Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/51

 confess the truth, she should be forgiven; but if she resolved to persist, he had brought a constable to take her up, and she would surely be hanged on her husband's evidence. The wench was so terrified she fell a-crying, and told all she knew of the matter. The attorney then took both their depositions in form; after which, John and his wife went home with Mr. David's uncle, and were to stay there till the affair was finished. The poor young man, with this fresh disturbance of his mind, was grown worse, and thought to be in danger of losing his life; but by the great care of the old gentleman he soon recovered. The uncle's next design was to go to Daniel, and endeavour by all means to bring him to reasonable terms, and to prevail on him to submit himself to his brother's discretion. Daniel at first blustered, and swore it was a calumny, and that he would prosecute the fellow and wench for perjury: and then left the room, with a haughtiness that generally attends that high-mindedness which is capable of being detected in guilt. He tried all methods possible to get John and his wife out of his uncle's house, in order to bribe them a second time; but that scheme could not succeed. He then used every endeavour to procure false evidence; but when the time of trial approached, his uncle went once more to him, and talked seriously to him on the consequences of being convicted in a court of justice of forgery, especially of that heinous sort: assuring him, he had the strongest evidence, joined to the greatest probability of the falseness of his father's will. After he had discoursed with him some time, and Daniel began to find the impossibility of defending himself, he fell from one extreme to another (for a mind capable of treachery is most times very pusillanimous) and his pride now thought fit to condescend to the most abject submissions; he