emphasis on the last words.  I might have observed that I was an inexperienced young man, who, meaning no harm myself, suspected none in others, but I was confused, stunned, and my tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of my mouth.  The men who had taken my horses to Horncastle, and for whom I had sent, as they lived close at hand, now arrived, but the evidence which they could give was anything but conclusive in my favour; they had seen me in company with an individual at Horncastle, to whom, by my orders, they had delivered certain horses, but they had seen no part of the money transaction; the fellow, whether from design or not, having taken me aside into a retired place, where he had paid me the three spurious notes, and induced me to change the fourth, which throughout the affair was what bore most materially against me.  How matters might have terminated I do not know, I might have gone to prison, and I might have been—­just then, when I most needed a friend, and least expected to find one, for though amongst those present there were several who were my neighbours, and who had professed friendship for me, none of them when they saw that I needed support and encouragement, came forward to yield me any, but, on the contrary, appeared by their looks to enjoy my terror and confusion—­just then a friend entered the room in the person of the surgeon of the neighbourhood, the father of him who has attended you; he was not on very intimate terms with me, but he had occasionally spoken to me, and had attended my father in his dying illness, and chancing to hear that I was in trouble, he now hastened to assist me.  After a short preamble, in which he apologized to the bench for interfering, he begged to be informed of the state of the case, whereupon the matter was laid before him in all its details.  He was not slow in taking a fair view of it, and spoke well and eloquently in my behalf—­insisting on the improbability that a person of my habits and position would be wilfully mixed up with a transaction like that of which it appeared I was suspected—­adding, that as he was fully convinced of my innocence, he was ready to enter into any surety with respect to my appearance at any time to answer anything which might be laid to my charge.  This last observation had particular effect, and as he was a person universally respected, both for his skill in his profession and his general demeanour, people began to think that a person in whom he took an interest could scarcely be concerned in anything criminal, and though my friend the magistrate—­I call him so ironically—­made two or three demurs, it was at last agreed between him and his brethren of the bench, that, for the present, I should be merely called upon to enter into my own recognizance for the sum of two hundred pounds, to appear whenever it should be deemed requisite to enter into any further investigation of the matter.