N

Young man, pray take hold || cdl tite countryman's horse I DeveN and take him out of the way, udy come up." He did so, and elow him; we walked together says he to me, “Do you step beup the lane, I'll overtake you;" so p the lane, and in a few minutes he up upon the horse and at my heels. et up, says he; "we will have a lift, Iwe wat get the horse by the bargain."

!made no difficulty to get up behind him, and pay we went at a good round rate, it being a good strong horse. We lost no time for an hour's ring and more, by which time we thought we were out of the reach of being pursued; and as the countryman, when he should miss his horse, would hear that we inquired the way to Royston, ho would certainly pursue us that way, and not towards Cambridge. We went easier after the Brst hour's riding, and, coming through a town or two, we alighted by turns, and did not ride double through the villages.

Now, as it was impossible for the captain to pass by anything that he could lay his hand on, and not take it, so now, having a horse to carry it off too, the temptation was the stronger. Going through a village where a good housewife of the house had been washing, and hung her clothes out upon a hedge near the road, he could not help it, but got hold of a couple of good shirts, that were about half dry, and overtook me upon the spur, for I walked on before; I immediately got up behind, and away we galloped together as fast as the horse could well go. In this part of our expedition, his good luck, or mine, carried us quite out of the road; and having seen none to ask the way of, we lost ourselves, and wandered I know not how many miles to the right hand, till, partly by that means, and partly by the occasion following, we came quite into the coach road to Cambridge, from London, by BishopStratford. The particular occasion that made me wander on was thus; the country was all open corn-fields, no enclosures; when, being upon a little rising ground, I bade him stop the horse, for I would get down, and walk a little to ease my legs, being tired with riding so long behind without stirrups; when I was down, and looked a little about me, I saw plainly the great white road, which we should have gone, at near two miles from us.

On a sudden, looking a little back to my left upon that road, I saw four or five horsemen riding full speed, some a good way before the other, and hurrying on, as people in a full pursuit.

wise have done, and so have pursued that way at a venture.

But as it was impossible for them to see the horse, so was it as impossible for them to see us at that distance, who sat down on the ground to look at them the more securely.

The road winding about, we saw them a great way, and they rode as fast as they could make their horses go. When we found they were gone quite out of sight, we mounted, and made the best of our way also; and indeed, though we were two upon one horse, yet we abated no speed where the way would admit of it, not inquiring of anybody the way to anywhere, till, after about two hours' riding, we came to a town, which, upon inquiry, they called Chesterford; and here we stopped, and asked not our way to any place, but whither that road went, and were told it was the coach road to Cambridge; also that it was the way to Newmarket, to St Edmund's-bury, to Norwich and Yarmouth, to Lynn and to Ely, and the like.

We stayed here a good while, believing ourselves secure; and afterwards, towards evening, went forward to a place called Bourn-bridge, where the road to Cambridge turns away out of the road to Newmarket, and where there are but two houses only, both of them being inns. Here the captain says to me, "Hark ye, you see we are pursued towards Cambridge, and shall be stopped if we go thither; now Newmarket is but ten miles off, and there we may be safe, and perhaps get an opportunity to do some business."

"Look ye, Jack," said I, "talk no more of doing business, for I will not join with you in anything of that kind; I would fain get you to Scotland before you get a halter about your neck; I will not have you hanged in England, if I can help it, and therefore I won't go to Newmarket, unless you promise me to take no false steps there." "Well," says he, "if I must not, then I won't; but I hope you will let us get another horse, won't you, that we may travel faster?" "No," says I, "I won't agree to that; but if you will let me send this horse back fairly, I will tell you how we shall hire horses afterwards for one stage or two, and then take them as far as we please; it is only sending a letter to the owner to send for him, and then, if we are stopped, it can do us but little hurt."

"You are a wary, politic gentleman," says the captain, "but, I say, we are better as we are; for we are out of all danger of being stopped on the way, after we are gone from this place."

the whole story. Now, the case is plain, our hour was not come, our fate had determined other things for us, and we were to be reserved for it; the matter was thus: when we first came to Bourn bridge, we called at the first house, and asked the way to Cambridge, drank a mug of beer, and went on, and they might see us tarn off to go the way they directed; but, night coming on, and we being very weary, we thought we should not find the way; and we came back in the dusk of the evening, and went into the other house, being the first as we came back, as that, where we called before, was the first as we went forward.

