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 humor 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 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 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 ain'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. "Well," says I, "you are afraid, and indeed
you have reason; give it to 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 anything there without danger; which was true indeed, for
there they asked us no questions.

We set out, as I said, in the evening