ysician,
telling him at the time he bought it, that it would be greatly the
better for being suffered to run at grass a fortnight or so. _No doubt
on it_, said he; _but I had some design of so doing._

Yet they were much sooner executed than at first they were intended to
have been, by an accident which happened the very day after the beast
came into the hands of the physician; for one evening as Brown was
taking a walk in the skirts of the city, who should he perceive but his
old Cornish parson and his footman, jogging into town. Guilt struck him
immediately with apprehensions at their errand relating to him, so that
walking up and down, nor daring to go into the town for fear of being
taken up and at last supposing it the only way to rid him of danger, he
caught the horse once more in the doctor's close, and having stolen a
saddle and bridle out of the inn where he lodged, he rode on him as far
as Essex.

There he remained until Northampton Fair, where he sold the horse for
the third time, for twenty-seven guineas, to an officer in the same
regiment with him from whom it had been first stolen, on whose return
from Flanders it was owned and the captain who bought it (though he
refused to lose his money) yet gave as good description as he could of
the person who sold it. Upon this the other officer put out an
advertisement, describing both the man and the horse, and offering a
reward of five guineas for whoever should apprehend him. This
advertisement roused both the parson and the doctor, and the former took
so much pains to discover him that he was at length apprehended in
Cornwall, where at the assizes he was tried and convicted for the fact.
But the captain who was the original possessor of the horse was so much
pleased with his ingenuity that he procured a reprieve for him, and
carried him abroad with him where he continued until the peace of
Utrecht, when he returned home and fell to his old way of living, by
which he had submitted himself unto the time in which he fell into
company with Murrel, and had then bought five or six horses which had
been stolen from the South, to be disposed of at the fair.

Murrel liked the precedent, and put it in practice immediately by
stealing a brown mare which belonged to Jonathan Wood, for which he was
shortly after apprehended and committed to Newgate. At the next sessions
at the Old Bailey he was tried and convicted on very clear evidence, and
during the space in which he l