to meet with it by beating. Some of the biggest boys were sent
out with these lean and galled animals to carry sand or coals about
the neighboring towns. Both sand and coals were often stolen before
they got them to sell; or if not, they always took care to cheat in
selling them. By long practice in this art, they grew so dexterous
that they could give a pretty good guess how large a coal they could
crib out of every bag before the buyer would be likely to miss it.

All their odd time was taken up under the pretence of watching these
asses on the moor, or running after five or six half-starved geese;
but the truth is, these boys were only watching for an opportunity to
steal an odd goose of their neighbor's, while they pretended to look
after their own. They used also to pluck the quills or the down from
these poor live creatures, or half milk a cow before the farmer's maid
came with her pail. They all knew how to calculate to a minute what
time to be down in a morning to let out their lank, hungry beasts,
which they had turned over night into the farmer's field to steal a
little good pasture. They contrived to get there just time enough to
escape being caught in replacing the stakes they had pulled out for
the cattle to get over. For Giles was a prudent, long-headed fellow;
and wherever he stole food for his colts, took care never to steal
stakes from the hedges at the same time. He had sense enough to know
that the gain did not make up for the danger; he knew that a loose
fagot, pulled from a neighbor's pile of wood after the family were
gone to bed, answered the end better, and was not half the trouble.

Among the many trades which Giles professed, he sometimes practised
that of a rat-catcher; but he was addicted to so many tricks, that he
never followed the same trade long, for detection will sooner or later
follow the best-concerted villany. Whenever he was sent for to a
farm-house, his custom was to kill a few of the old rats, always
taking care to leave a little stock of young ones alive sufficient to
keep up the breed; "for," said he, "if I were to be such a fool as to
clear a house or a barn at once, how would my trade be carried on?"
And where any barn was overstocked, he used to borrow a few rats from
thence, just to people a neighboring granary which had none; and he
might have gone on till now, had he not unluckily been caught one
evening emptying his cage of young rats under parson Wilson's
barn-door.