did him honour, and many a time my vanity was sorely wounded.  I was a pretty girl, mind you, though my travels have not improved my beauty; and I had many admirers before ever I picked up Jack Rann at a masquerade.  Why, there was a Templar, with two thousand a year, who gave me a carriage and servants while I still lived at the dressmaker’s in Oxford Street, and I was not out of my teens when the old Jew in St. Mary Axe took me into keeping.  But when Jack was by, I had no chance of admiration.  All the eyes were glued upon him, and his poor doxy had to be content with a furtive look thrown over a stranger’s shoulder.  At Barnet races, the year before they sent me across the sea, we were followed by a crowd the livelong day; and truly Jack, in his blue satin waistcoat laced with silver, might have been a peer.  At any rate, he had not his equal on the course, and it is small wonder that never for a moment were we left to ourselves.

’But happiness does not last for ever; only too often we were gravelled for lack of money, and Jack, finding his purse empty, could do naught else than hire a hackney and take to the road again, while I used to lie awake listening to the watchman’s raucous voice, and praying God to send back my warrior rich and scatheless.  So times grew more and more difficult.  Jack would stay a whole night upon the heath, and come home with an empty pocket or a beggarly half crown.  And there was nothing, after a shabby coat that he hated half so much as a sheriff’s officer.  “Learn a lesson in politeness,” he said to one of the wretches who dragged him off to the Marshalsea.  “When Sir John Fielding’s people come after me they use me genteelly; they only hold up a finger, beckon me, and I follow as quietly as a lamb.  But you bluster and insult, as though you had never dealings with gentlemen.”  Poor Jack, he was of a proud stomach, and could not abide interference; yet they would never let him go free.  And he would have been so happy had he been allowed his own way.  To pull out a rusty pistol now and again, and to take a purse from a traveller—­surely these were innocent pleasures, and he never meant to hurt a fellow-creature.  But for all his kindness of heart, for all his love of splendour and fine clothes, they took him at last.

’And this time, too, it was a watch which was our ruin.  How often did I warn him:  “Jack,” I would say, “take all the money you can.  Guineas tell no tale.  But leave the watches in their owners’ fobs.”  Alas! he did not heed my words, and the last man he ever stopped on the road was that pompous rascal, Dr. Bell, then chaplain to the Princess Amelia.  “Give me your money,” screamed Jack, “and take no notice or I’ll blow your brains out.”  And the doctor gave him all that he had, the mean-spirited devil-dodger, and it was no more than eighteenpence.  Now what should a man of courage do with eighteenpence?  So poor Jack was forced to seize the parson’s watch and trinkets as well, and thus it was that a second time we faced the Blind Beak.