“Ye’re not a-going to sell yereself for seven year, my lad?” said he.  “I was near that myself when I was young, and I thank God’ to this day that I talked first to an honest man, even as you are doing.  They’ll give ye a pretty tale,—­the factors,—­of a land of milk and honey, when it’s naught but stripes and curses yell get.”

And he was about to rebuke me hotly, when I told him I had come from Maryland, where I was born.

“Why, ye speak like a gentleman!” he exclaimed.  “I was informed that all talk like naygurs over there.  And is it not so of your redemptioners?”

I said that depended upon the master they got.

“Then I take it ye are looking for the lawyers, who mostly represent the planters.  And y e’ll find them at the Temple or Lincoln’s Inn.”

I replied that he I sought was not an attorney, but a man of business.  Whereupon he said that I should find all those in a batch about the North and South American Coffee House, in Threadneedle Street.  And he pointed me into the Strand, adding that I had but to follow my nose to St. Paul’s, and there inquire.

I would I might give you some notion of the great artery of London in those days, for it has changed much since I went down it that heavy morning in April, 1770, fighting my way.  Ay, truly, fighting my way, for the street then was no place for the weak and timid, when bullocks ran through it in droves on the way to market, when it was often jammed from wall to wall with wagons, and carmen and truckmen and coachmen swung their whips and cursed one another to the extent of their lungs.  Near St. Clement Danes I was packed in a crowd for ten minutes while two of these fellows formed a ring and fought for the right of way, stopping the traffic as far as I could see.  Dustmen, and sweeps, and even beggars, jostled you on the corners, bullies tried to push you against the posts or into the kennels; and once, in Butchers’ Row, I was stopped by a flashy, soft-tongued fellow who would have lured me into a tavern near by.

The noises were bedlam ten times over.  Shopmen stood at their doors and cried, “Rally up, rally up, buy, buy, buy!” venders shouted saloop and barley, furmity, Shrewsbury cakes and hot peascods, rosemary and lavender, small coal and sealing-wax, and others bawled “Pots to solder!” and “Knives to grind!” Then there was the incessant roar of the heavy wheels over the rough stones, and the rasp and shriek of the brewers’ sledges as they moved clumsily along.  As for the odours, from that of the roasted coffee and food of the taverns, to the stale fish on the stalls, and worse, I can say nothing.  They surpassed imagination.

At length, upon emerging from Butchers’ Row, I came upon some stocks standing in the street, and beheld ahead of me a great gateway stretching across the Strand from house to house.

Its stone was stained with age, and the stern front of it seemed to mock the unseemly and impetuous haste of the tide rushing through its arches.  I stood and gazed, nor needed one to tell me that those two grinning skulls above it, swinging to the wind on the pikes, were rebel heads.  Bare and bleached now, and exposed to a cruel view, but once caressed by loving hands, was the last of those whose devotion to the house of Stuart had brought from their homes to Temple Bar.