away, because I took care not to give him the slightest umbrage of my design of seizing him. Nor had I, until the day I produced my orders from the Court to arrest Kidd, communicated them to anybody. But I found it necessary to produce my orders to my Council to animate them to join heartily in securing Kidd. Another reason why I took him not up sooner, was that he had brought his wife and family hither on the sloop with him who (_sic_) I believed” (poor wretch!) “he would not readily forsake.” At the same time whilst thus excusing himself for not arresting Kidd more promptly, Bellamont seems to have felt that some explanation was called for to justify his arresting him at all. “Your Lordships may observe,” he writes, and it requires a very microscopical scrutiny of his hypocritical letter to observe it, “that the promise made Kidd in my letter of a kind reception, and promising the King’s pardon for him, was conditional, that is, provided that he was as innocent as he pretended to be. But I quickly found sufficient cause to suspect him to be very guilty by the many lies and contradictions he told me.” What these lies and contradictions were, he is very careful not to say. Kidd’s own narrative, corroborated by the depositions of several of his crew, are perfectly intelligible and straightforward documents, far more intelligible and convincing than Bellamont’s lame reasons for thinking him guilty. The first of these was that Kidd had communicated in the first instance with his old friend Emmot, who Bellamont says was “a cunning Jacobite and my avowed enemy.” The second reason assigned is, “I thought he looked very guilty.” It is not improbable that poor Kidd was taken aback by his cold reception; but it is safe to assume that whatever his demeanor had been, it would have been regarded by the Governor as a sure sign of his guilt. Sometimes during his examination he seems to have been cheerful and breezy. With what result? The Governor reports, “Kidd did strangely trifle with me and the Council three or four times that we had him under examination.” Finding that his jocular efforts were not appreciated, Kidd not unnaturally became grave. But the result was still unsatisfactory. “He being examined two or three times by the Council and also some of his men, I observed,” says Bellamont, “that he seemed much disturbed.” The last time he was under examination, his appearance seems again to have changed, but still, as ever, for the worse. Probably by this time he had grown restless and restive. “I fancied,” Bellamont writes, “he looked as if he were upon the wing and resolved to run away.” But after all, the chief offence for which the poor man was at last consigned to gaol, was not committed by him, but by his evil genius, Livingstone, who asked Bellamont to return him the bond he had entered into for Kidd’s good behaviour. “I thought,” says Bellamont, “this was such an impertinence that it was time for me to look about me and secure Kidd.” On this last