getting rid of unpleasant thoughts.  After dinner, during which he talked nothing but slang, observing I looked very melancholy, he asked me what was the matter with me, and I, my heart being opened by the wine he had made me drink, told him my circumstances without reserve.  With an oath or two for not having treated him at first like a friend, he said he would soon set me all right; and pulling out two hundred pounds, told me to pay him when I could.  I felt as I never felt before; however, I took his notes, paid my sneaks, and in less than three months was right again, and had returned him his money.  On paying it to him, I said that I had now a lunch which would just suit him, saying that I would give it to him—­a free gift—­for nothing.  He swore at me;—­telling me to keep my Punch, for that he was suited already.  I begged him to tell me how I could requite him for his kindness, whereupon, with the most dreadful oath I ever heard, he bade me come and see him hanged when his time was come.  I wrung his hand, and told him I would, and I kept my word.  The night before the day he was hanged at H—–­, I harnessed a Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles.  I arrived at H—–­ just in the nick of time.  There was the ugly jail—­the scaffold—­and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world.  Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, ’God Almighty bless you, Jack!’ The dying man turned his pale grim face towards me—­ for his face was always somewhat grim, do you see—­nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, ‘All right, old chap.’  The next moment—­my eyes water.  He had a high heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines, lost his half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had.  But he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never did half the bad things laid to his charge; for example, he never bribed Tom Oliver to fight cross, as it was said he did on the day of the awful thunder-storm.  Ned Flatnose fairly beat Tom Oliver, for though Ned was not what’s called a good fighter, he had a particular blow, which if he could put in he was sure to win.  His right shoulder, do you see, was two inches farther back than it ought to have been, and consequently his right fist generally fell short; but if he could swing himself round, and put in a blow with that right arm, he could kill or take away the senses of anybody in the world.  It was by putting in that blow in his second fight with Spring that he beat noble Tom.  Spring beat him like a sack in the first battle, but in the second Ned Painter—­for that was his real name—­contrived to put in his blow, and took the senses out of Spring; and in like manner he took the senses out of Tom Oliver.