from the audience, whose disgust is indignantly expressed by silence when he exits to cut the man down.  Their delight is only revived by the apparition of Gipsy George, pale and ghastly, with the rope round his neck, and the exclamation that he is “done for.” Barabbas, the hangman, who re-appears with the rest, is upbraided by Jack for coolly looking on and letting the man hang himself, without raising an alarm.  Mr. B. answers, that “it was no business of his.”  Like Sir Robert Peel and the rest of the profession, it was evidently his maxim not to interfere, unless “regularly called in.”  The Gipsy, so far from dying, recovers sufficiently to make to Jack some important disclosures; but of that mysterious kind peculiar to melodrama, by which nobody is the wiser.  They, however, bear reference to Jack’s deceased father, a clasp-knife, a certain Sir Gregory of “the gash,” and the four gentlemen so recently suspended at Execution-Dock.

The residence of Content and Barbara Allen is a scene, the minute correctness of which it would be wicked to doubt, when the bills so solemnly guarantee that it is copied from the “best authorities.” Barbara opens the door, makes a curtsey, produces a purse, and after saying she is going to pay her rent, is, by an ingenious contrivance of the Sadler’s Wells’ Shakspere, confronted with her landlord, the Sir Gregory before-mentioned.  All stage-landlords are villains, who prefer seduction to rent, and he of the “gash” is no exception.  The struggle, rescue, and duel, which follow, are got through in no time.  The last would certainly have been fatal, had not the assailant’s servant come on to announce that “a gentleman wished to speak to him at his own residence.”  The lover (who is of course the rescuer) deems this a sufficient excuse to let off his antagonist without a scratch; Barbara rewards him with an embrace and a rose, just as another rival intrudes himself in the person of Mr. John Ketch.  The altercation which now ensues is but slight; for Jack, instead of fighting, goes off to Fairlop-fair with another young lady, who seems to come upon the stage for no other purpose than to oblige him.  At the fair we find Jack’s spirits considerably damped by the prediction of a gipsy, that he will marry a hangman’s daughter; but, after the jumping in sacks, which forms a part of the sports, he rescues Barbara from being once more assailed by her landlord.  Thereupon another component of the festive scene—­our friend the hangman—­declares that she is his daughter!  “Horror” tableau, and end of Act I.