _Mast_. But prithee, what is thy name? _Jacque_. Jacque. _Mast_. What! is thy Christian name, then, Colonel, and thy surname Jacque? _Jacque_. Truly, sir, to tell your honour the truth, I know little or nothing of myself,[5] nor what my true name is; but thus I have been called ever since I remember. Which is my Christian name, or which my surname, or whether I was ever christened or not, I cannot tell. _Mast_. Well, however, that’s honestly answered. Pray, how came you hither, and on what account are you made a servant here? _Jacque_. I wish your honour could have patience with me to hear the whole story; it is the hardest and most unjust thing that ever came before you. _Mast_. Say you so? Tell it me at large, then. I’ll hear it, I promise that, if it be an hour long. This encouraged me, and I began at being a soldier, and being persuaded to desert at Dunbar, and gave him all the particulars, as they are related above, to the time of my coming on shore and the captain talking to me about my bill after I arrived here. He held up his hands several times as I went on, expressing his abhorrence of the usage I had met with at Newcastle, and inquired the name of the master of the ship; “for,” said he, “that captain, for all his smooth words, must be a rogue.” So I told him his name, and the name of the ship, and he took it down in his book, and then he went on.