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for generations to come. It will be the grand date from which every thing will be reckoned; ay, your very grand children will boast that their fathers were present at the sight.

I make no doubt on't, my master, but you are a very capital man in your way: Lord forbid that I should envy the greatness of any one; but I would have you to know that there have been others in the world as good as yourself ere now: my own father cut off Baron Koflam s head upon this very scaffold that we now hear them hammering at.

Some wandering hocus-pocus Baron, I suppose, that sold nostrums for the tooth-ach. I always put such fellows into the hands of my underling to operate upon; I never count the dealing with them as your prime work, tho' for certain we must call it your head-work; ha! ha! ha! (holding out his axe in a vain-glorious manner.) Seest thou this axe of mine? The best blood of the country has been upon its edge: to have had one's father or brother under its stroke, let me tell thee, is equal to a patent of nobility.

Well, be it so: I envy no man, God be praised! tho' thou art set over my head upon this occasion. I have whipp'd, branded, and pilloried in great