You may be assured I was alarmed now, as indeed I had reason to be: the captain was in bed, and fast asleep, but I waked him, and roused him with a noise that frightened him ough. "Rise, Jack," said I; "we are both rained; they are come after us hither." Indeed, I was wrong to terrify him at that rate; for he started, and jumpt out of bed, and ran directly to the window, not knowing where he was, and, not quite awake, was just going to jump out of the window, but I laid hold of him. "What are you going to do?" says I. "I won't be taken," says he; "let me alone: where are they?"

This was all confusion; and he was so out of himself with the fright, and being overcome with sleep, that I had much to do to prevent his umping out of the window: however, I held han fast, and thoroughly wakened him, and then all was well again, and he was presently composed.

Then I told him the story, and we sat together upon the bed-side, considering what we should do: upon the whole, as the fellow that called was apparently gone to Cambridge, we had nothing to fear, but to be quiet till daybreak, and then to mount and be gone. Accordingly, as soon as day peeped we were up; and having happily informed ourselves of the road the other house, and being told that the road to Cambridge turned off on the left hand, and that the road to Newmarket lay straight forward; I say, having learnt this, the captain told me he would walk away on foot towards Newmarket; and so, when I came to go out, I should appear as a single traveller; and accordingly he went out immediately, and away he walked, and he travelled so hard that, when I came to follow, I thought once that he had dropped me, for though I rode hard, I got no sight of him for an hour; at length, having passed the great bank called the devil's-ditch, I found him, and took him up behind me, and we rode double till we came alhost to the end of Newmarket town. Just at the bither house in the town, stood a horse at a door, Just as it was at Puckeridge. "Now," says Jack, "if the horse was at the other end of the town, I would have him, as sure as we had the other at Puckeridge;" but it would not do, so he got down, and walked through the town on the right hand side of the way.

He had not got half through the town, but the horse, having somehow or other got loose, came trotting gently on by himself, and nobody following him; the captain, an old soldier at such work, as soon as the horse was got a pretty way before him, and that he saw nobody followed, sets up a

run after the horse; and the horse hearing him follow, ran the faster; then the captain calls out, Stop the horse!" and by this time the horse was got almost to the farther end of the town; the people of the house where he stood not missing him all the while.

Upon his calling out, "Stop the horse !" the poor people of the town, such as were next at hand, ran from both sides the way, and stopped the horse for him as readily as could be, and held him for him till he came up; he very gravely comes up to the horse, hits him a blow or two, and calls him dog for running away; gives the man 2d. that catched him for him, mounts, and away he comes after me.

This was the oddest adventure that could have happened, for the horse stole the captain, the captain did not steal the horse. When he came up to me, " Now, Colonel Jack," says he, "what say you to good luck ? would you have had mo refuse the horse, when he came so civilly to ask me to ride?"

"No, no," said I; "you have got this horse by your wit, not by design; and you may go now, I think; you are in a safer condition than I am, if we are taken."

The next question was, what road we should take? here were four ways before us, and we were alike strangers to them all; first on the right hand, and at a little mile from the town, a great road went off to St Edmund's-bury; straight on, but inclining afterwards to the right, lay the great road to Barton-mills and Thetford, and so to Norwich; and full before us lay a great road also to Brandon and Lynn, and on the left lay a less road to the city of Ely, and into the Fens.

In short, as we knew not which road to take, nor which way to get into the great north road, which we had left, so we, by mere unguided chance, took the way to Brandon, and so to Lynn: at Brand, or Brandon, we were told, that passing over at a place called Downham-bridge, we might cross the fen country to Wisbeach; and from thence go along the bank of the river Nyne to Peterborough, and from thence to Stamford, where we were in the northern road again: and likewise, that at Lynn we might go by the washes into Lincolnshire, and so might travel north. But, upon the whole, this was my rule, that, when we inquired the way to any particular place, to be sure we never took the road, but some other, which the accidental discourse we might have should bring in; and thus we did here; for, having chiefly asked our way into the northern road, we resolved to go directly for Lynn.

CHAPTER VII.

FURTHER ADVENTURES-THERE IS NO PREVENTING MY COMRADE FROM EXERCISING HIS TRADE OF A THIEF WE WITNESS A WHIPPING IN EDINBURGH -THE CAPTAIN TAKES FRENCH LEAVE-I RETURN MY HORSE TO THE PERSON FROM WHOM IT WAS STOLEN LEARN TO READ AND WRITE-I AM HIRED AND CHEATED BY A SCOTTISH MASTERMEET WITH THE CAPTAIN AGAIN-1 ENLIST FOR A SOLDIER-WE DESERT-ADVENTURES THEREUPON.

