In _The Romany Rye_ he gives his friend the jockey as his authority for the following apologia: The night before the day he was hanged at H----, I harnessed a Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles.

I arrived at H---- just in the nick of time.

There was the ugly jail--the scaffold--and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world.

Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, 'God Almighty bless you, Jack!' The dying man turned his pale grim face towards me--for his face was always somewhat grim, do you see--nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, 'All right, old chap.' The next moment--my eyes water.

He had a high heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines, lost his half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had.
But he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never did half the bad things laid to his charge.
FOOTNOTES: [65] _Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825_.