“Fine clothes, eh?” cried another, a portly dame of certain years.  “Much fine clothes he’ll need where he’m gone.”

“Yes, indeed, that he will na.  Bad luck ’twas to Mary Cullen as took un into her house.  Now she’s no lodging money for her rooms, and her lodgers be both in Newgate; least ways, one of un.”

“Ah now, ’tis a pity for Mary Cullen, she do need the money so much—­”

“Shut ye all your mouths, the lot o’ you,” cried Mary Cullen herself, appearing at the door. “’Tis not she is needing the little money, for she has it right here in the corner of her apron.  Every stiver Mary Cullen’s young men said they’d pay they paid, like the gentlemen they were.  I’ll warrant the raggle of ye would do well to make out fine as Mary Cullen hath.”

“Oh now, is that true, Mary Cullen?” said a voice. “’Twas said that these two were noble folk come here for the sport of it.”

“What else but true?  Do you never know the look of gentry?  My fakes, I’ll warrant the young gentleman is back within a fortnight.  His brother, the younger one, said to me hisself but this very morn, his brother was hinnocent as a child; that he was obliged to strike the other man for fear of his own life.  Now, what can judge do but turn un loose?  Four sovereigns he gave me this very morn.  What else can judge do but turn un free?  Tell me that, now!”

“Let’s see the fine clothes,” said the first old lady to the apprentice boy, reaching out a hand and pulling at the corner of the box-lid.  The youth was nothing loath to show, with professional pride, the quality of his burden, and so raised the lid.

“Land save us!  ’Tis gentry sure enough they are,” cried the inquisitive one.  “Do-a look in there!  Such clothes and laces, such a brand new wig, such silken hose!  Law o’ land!  Must have cost all of forty crowns.  Mary Cullen, right ye are; ’twas quality ye had with ye, even if ’twas but for little while.”

“And them gone to prison, him on trial for his life!  I saw un ride out this very yesterday, fast as though the devil was behind un, and a finer body of a man never did I look at in my life.  What pity ’tis, what pity ’tis!”

“Well,” said the apprentice, with a certain superiority in his air.  “I dare wait no longer.  My master said the gentleman was to have the clothes this very afternoon.  So if to prison he be gone, to prison must I go too.”  Upon which he set off doggedly, and so removed one of the main causes for the assemblage at the curb.

The apprentice was hungry and weary enough before he reached the somber portals, yet his insistence won past gate-keeper and turnkey, one after another, till at length he reached the jailer who adjudged himself fit to pass upon the stolid demand that the messenger be admitted with the parcel for John Law, Esquire, late of Bradwell Street, marked urgent, and collect fifty sovereigns.  The humor of all this appealed to the Jailer mightily.