persecutors.

During the period in which my mind had been thus undecided, and when I
had been little more than a month in durance, the assizes, which were
held twice a year in the town in which I was a prisoner, came on. Upon
this occasion my case was not brought forward, but was suffered to stand
over six months longer. It would have been just the same, if I had had
as strong reason to expect acquittal as I had conviction. If I had been
apprehended upon the most frivolous reasons upon which any justice of
the peace ever thought proper to commit a naked beggar for trial, I must
still have waited about two hundred and seventeen days before my
innocence could be cleared. So imperfect are the effects of the boasted
laws of a country, whose legislators hold their assembly from four to
six months in every year! I could never discover with certainty, whether
this delay were owing to any interference on the part of my prosecutor,
or whether it fell out in the regular administration of justice, which
is too solemn and dignified to accommodate itself to the rights or
benefit of an insignificant individual.

But this was not the only incident that occurred to me during my
confinement, for which I could find no satisfactory solution. It was
nearly at the same time, that the keeper began to alter his behaviour to
me. He sent for me one morning into the part of the building which was
appropriated for his own use, and, after some hesitation, told me he was
sorry my accommodations had been so indifferent, and asked whether I
should like to have a chamber in his family? I was struck with the
unexpectedness of this question, and desired to know whether any body
had employed him to ask it. No, he replied; but, now the assizes were
over, he had fewer felons on his hands, and more time to look about him.
He believed I was a good kind of a young man, and he had taken a sort of