For the matter of that

While I was sitting at my repast, three or four labourers came in for a little refreshment after their work. Ideas respecting the inequality of rank pervade every order in society; and, as my appearance was meaner and more contemptible than theirs, I found it expedient to give way to these gentry of a village alehouse, and remove to an obscurer station. I was surprised, and not a little startled, to find them fall almost immediately into conversation about my history, whom, with a slight variation of circumstances, they styled the notorious housebreaker, Kit Williams. “Damn the fellow,” said one of them, “one never hears of any thing else. O’ my life, I think he makes talk for the whole country.” “That is very true,” replied another. “I was at the market-town today to sell some oats for my master, and there was a hue and cry, some of them thought they had got him, but it was a false alarm.” “That hundred guineas is a fine thing,” rejoined the first. “I should be glad if so be as how it fell in my way.” “For the matter of that,” said his companion, “I should like a hundred guineas as well as another. But I cannot be of your mind for all that. I should never think money would do me any good that had been the means of bringing a Christian creature to the gallows.” “Poh, that is all my granny! Some folks must be hanged, to keep the wheels of our state-folks a-going. Besides, I could forgive the fellow all his other robberies, but that he should have been so hardened as to break the house of his own master at last, that is too bad.” “Lord! lord!” replied the other, “I see you know nothing of the matter! I will tell you how it was, as I learned it at the town. I question whether he ever robbed his master at all. But, hark you! you must know as how that squire Falkland was once tried for murder”— “Yes, yes, we know that.”