We arrived here very easy and safe; and, while we were considering of what way we should travel

next, we found we were got to a point, and that there was no way now left but that by the washes into Lincolnshire, and that was represented as very dangerous; so an opportunity offering of a man that was travelling over the fens, we took him for our guide, and went with him to Spalding, and from thence to a town called Deeping, and so to Stamford in Lincolnshire.

This is a large populous town, and it was market-day when we came to it; so we put in at a little house at the hither end of the town, and walked into the town.

Here it was not possible to restrain my captain from playing his feats of art, and my heart ached for him; I told him I would not go with him, for he would not promise to leave off, and I was so terribly concerned at the apprehension of his venturous humour, that I would not so much as stir out of my lodging; but it was in vain to persuade him. He went into the market, and found a mountebank there, which was what he wanted. How he picked two pockets there in one quarter of an hour, and brought to our quarters a piece of new holland of eight or nine ells, a piece of stuff, and played three or four pranks more in less than two hours; and how afterwards he robbed a doctor of physic, and yet came off clear; all this I say, as above, belongs to his story, not mine.

I scolded heartily at him when he came back, and told him he would certainly ruin himself, and me too, before he left off, and threatened in so many words that I would leave him and go back, and carry the horse to Puckeridge, where we borrowed it, and so go to London by myself.

He promised amendment; but as we resolved (now we were in the great road) to travel by night, so it being not yet night, he gives me the slip again, and was not gone half an hour but he comes back with a gold watch in his hand: "Come," says he, "why an't you ready? I am ready to go as soon as you will;" and with that he pulls out the gold watch. I was amazed at such a thing as that in a country town; but it seems there were prayers at one of the churches in the evening, and he, placing himself as the occasion directed, found the way to be so near a lady as to get it from her side, and walked off with it unperceived.

The same night we went away by moonlight, after having the satisfaction to hear the watch cried, and ten guineas offered for it again; he would have been glad of the ten guineas instead of the watch, but durst not venture to carry it home. 66 Well," says I, "you are afraid, and indeed you have reason; give it me, I will venture to carry it again;" but he would not let me, but told me that, when we came into Scotland, we might sell any thing there without danger; which was true indeed, for there they asked us no questions.

We set out, as I said, in the evening by moonlight, and travelled hard, the road being very plain and large, till we came to Grantham, by which time it was about two in the morning, and all the town, as it were, dead asleep; so we went on for Newark, which we reached about eight in the morning, and there we lay down and slept most of the day; and by this sleeping so continually in the day-time, I kept him from doing a great deal of mischief, which he would otherwise have done.

From Newark we took advice of one that was accidentally comparing the roads, and we concluded that the road by Nottingham would be the best for us; so we turned out of the great road, and went up the side of the Trent to Nottingham: here he played his pranks again in a manner that it was the greatest wonder imaginable to me that he was not surprised, and yet he came off clear; and now he had got so many bulky goods that he bought him a portmanteau to carry them in. It was in vain for me to offer to reIstrain him any more, so after this he went on his own way.

At Nottingham, I say, he had such success as made us the hastier to be going than otherwise we should have been, lest we should have been baulked and should be laid hold of; from thence we left the road, which leads to the north again, went away by Mansfield into Scarsdale, in Yorkshire.

I shall take up no more of my own story with his pranks; they very well merit to be told by themselves, but I shall observe only what relates! to our journey. In a word, I dragged him along as fast as I could, till I came to Leeds in York. I shire. Here, though it be a large and populous town, yet he could make nothing of it, neither had he any success at Wakefield; and he told me, in short, that the north-country people were certainly all thieves. "Why so?" said I; "the people seem to be just as other people are."

No, no," says he, "they have their eyes so about them, and are all so sharp, they look upon every body that comes near them to be a pickpocket, or else they would never stand so upon their guard; and then again," says he, "they are se poor, there is but little to be got; and I am afraid," says he, "the farther we go north we shall find it worse."-" Well," said I, "what do you infer from thence?”—“ I argue from thence," says he, "that we shall do nothing there, and I had as good go back into the south and be hanged, as into the north to be starved.”

Well, we came at length to Newcastle upon Tyne. Here, on a market day, was a great throng of people, and several of the town's-people going to market to buy provisions; and here he played his pranks, cheated a shopkeeper of 151 or in goods, and got clear away with them; stole a horse, and sold that he came upon, and played so many pranks, that I was quite frightened for him; I say for him, for I was not concerned for myself, having never stirred out of the house where I lodged, at least not with him, nor without some or other with me belonging to the inn, that might give an account of me.

