Page:Marriott Watson--Galloping Dick.djvu/204

 comes the affair at Petersfield, with which Grubbe was well acquainted. And as if that were not enough, they had furbished up a paltry business on Hampstead Heath, in the which I was under the necessity to quiet a noisy fellow with my barker. This, it turns out, if you please, was no less a personage than a Sheriff of the City. And after that the document wound up with the officer that I had cut down in the Highway; as if the killing of a catchpoll, good Lord, made any difference among respectable people! Still, though the one case was black against me, and Grubbe, no doubt, had ample private particulars of the others, I must face my position with the best phiz possible. So I laid hold of a gentleman of the law to speak in my defence. He was a man in repute for a mighty clever fellow, and had had much practice at the Assizes these many years. In his earlier days he had had sharp work under Old Noll, and of late he had been with Bloody Jeffreys in the West. He was a grasping, watery-livered creature, with his fee ever in