d fortune had broken the bookmakers. There was
no thief on the course who did not wait, in hungry appetence, the
sportsman's descent from the stand; yet the novice outstripped them all.
'I got the first dive at his keek-cloy,' he writes in his simple, heroic
style, 'and was so eager on my prey, that I pulled out the pocket along
with the money, and nearly upset the gentleman.' A steady brain saved
him from the consequence of an o'erbuoyant enthusiasm. The notes were
passed to Barney in a flash, and when the sportsman turned upon his
assailant, Haggart's hands were empty.

Thereupon followed an infinite series of brilliant exploits. With Barney
to aid, he plundered the Border like a reiver. He stripped the yeomen
of Tweedside with a ferocity which should have avenged the disgrace of
Flodden. More than once he ransacked Ecclefechan, though it is unlikely
that he emptied the lean pocket of Thomas Carlyle. There was not a
gaff from Newcastle to the Tay which he did not haunt with sedulous
perseverance; nor was he confronted with failure, until his figure
became a universal terror. His common method was to price a horse, and
while the dealer showed Barney the animal's teeth, Haggart would slip
under the uplifted arm, and ease the blockhead of his blunt. Arrogant in
his skill, delighted with his manifold triumphs, Haggart led a life of
unbroken prosperity under the brisk air of heaven, and, despite the
risk of his profession, he remained two years a stranger to poverty
and imprisonment. His worst mishap was to slip his forks into an empty
pocket, or to encounter in his cups a milvadering horse-dealer; but his
joys were free and frank, while he exulted in his success with a boyish
glee. 'I was never happier in all my life than when I fingered all this
money,' he exclaims when he had captured the comfortable prize of two
hundred pounds. And then he would make merry at Newcastle or York,
forgetting the knowing ones for a while, going abroad in white cape and
tops, and flicking his leg like a gentleman with a dandy whip. But at
last Barney and a wayward ambition persuaded him to desert his proper
craft for the greater hazard of cracking a crib, and thus he was
involved in his ultimate ruin. He incurred and he deserved the untoward
fate of those who overlook their talents' limitation; and when this
master of pickpockets followed Barney through the window of a secluded
house upon the York Road, he might already have felt the noose