A good-day to you, master Bolt.
Bolt. A good-day—you are late, master Grayling—you will have scarcely sufficient time to perform your task.
Gray. Oh, plenty—I have an old set of chains in hand; an hour’s work will make them fit for any body—so let me at once measure the prisoner.
Bolt. The prisoner! do you not know that there are two to suffer?
Gray. Two!
Bolt. Aye; we have to day received an order that “mad George,” as he is called, who was last Sessions convicted for shooting an Exciseman, is to suffer with poor Ambrose Gwinett.
Gray. Poor Ambrose Gwinett—you are mightily compassionate, master Bolt.
Bolt. Why, for the matter of that, if a man’s a gaoler, I see no reason why his heart should be of a piece with the prison wall.
Gray. But is he not an assassin?—a midnight murderer?
Bolt. True; and yet I cannot but doubt—I do not think a man with blood upon his head, could sleep so soundly and smile so in his slumbers, as does master Gwinett; the whole country feels for him.