Page:Marriott Watson--Galloping Dick.djvu/224

 Starbottle was well enough, but Starbottle, between cronies, was a rough-mannered tyke, with no gracious instincts. He had no more civility than a bear, had Jerry.”

And now I come to the time when, my plot being ripe, I must make a push for liberty. It was a hazardous course, and I could not promise myself success, but ’twas better to take all the hazards in the world than to be carted meekly off to Tyburn. Thus it was upon the night afore the day appointed for the ladder that the Ordinary, entering my cell very sober about eight o’clock, found me with a doleful mouth.

“Ah, Ryder,” he says, shaking his head, “’tis a long journey and a short shrift for you to-morrow”; and, being in that humour, proceeded to enliven me with pictures of the vengeance of the Almighty and of the baseness of the malefactor.

Of course I listened very anxiously, and when he had finished, I says, “Your reverence,” I says, “if a man must die, ’tis wisdom that he should die with his belly comfortable. For