again, and said to him, 'Pray come, sir, now, and take
it and play for yourself; I think I have done pretty well for you.' He
would have had me play on, but it grew late, and I desired to be
excused. When I gave it up to him, I told him I hoped he would give me
leave to tell it now, that I might see what I had gained, and how lucky
I had been for him; when I told them, there were threescore and three
guineas. 'Ay,' says I, 'if it had not been for that unlucky throw, I
had got you a hundred guineas.' So I gave him all the money, but he
would not take it till I had put my hand into it, and taken some for
myself, and bid me please myself. I refused it, and was positive I
would not take it myself; if he had a mind to anything of that kind, it
should be all his own doings.

The rest of the gentlemen seeing us striving cried, 'Give it her all';
but I absolutely refused that. Then one of them said, 'D--n ye, jack,
halve it with her; don't you know you should be always upon even terms
with the ladies.' So, in short, he divided it with me, and I brought
away thirty guineas, besides about forty-three which I had stole
privately, which I was sorry for afterward, because he was so generous.

Thus I brought home seventy-three guineas, and let my old governess see
what good luck I had at play. However, it was her advice that I should
not venture again, and I took her counsel, for I never went there any
more; for I knew as well as she, if the itch of play came in, I might
soon lose that, and all the rest of what I had got.

Fortune had smiled upon me to that degree, and I had thriven so much,
and my governess too, for she always had a share with me, that really
the old gentlewoman began to talk of leaving off while we were well,
and being satisfied with what we had got; but, I know not what fate
guided me, I was as backward to it now as she was when I proposed it to
her before, and so in an ill hour we gave over the thoughts of it for
the present, and, in a word, I grew more hardened and audacious than
ever, and the success I had made my name as famous as any thief of my
sort ever had been at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey.

I had sometime taken the liberty to play the same game over again,
which is not according to practice, which however succeeded not amiss;
but generally I took up new figures, and contrived to appear in new
shapes every time I went abroad.

It was not a rumbling time of the year, and the gentlemen bein