Of my Incarceration in the Jug
the tail of his eye; but that was no bar to me, seeing I was just then very comfortable in pocket; and so I bought him with a bag of goldfinches, and sent him off with his pockets bulging with king’s pictures, to digest at his leisure. I knew it was a bad case for me, and that fact was plainer upon the morning of the trial, when I was fetched into Court atween two turnkeys, and with the darbies still upon my wrist. It seems that they were in a taking lest even then Dick Ryder should spread his wings! When I was brought in and looked about me, there was the Judge regarding me sourly from his bench, and hobanobbing with him stood a tall, fat-bellied man, with a white wig and a very scarlet face. This was the cully as was to talk me up the ladder. And with the sight of them laughing together I knew ’twas odds but I should get no fair play that day. But I was not to hoist the white feather on that account, and so I just wagged my head to my man to begin. But instead, up jumps Pot-belly, and starts upon a tedious harangue, motioning at me with his fingers
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