Accordingly, on the morning of Monday, Time laid his long hand upon Tony’s collar, and gave him eight distinct hints that his hour was come for being ornithologised by sentence of the great Law Bird, genus Black-cap, into jail bird, genus Wryneck. Never was there such mobbing to see a hanging. Half the Londoners that morning went without their breakfasts to be in time for the Old Bailey. Trot, trot, trot, canter and full gallop; away through Piccadilly; push on there, in the Strand, hey down Holborn Hill, with a yoicks in Cheapside, and a hark forward in Newgate Street, and a tally ho! in West Smithfield. They all meant to be in at the death. Never was there such a race, to see a man whose race was run losing it by a neck. And the order of the running was thus:--The Royal Humane Society got in first at the Drop, and had an excellent front row. The Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals was a good second; and may I die, if the Law Life Assurance hadn’t the assurance to come third. Next came the Philanthropic Society, with the Society of Good Samaritans barely a length behind; and then the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, neck and neck with the London Benevolent Society; all racing till they panted again, to see Tony put out of breath. You never saw such a chevy! Luckily there was no Anniversary at St. Paul’s, so the Sons of the Clergy cantered in with all the children of all the parishes that had any charity, to see an execution put in for the debt of Nature. Also the Medical Society came to see one die by the New Dropsy; and all the Knights of the Garter, with their orders, _it being a collar-day_, wherefore they wore their garters according to the fashion of Miss Bailey; and all the Foreign Ambassadors. Seeing which, Tony put on a good face, and walked stoutly up the ladder, saying softly to himself, “the eyes of Europe are upon you.” All being ready, with the Ordinary on the right hand, and the Extraordinary on the left, and the Great Constrictor a little behind, Tony (who had his whim with him) was asked how he felt himself, and how his father and mother did, and all his little brothers and sisters; to which he answered thankfully, that they were all very well, and that for his own part, he felt very comfortable, and died in the faith of St. Vitus. Now the faith of St. Vitus is not exactly the faith of the Church of England, nor, in faith, do I well know what faith it is; but the Ordinary took no objection to it, for he was a man in favour of universal toleration, remembering the saying of the heathen Priest of Apollo to the Bishop of Magnum Bonum, “You have _your_ thology, and let me have _my_thology.” So the Ordinary held his peace, but the Extraordinary would fain have argued the point regularly and methodically, according to the dogmatical manner of Cerberus, namely, in a discourse with three heads; and if he had once begun to spin the triple yarn of controversy, prosyversy, and viceversy into a cable,