learning all their peculiar views would not pay, so he neglected
them. The Wesleyans were at one time all-powerful in our road
district, and Nicholas, foreseeing a chance of filling an office of
profit under the Board, threw away all his sins, and obtained grace
and a billet as toll-collector or pikeman. In England the pike-man
was always a surly brute, who collected his fees with the help of a
bludgeon and a bulldog, but Nicholas performed his duties in the
disguise of a saint. He waited for passengers in his little wooden
office, sitting at a table, with a huge Bible before him, absorbed in
spiritual reading. He wore spectacles on his Roman nose, had a long
grey beard, quoted Scripture to chance passengers, and was very
earnest for their salvation. He was atoning for the sins of his
youth by leading the life of a hermit by praying and cheating. He
has had many followers. He made mistakes in his cash, which for a
while were overlooked in so good a man, but they became at length so
serious that he lost his billet. He had for some time been spoken of
by his friends and admirers as "Mr. Nicholas," but after his last
mistakes had been discovered, he began to be known merely as "Old
Nick the Lawyer," or "Old Nick the Liar," which some ignorant people
look upon as convertible terms. I think Lizard Skin, the cannibal,
was a better Christian than old Nick the lawyer, as he was brave and
honest, and scorned to tell a lie.

The convict counsel for the four seamen defended them at a great
expenditure of learning and lies. He argued at great length:--
"That there was no evidence that a master mariner named Blogg ever
existed; that he was an outlaw, and, as such, every British subject
had an inchoate right to kill him at sight, and, therefore, that the
seamen, supposing for the sake of argument that they did kill him,
acted strictly within their legal rights; that Blogg drowned himself