Where a Girl, like this, could be; and how employed during the time; is not difficult to imagine. Not with a Lover certainly, say you! You would be happy, Sir, if all you beg should be allowed you. Not with a Lover, Sir! Eighteen, let me remind you, is a critical Age; and what would not a Woman do, that had made an Escape, to recover her own Credit, and screen her Lover. I pretend to no Knowledge of this, as having been the Case with Respect to the Girl of whom I speak; but, if we are to reason, let us do it freely; and what appears so likely?
The Description she gave of the Room in which she had been confined, is urged by you to justify; but, Sir, that Circumstance alone ought to condemn her. Let me not be understood to speak of that Description, which she gave after she had seen it: That Subterfuge may serve for the Excuse of those who will be found to want it. But let us now enquire with better Judgment: Let us, Sir, appeal to that Account she gave before the sitting Alderman, by whom she was first examined; and we shall find it countenance the worst that can be thought against her. Observe the Articles.
She described it to be a _dark_ Room; in which she lay upon the _Boards_; in which there was nothing except _a Grate_ with a Gown in it; and a _few Pictures_ over the Chimney; from which she made her Escape by _forcing down some Boards_, and out of which she had before discovered the Face of a Coachman, through certain _Cracks_ in the Side.
Let those who have seen the Room speak whether this was a Description of it. They will answer No. No, not in any one Particular. Far from being _dark_, there are _two Windows_ in it. These have Casements which were unfastened, out at which she might have _escaped_, had she been confined in it; so that pulling down of Boards to that Purpose could not be necessary: Out at these also, I suppose, the might have _seen this Coachman_, so that she needed not to peep through Cracks. There was no Grate in the Chimney: so that no body could have been guilty of this most housewifely Trick of putting a Gown in one: Nor were there any Pictures over it. Of the latter there was no Probability to be any, because the House had no Profusion of Furniture, and this was a Room of Lumber: And it is palpable there could have been no Grate in the Chimney of a long Time; for the whole Expanse of it was found covered and overspread with Cobwebs, the Work of many Generations of unmolested Spiders. Oh Providence that assists in these Discoveries!