It was certain that Jenny had been born and brought up in this vile receptacle or Temple of Vice. Many people were found who had recollections of Jenny as a child playing in the gutter, or on the steps of St. Giles's Church. These recollections were of an edifying nature. One gentleman, of an aspect which we call smug--somewhat resembling, in fact, my cousin Matthew at his earliest and best--related in my hearing that he had addressed the child, and on hearing that her ambition was to become an Orange Girl at Drury Lane Theatre, had warned her against the perils of that path; unhappily without effect, except that while he was exhorting her to a godly life, his tears were checked by the theft of his pocket-handkerchief. And so on: and so on; because the occasion gave an opportunity for securing a momentary distinction, and when the imagination is fired the tongue is loosed. Again, there is in the English mind something particularly repellant in the life and the acts of the informer. Now it cannot be denied that in my Trial, Jenny figured as one who had turned against her old friends and associates; had used her knowledge to secure their arrest; and had induced her mother and sister and at least one of the rogues of the Black Jack, to join her in giving evidence against the conspirators. So that when the news was spread abroad that her house, as well as the Black Jack, had been wrecked and the contents destroyed there was at first a strong feeling among many that this was a kind of wild justice which she deserved, because she ought not to have turned against her friends. As for the man for whose sake she did it, you may be sure that the motive commonly attributed to her was such as would naturally commend itself to the majority. That any woman should be so deeply moved by generosity of heart, by love of justice, by honest indignation against so foul a conspiracy as to resolve, at all risks and hazards, to defeat the object of the villains, and to prevent the destruction of an innocent man, required too high a flight to make it possible to be considered by the common sort--I mean, not the poor, but the common sort of 'respectable' burgesses; the folk of the coffee-house and the club. The world always accepts the worst where it ought to believe the best. And the wickedness of the natural man is never so strongly demonstrated as when he is searching for motives. In a word, it was pretended and believed, that in order to rescue her lover--a broken-down gentleman and a highwayman--from the charge of robbery, which could only be proved by the witnesses taking false names, in order to protect themselves, being unfortunately rogues themselves, she brought a charge against them of conspiracy and exposed their true names and their history, which she could only effect by the knowledge she got from the Black Jack and the assistance of her mother: that her lover, it was true, was cast loose upon the world again; but that the innocence of those four persons,