“I can’t, my dear Folliard; it won’t stay up for me.”

“Egad! and you’ll soon get a receipt for holding it up.  Why the mischief can’t you have spunk?”

“Spunk; how the deuce could you expect spunk from any man in my condition?  It is difficult to understand you, Mr. Folliard; you told me a minute ago to repent, and now you tell me to have spunk; pray what do you mean by that?”

“Why, confound it, I mean that you should repent with spunk.  However, let us come to more important matters; what can be done for you?”

“I know not; I am incapable of thinking on any thing but that damned gallows without; yet I should wish to make my will.”

“Your will!  Why, I think you have lost your senses; don’t you know that when you’re hanged every shilling and acre you are possessed of will be forfeited to the crown?”

“True,” replied the other, “I had forgotten that.  Could Hastings be induced to decline prosecuting?”

“What! to compromise a felony, and be transported himself.  Thank you for nothing baronet; that’s rather a blue look up.  No, our only plan is to try and influence the grand jury to throw out the bills; but then, again, there are indictments against you to no end.  Hastings’ case is only a single one, and, even if he failed, it would not better your condition a whit.  Under the late Administration we could have saved you by getting a packed jury; but that’s out of the question now.  All we can do, I think, is to get up a memorial strongly signed, supplicating the Lord Lieutenant to commute your sentence from hanging to transportation for life.  I must confess, however, there is little hope even there.  They will come down with their cursed reasoning and tell us that the rank and education of the offender only aggravate the offence; and that, if they allow a man so convicted to escape, in consequence of his high position in life, every humble man found guilty and executed for the same crime—­is murdered.  They will tell us it would be a prostitution of the prerogative of the Crown to connive at crime in the rich and punish it in the poor.  And, again, there’s the devil of it; your beggarly want of hospitality in the first place, and the cursed swaggering severity with which you carried out your loyalty, by making unexpected domiciliary visits to the houses of loyal but humane Protestant families, with the expectation of finding a priest or a Papist under their protection:  both these, I say, have made you the most unpopular man in the county; and, upon my soul, Sir Robert, I don’t think there will be a man upon the grand jury whose family you have not insulted by your inveterate loyalty.  No one, I tell! you, likes a persecutor.  Still, I say, I’ll try what I can do with the grand jury.  I’ll see my friends and yours—­if you have any now; make out a list of them in a day or two—­and you may rest assured that I will leave nothing undone to extricate you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Folliard; but do you know why I am here?”