than any of the baggages to whom he paid court, he would not visit me so often as he should.  Why, once he was hustled off to Bow Street because the watch caught him climbing in at Doll Frampton’s window.  And she, the shameless minx, got him off by declaring in open court that she would be proud to receive him whenever he would deign to ring at her bell.  That is the penalty of loving a great man:  you must needs share his affection with a set of unworthy wenches.  Yet Jack was always kind to me, and I was the chosen companion of his pranks.

’Never can I forget the splendid figure he cut that day at Bagnigge Wells.  We had driven down in our coach, and all the world marvelled at our magnificence.  Jack was brave in a scarlet coat, a tambour waistcoat, and white silk stockings.  From the knees of his breeches streamed the strings (eight at each), whence he got his name, and as he plucked off his lace-hat the dinner-table rose at him.  That was a moment worth living for, and when, after his first bottle, Jack rattled the glasses, and declared himself a highwayman, the whole company shuddered.  “But, my friends,” quoth he, “to-day I am making holiday, so that you have naught to fear.”  When the wine ’s in, the wit ’s out, and Jack could never stay his hand from the bottle.  The more he drank, the more he bragged, until, thoroughly fuddled, he lost a ring from his finger, and charged the miscreants in the room with stealing it.  “However,” hiccupped he, “’tis a mere nothing, worth a paltry hundred pounds—­less than a lazy evening’s work.  So I’ll let the trifling theft pass.”  But the cowards were not content with Jack’s generosity, and seizing upon him, they thrust him neck and crop through the window.  They were seventeen to one, the craven-hearted loons; and I could but leave the marks of my nails on the cheek of the foremost, and follow my hero into the yard, where we took coach, and drove sulkily back to Covent Garden.

’And yet he was not always in a mad humour; in fact, Sixteen-String Jack, for all his gaiety, was a proud, melancholy man.  The shadow of the tree was always upon him, and he would make me miserable by talking of his certain doom.  “I have a hundred pounds in my pocket,” he would say; “I shall spend that, and then I shan’t last long.”  And though I never thought him serious, his prophecy came true enough.  Only a few months before the end we had visited Tyburn together.  With his usual carelessness, he passed the line of constables who were on guard.

“It is very proper,” said he, in his jauntiest tone, “that I should be a spectator on this melancholy occasion.”  And though none of the dullards took his jest, they instantly made way for him.  For my Jack was always a gentleman, though he was bred to the stable, and his bitterest enemy could not have denied that he was handsome.  His open countenance was as honest as the day, and the brown curls over his forehead were more elegant than the smartest wig.  Wherever he went the world