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 MASTER-MEET WITH THE CAPTAIN AGAIN-I 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 apprehensions 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 afterward he robbed a doctor of physic, and yet came off clear in them; 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

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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 carry it home. 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 he came into Scotland we might sell anything 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, where 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 restrain 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 would 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 Yorkshire. 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 everybody 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 so 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 townspeople going to market to buy provisions; and here he played his pranks, cheated a shopkeeper of 157. or 167. 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 frighted 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 he not artfully first given out that he was come from Scotland, and was going toward 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

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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 call it), and consequently they had no power to have carried him off, if anybody had opposed them; yet, as they were in a full chase after him, could they have come up with him, they would have run the risk of the rest, and they could but have delivered him up, if they had been questioned about it. However, as he got over the Tweed, and was landed safe, they could neither follow him, the water being too high at the usual place of going over, nor could they have attempted to have brought him away if they had taken him. The place where he took the river was where there is a ford below Kelso, but, the water being up, the ford was not passable, and he had no time to go to the ferry-boat, which is about a furlong off, opposite to the town.

Having thus made his escape, he went to Kelso, where he had appointed me to come after him.

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 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 no beating anything into his head by words, I 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 opportunity; 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 were wrapped up so close, that there was no coming to make the least attempt of that kind.

Kelso was indeed a good town, and had abundance of people in it; and yet, though he stayed 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 guards.

We set out therefore with this discouragement, which I was secretly glad of, and went forward to 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