Page:Memoirs James Hardy Vaux.djvu/358

 brown great-coat. After searching me, they gave me in charge to the watch-house-keeper, and desiring to know what name I chose to give in, as I denied being called Vaux, I assured them my name was James Lowe, this being the name of my much-loved grandfather, and the first that occurred to me. In this name I was therefore entered in the charge-book, and, having told the keeper that they should call for me in the morning, they departed. When left to ruminate on my now hopeless condition, nothing affected me so much as the distress my poor wife must suffer, on my being thus torn from her, and what heightened my affliction, was, the consciousness, that had I listened to her affectionate advice, I should probably have avoided this misfortune, and been at that moment happy in her society, by my own fire-side: but mature reflection convinced me, that, my time being come, it was impossible to escape the fate to which I was born, and destined from the moment of that birth.—I, therefore, bowed with resignation to a fate, which by my vicious conduct I had certainly merited; and applied for consolation to a pipe and a jug of ale, which I was permitted to send for, and which indulgence I compensated by liberally treating the keeper and his wife, according to the established usage of such places.

I afterwards learnt that my wife had fainted immediately on my apprehension, and continued for some minutes in violent hysterics, on recovering