Nor did I use this caution in vain, for he had made himself so public by his rogueries, that he was waylaid everywhere to be taken, and had be not artfully first given out, that he was come from Scotland, and was going towards London. inquiring that road and the like, which amused his pursuers for the first day, he had been taken, and in all probability had been hanged there, but by that artifice he got half a day's time of them; and yet, as it was, he was put so to it, that he was fain to plunge, horse and all, into the river Tweed and swim over, and thereby made his escape. It was true that he was before upon Scots ground (as they called it), and conse

were wrapped up so close, that there was no coming to make the least attempt of that kind.

the town.

I followed with a heavy heart, expecting every hour to meet him upon the road, in the custody of the constables, and such people, or to hear of him in the gaol; but when I came to a place on the border, called Woller-haugh-head, there I understood how he had been chased, and how he had made his escape.

When I came to Kelso, he was easy enough to be found; for his having desperately swam the Tweed, a rapid and large river, made him much talked of, though it seems they had not heard of the occasion of it, nor anything of his character; for he had wit enough to conceal all that, and live as retired as he could till I came to him.

I was not so much rejoiced at his safety as I was provoked at his conduct; and the more, for that I could not find he had yet the least notion of his having been void of common sense with respect to his circumstances, as well as contrary to what he promised me. However, as there was Do beating anything into his head by words, only told him, that I was glad he was at last gotten into a place of safety, and I asked him then how he intended to manage himself in that country? He said in a few words, he did not know yet, he doubted the people were very poor; but if they had any money, he was resolved to have

some of it.

"But do you know too," says I, "that they are the severest people upon criminals of your kind in the world ?" He did not value that, he said, in his blunt short way, he would venture it; upon this I told him that, seeing it was so, and he would run such ventures, I would take my leave of him, and be gone back to England. He seemed sullen, or rather it was the roughness of his untractable disposition; he said I might do what I would, he would do as he found opportuuity; however, we did not part immediately, but went on towards the capital city; on the road we found too much poverty, and too few people, to give him room to expect any advantage in his way; and though he had his eyes about him as sharp as a hawk, yet he saw plainly there was nothing to be done; for as to the men, they did not seem to have much money about them; and for the women, their dress was such, that had they any money, or indeed any pockets, it was impossible to come at them; for, wearing large plaids about them, and down to their knees, they

Kelso was indeed a good town, and had abundance of people in it; and yet, though he staid one Sunday there, and saw the church, which is very large, and thronged with people; yet, as he told me, there was not one woman to be seen in all the church with any other dress than a plaid, except in two pews, which belonged to some noblemen, and who, when they came out, were so surrounded with footmen and servants, that there was no coming near them, any more than there was any coming near the king surrounded by his We set out therefore with this discouragement, which I was secretly glad of, and went forward for Edinburgh. All the way thither we went through no considerable town, and it was but very coarse travelling for us, who were strangers; for we met with waters which were very dangerous to pass, by reason of hasty rains, at a place called Lauderdale, and where my captain was really in danger of drowning, his horse being driven down by the stream, and fell under him, by which he wetted and spoiled his stolen goods, that he brought from Newcastle, and which he had kept dry strangely, by holding them up in

his arms, when he swam the Tweed; but here it wanted but little, that he and his horse had been lost, not so much by the depth of the water, as the fury of the current; but he had a proverb in his favour, and he got out of the water, though with difficulty enough, not being born to be drowned, as I shall observe afterwards in its place.

We came to Edinburgh, the third day from Kelso, having stopped at an inn one whole day, at a place called Soutra-hill, to dry our goods and refresh ourselves. We were oddly saluted at Edinburgh, the next day after we came thither; my captain having a desire to walk, and look about him, asked me if I would go and see the town? I told him yes; so we went out, and coming through a gate, that they call the Netherbow, into the great High street, which went up to the Cross, we were surprised to see it thronged with an infinite number of people: Ay (says my captain) this will do; however, as I had made him promise to make no adventures that day, otherwise I told him I would not go out with him, so I held him by the sleeve, and would not let him stir from me.

Then we came up to the Market-cross, and there, besides the great number of people who passed and repassed, we saw a great parade, or kind of meeting, like an Exchange of gentlemen, of all ranks and qualities, and this encouraged my captain again, and he pleased himself with that sight.

It was while we were looking and wondering at what we saw here that we were surprised with a sight which we little expected. We observed the people running on a sudden, as to see some strange thing just coming along, and strange it was, indeed; for we saw two men naked from the waist upwards run by us as swift as the wind, and we imagined nothing but that it was two men running a race for some mighty wager. sudden we found two long small ropes or lines, which hung down at first, pulled strait, and the

D

On a