when she opened her lips she became instantly animated.  With a glass before her on the table, she would prattle frankly and engagingly of the past.  Strange cities had she seen; she had faced the dangers of an adventurous life with calmness and good temper.  And yet Botany Bay, with its attendant horrors, was already fading from her memory.  In imagination she was still with her incomparable hero, and it was her solace, after fifteen years, to sing the praise and echo the perfections of Sixteen-String Jack.

‘How well I remember,’ she would murmur, as though unconscious of her audience, ’the unhappy day when Jack Rann was first arrested.

It was May, and he came back travel-stained and weary in the brilliant dawn.  He had stopped a one-horse shay near the nine-mile stone on the Hounslow Road—­every word of his confession is burnt into my brain—­and had taken a watch and a handful of guineas.  I was glad enough of the money, for there was no penny in the house, and presently I sent the maid-servant to make the best bargain she could with the watch.  But the silly jade, by the saddest of mishaps, took the trinket straight to the very man who made it, and he, suspecting a theft, had us both arrested.  Even then Jack might have been safe, had not the devil prompted me to speak the truth.  Dismayed by the magistrate, I owned, wretched woman that I was, that I had received the watch from Rann, and in two hours Jack also was under lock and key.  Yet, when we were sent for trial I made what amends I could.  I declared on oath that I had never seen Sixteen-String Jack in my life; his name came to my lips by accident; and, hector as they would, the lawyers could not frighten me to an acknowledgment.  Meanwhile Jack’s own behaviour was grand.  I was the proudest woman in England as I stood by his side in the dock.  When you compared him with Sir John Fielding, you did not doubt for an instant which was the finer gentleman.  And what a dandy was my Jack!  Though he came there to answer for his life, he was all ribbons and furbelows.  His irons were tied up with the daintiest blue bows, and in the breast of his coat he carried a bundle of flowers as large as a birch-broom.  His neck quivered in the noose, yet he was never cowed to civility.  ’I know no more of the matter than you do,’ he cried indignantly, ’nor half so much neither,’ and if the magistrate had not been an ill-mannered oaf, he would not have dared to disbelieve my true-hearted Jack.  That time we escaped with whole skins; and off we went, after dinner, to Vauxhall, where Jack was more noticed than the fiercest of the bloods, and where he filled the heart of George Barrington with envy.  Nor was he idle, despite his recent escape:  he brought away two watches and three purses from the Garden, so that our necessities were amply supplied.  Ah, I should have been happy in those days if only Jack had been faithful.  But he had a roving eye and a joyous temperament; and though he loved me better