Your assistance, therefore, I demand, as you are a gentleman, a Christian, and a fellow-subject, who, though every other motive should be overlooked, ought to interest himself in my case as a common concern, and concur with all your power towards the punishment of those who dare commit such outrages against the liberty of your country." The doctor seemed to be a little disconcerted; but, after some recollection, resumed his air of sufficiency and importance, and assured our adventurer he would do him all the service in his power; but in the meantime advised him to take the potion he had prescribed.
The knight's eyes lightening with indignation, "I am now convinced," cried he, "that you are an accomplice in the villany which has been practised upon me; that you are a sordid wretch, without principle or feeling, a disgrace to the faculty, and a reproach to human nature--yes, sirrah, you are the most perfidious of all assassins--you are the hireling minister of the worst of all villains; who, from motives even baser than malice, envy, and revenge, rob the innocent of all the comforts of life, brand them with the imputation of madness, the most cruel species of slander, and wantonly protract their misery, by leaving them in the most shocking confinement, a prey to reflections infinitely more bitter than death but I will be calm--do me justice at your peril.
I demand the protection of the legislature--if I am refused--remember a day of reckoning will come--you and the rest of the miscreants who have combined against me, must, in order to cloak your treachery, have recourse to murder,--an expedient which I believe you very capable of embracing,--or a man of my rank and character cannot be much longer concealed.

Tremble, caitiff, at the thoughts of my release--in the meantime, be gone, lest my just resentment impel me to dash your brains out upon that marble--away"---- The honest doctor was not so firmly persuaded of his patient's lunacy as to reject his advice, which he made what haste he could to follow, when an unexpected accident intervened.
That this may be properly introduced, we must return to the knight's brace of trusty friends, Captain Crowe and lawyer Clarke, whom we left in sorrowful deliberation upon the fate of their patron.

Clarke's genius being rather more fruitful in resources than that of the seaman, he suggested an advertisement, which was accordingly inserted in the daily papers; importing that, "Whereas a gentleman of considerable rank and fortune had suddenly disappeared, on such a night, from his house near Golden Square, in consequence of a letter delivered to him by a porter; and there is great reason to believe some violence hath been offered to his life; any person capable of giving such information as may tend to clear up this dark transaction, shall, by applying to Mr.Thomas Clarke, attorney, at his lodgings in Upper Brook Street, receive proper security for the reward of one hundred guineas, to be paid to him upon his making the discovery required." The porter who delivered the letter appeared accordingly, but could give no other information, except that it was put into his hand with a shilling, by a man muffled up in a greatcoat, who stopped him for the purpose, in his passing through Queen Street.

It was necessary that the advertisement should produce an effect upon another person, who was no other than the hackney-coachman who drove our hero to the place of his imprisonment.

This fellow had been enjoined secrecy; and, indeed, bribed to hold his tongue, by a considerable gratification, which, it was supposed, would have been effectual, as the man was a master coachman in good circumstances, and well known to the keeper of the madhouse, by whom he had been employed on former occasions of the same nature.