e 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 almost to the end of Newmarket town.
Just at the hither 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 of 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 twopence 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 do you say to good luck?
Would you have had me 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 on now, I think; you are in a safer
condition than I am, if we are taken."

COLONEL JACK FINDS CAPTAIN JACK HARD TO MANAGE

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 traveling over the fens, we took him for our guide,
and went with him to Spalding, and from thence to a town called