CHAP. XL.
What a notable revengeful trick he serv’d the Turn-key of Ludgate.
I went on a time to see a Prisoner in Ludgate, but thinking to come out again as easily as I went in, I found my self just as the Picture I have often seen upon the Exchange, wherein is represented a man plunging himself with much ease into the great end of the Horn, but with the greatest difficulty can hardly squeeze his Head through the other end. Hell Gates stand ever open to let all souls in, but none are suffer’d to go out. Here I waited two hours for the return of the Turn-key, fretting my self even to death for being detained from my urgent occasions. At length he came: I told him what an injury he did me: instead of excusing himself, he returned me very scurvy language, which provoked my passion so much, that though I said little, yet my invention was presently at work to be reveng’d. Not long after I got a poor fellow to be arrested for an inconsiderable debt, advising him to turn himself instantly over to Ludgate. In a short time the poorness of this mans condition was generally known, and he himself pretending he was almost starved, got liberty to put in what slender security he could procure for his true imprisonment, and so had leave to go abroad. In the mean time I had got a Bond of the Prisoner of fourscore pound for the payment of forty, and so went privately and enter’d an action of Debt. I told the Prisoner the next time he went out he should run away, which he did, neither was there any security to be found; then did I bring my action against the Keeper, with my Knights of the Post, and so recovered the money.