My liberation did not come to pass so quickly as Mr. Ulceby had hoped, for the justices and the sheriff and the commander of the castle, and I know not how many authorities besides, all had something to say in the matter. After my friend's testimony that I was not his son had been accepted, I supposed I should be set free at once, but no such thing! "If I was not Jim Ulceby, who was I?" "Where was Jim Ulceby?" "How came I to resemble him?" So the authorities demanded, and seemed to think these questions must be answered before they gave me my liberty. One magistrate, whose gravity and dulness were of equal magnitude, took it into his head that a plot of some kind was on foot. If he could have had his way, I believe he would have put me to bodily torture; to torture of mind he often put me, coming to "examine the prisoner," by asking the most absurd questions, looking as solemn as an owl the while. I never understood his drift, nor I believe did he. Mr. Ulceby warned me of this man's first visit, and implored me to endure it with all the patience I could muster; so I contrived to keep my temper, and in the end the ass was good enough to express the judgment "that I was a blind instrument of the conspirators." That there was a conspiracy he was well assured. Acton gave us some trouble at first, holding that I was in fact his one-time crony, and that Mr. Ulceby had taken the course of denying me, as the one means of saving me from transportation to America. He declared that no man would be at the pains and cost which Mr. Ulceby took on my behalf for a stranger, and claimed "hush-money." When he could not extort that, he did his worst against me secretly. Even when the surgeon had restored me to something more like my former looks, Acton would not be convinced. The surgeon did me good service by giving evidence as to the recent date of the distortion of my face, which was corroborated by the sergeant who brought me to Hull. He testified that he had been perplexed when he arrested me by the freshness of the tattooing and of the scars. But eight days passed before my good friend, who had been unceasing in his exertions in my cause, came with the order for my release. Every comfort which money could procure during those weary days I enjoyed, and Mr. Ulceby gave me as much of his time as might be spared from the business of expediting my deliverance. After the second day of durance I kept to my own room. On that day I had the curiosity to look over the prison. It consisted of two houses which had been thrown into one, and of buildings which occupied two sides of a quadrangle behind them. These buildings would not have been used as stabling by a man who valued his horses. Here the wretches were confined who could not, or would not, pay for accommodation within the house; some of them kept safely by being laid on the floor with iron bars across their legs; others having liberty to stand upright, but chained to staples in the wall.