distributed among them in bread, which was to be had in the place.
But so troublesome an office it was, that I thought one had as good
have had a pack of hungry hounds about one, as these, when they knew
there was a dole to be given. Yet this, I think, made them a little
the more observant to me; for they would dispose themselves to one
side of the room, that they might make way for me to walk on the
other.

For having, as I hinted before, made up our packs and taken our
leave of our friends, whom we were to leave behind, we took our
bundles on our shoulders, and walked two and two abreast through the
Old Bailey into Fleet Street, and so to Old Bridewell. And it being
about the middle of the afternoon, and the streets pretty full of
people, both the shopkeepers at their doors and passengers in the
way would stop us, and ask us what we were and whither we were
going; and when we had told them we were prisoners going from one
prison to another, from Newgate to Bridewell, "What!" said they,
"without a keeper?"--"No," said we, "for our word, which we have
given, is our keeper." Some thereupon would advise us not to go to
prison, but to go home. But we told them we could not do so; we
could suffer for our testimony, but could not fly from it. I do not
remember we had any abuse offered us, but were generally pitied by
the people.

When we were come to Bridewell, we were not put up into the great
room in which we had been before, but into a low room in another
fair court, which had a pump in the middle of it. And here we were
not shut up as before, but had the liberty of the court to walk in,
and of the pump to wash or drink at. And indeed we might easily
have gone quite away if we would, there being a passage through the