Well, Friday came, and Saturday, and Sunday, and Sunday’s night; he was posting to eternity with four bolters. I will bet the whole national debt he would have given eighteen-pence a mile, and half-a-crown to the boy, to have been posting on any other road. All the favour the law allowed him was to have an Ordinary at eight instead of an ordinary at one, a very ordinary favour to a man who was about to leave off dining. But the devil ought to have his due, and so should the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs. As they had neglected Tony a little, by not being with the other gossips at his christening, to usher him into this world, they attended very ceremoniously to show him out of it, each in his gilt coach; and, with regard to the coachmen, the footmen, and even the very horses themselves, they were all Malthusians. Of course the Recorder brought the hanging-warrant, and if you would know what the hanging-warrant was like, it was like a map of _Cheshire_ with the _Mersey_ left out.
I forgot to tell you, that before it came to this pass, the Ordinary came oftentimes to the cell where Tony was, to pray, besides whom there was an Extraordinary, who examined him on his points of faith. And the points of faith were these; namely, whether he believed the moon to be of green cheese, and as to the size of the mites thereon. Secondly, if he believed the puppet-play of Punch and Judy to be a type of the fall of Nineveh; and, thirdly, concerning the lions in Pilgrim’s Progress, whether they were bred at Mr. Wombwell’s or Mr. Cross’s, or at the Tower of London. To all of which Tony giving decidedly serious answers, he was pronounced fit to die, and quite prepared to have his neck stretched, as long as the throttle of a claret-bottle when the wine is ropy.