ted
comfortably in my inn, with my bottle of champagne before me. He,
however, did not show himself carrion; he would not betray his
companions, who had behaved very handsomely to him, having given the son
of a lord, a great barrister, not a hundred-pound forged bill, but a
hundred hard guineas, to plead his cause, and another ten, to induce him,
after pleading, to put his hand to his breast, and say, that, upon his
honour, he believed the prisoner at the bar to be an honest and injured
man. No; I am glad to be able to say, that my father did not show
himself exactly carrion, though I could almost have wished he had let
himself-- However, I am here with my bottle of champagne and the Romany
Rye, and he was in his cell, with bread and water and the prison
chaplain. He took an affectionate leave of me before he was sent away,
giving me three out of five guineas, all the money he had left. He was a
kind man, but not exactly fitted to fill my grandfather's shoes. I
afterwards learned that he died of fever, as he was being carried across
the sea.

"During the 'sizes I had made acquaintance with old Fulcher. I was in
the town on my father's account, and he was there on his son's, who,
having committed a small larceny, was in trouble. Young Fulcher,
however, unlike my father, got off, though he did not give the son of a
lord a hundred guineas to speak for him, and ten more to pledge his
sacred honour for his honesty, but gave Counsellor P--- one-and-twenty
shillings to defend him, who so frightened the principal evidence, a
plain honest farming-man, that he flatly contradicted what he had first
said, and at last acknowledged himself to be all the rogues in the world,
and, amongst other things, a perjured villain. Old Fulcher, before he
left the town with his son,--and here it will be well to say that he and
his son left it in a kind of triumph, the base drummer of a militia
regiment, to whom they had given half-a-crown, beating his drum before
them--old Fulcher, I say, asked me to go and visit him, telling me where,
at such a time, I might find him and his caravan and family; offering, if
I thought fit, to teach me basket-making: so, after my father had been
sent off, I went and found up old Fulcher, and became his apprentice in
the basket-making line. I stayed with him till the time of his death,
which happened in about three months, travelling about with him and his
family, and living in green lanes, where we saw gy