"I expected nothing but to be torn to pieces every moment, and was fearful to attempt one step back, lest my endeavor to shun him might have made him the more eager to hasten my destruction. At last he roused himself, as though to have a breakfast off me; yet, by the assistance of Providence, I had the presence of mind to keep steady in my posture, for the reasons before mentioned.
"He moved toward me, but without expressing in his countenance either greediness or anger; but, on the contrary, wagged his tail, signifying nothing but friendship in his fawning behavior; and after he had stared me a little in the face, he raises himself up on his two hindmost feet, and laying his two fore paws upon my shoulders, without hurting me, fell to licking my face, as a further instance of his gratitude for my feeding him, as I afterwards conjectured; though then I expected every moment that he would have stripped my skin, as a poulterer does a rabbit, and have cracked my head between his teeth, as a monkey does a walnut.
"His tongue was so very rough, that with the few favorite kisses he gave me, it made my cheeks almost as rough as a pork griskin, which I was very glad to take in good part without a bit of grumbling, and when he had thus saluted me and given me his sort of welcome to his den, he returned to his place and laid him down, doing me no further damage; which unexpected deliverance occasioned me to take courage, that I shrunk back by degrees till I recovered the trap door, through which I jumped and pulled it after me, thus happily through an especial Providence, I escaped the fury of so dangerous a creature."
THE BISHOP OF DURHAM A PRISONER.
The Tower was for many hundreds of years an object of suspicion to the good citizens of London, who deemed the massive fortress a standing threat against their rights and privileges. Whenever a monarch wished to wrest concessions from the Londoners, to wring a large sum of money from their fears, or commit some other act of despotism, it was customary, just previous to the attempt against the people, to strengthen the Tower in its weakest part, and a ditch, or a wall, or a bastion was constructed, to enable the Governor or Constable of the Tower to hold the fortress for his Lord the King, in case the citizens should resist the attempt on their purses or their liberties.
How little the gaping Cockneys and bulbous-eyed rustics, who stroll around through the different apartments of this mighty castle, know or even dream of the great deeds, terrible crimes, and high resolves of those who have inhabited this Tower of London during a thousand years of its most eventful and troubled history.
TRAITOR'S GATE.