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points were given in Sampson's favour, and some against him; and
the upshot was, that, instead of being desired to travel for a time in
foreign parts, he was permitted to grace the mother country under
certain insignificant restrictions.
These were, that he should, for a term of years, reside in a spacious
mansion where several other gentlemen were lodged and boarded at
the public charge, who went clad in a sober uniform of grey turned up
with yellow, had their hair cut extremely short, and chiefly lived on
gruel and light soup. It was also required of him that he should
partake of their exercise of constantly ascending an endless flight of
stairs; and, lest his legs, unused to such exertion, should be
weakened by it, that he should wear upon one ankle an amulet or
charm of iron. These conditions being arranged, he was removed one
evening to his new abode, and enjoyed, in common with nine other
gentlemen, and two ladies, the privilege of being taken to his place of
retirement in one of Royalty's own carriages.
Over and above these trifling penalties, his name was erased and
blotted out from the roll of attorneys; which erasure has been always
held in these latter times to be a great degradation and reproach, and
to imply the commission of some amazing villany - as indeed it would
seem to be the case, when so many worthless names remain among
its better records, unmolested.
Of Sally Brass, conflicting rumours went abroad. Some said with
confidence that she had gone down to the docks in male attire, and
had become a female sailor; others darkly whispered that she had
enlisted as a private in the second regiment of Foot Guards, and had
been seen in uniform, and on duty, to wit, leaning on her musket and
looking out of a sentry-box in St james's Park, one evening. There
were many such whispers as these in circulation; but the truth
appears to be that, after the lapse of some five years (during which
there is no direct evidence of her having been seen at all), two
wretched people were more than once observed to crawl at dusk from
the inmost recesses of St Giles's, and to take their way along the
streets, with shuffling steps and cowering shivering forms, looking
into the roads and kennels as they went in search of refuse food or
disregarded offal. These forms were never beheld but in those nights
of cold and gloom, when the terrible spectres, who lie at all other
times in the obscene hiding-places of London, in archways, dark
vaults and cellars, venture to creep into the streets; the embodied
spirits of Disease, and Vice, and Famine. It was whispered by those
who should have known, that these were Sampson and his sister
Sally; and to this day, it is said, they sometimes pass, on bad nights,
in the same loathsome guise, close at the elbow of the shrinking
passenger.
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