found to contain counterfeit money--Flash-screens or
Fleet-notes,{1} and the division cannot well be made without change can
be procured. Now comes the touch-stone. The Countryman, for such they
generally contrive to inveigle, is perhaps in cash, having sold his hay,
or his cattle, tells them he can give change; which being understood,
the draught-board, cards, or la bagatelle, are introduced, and as the
job is a good one, they can afford to sport some of their newly-acquired
wealth in this way. They drink and play, and fill their grog again. The
Countryman bets; if he loses, he is called upon to pay; if he wins, 'tis
added to what is coming to him out of the purse.

"If, after an experiment or two, they find he has but little money, or
fight shy, they bolt, that is, brush off in quick time, leaving him to
answer for the reckoning. But if he is what they term well-breeched,
and full of cash, they stick to him until he is cleaned out,{2} make him
drunk, and, if he turns restive, they mill him. If he should be an
easy cove,{3} he perhaps give them change for their flash notes, or
counterfeit coin, and they leave him as soon as possible, highly pleased
with his fancied success, while they laugh in their sleeves at the dupe
of their artifice."

"And is it possible?" inquired Tallyho--

"Can such things be, and overcome us
Like a summer's cloud?"

"Not without our special wonder," continued Dashall; "but such things
have been practised. Then again, your ring-droppers, or practisers of
the fawney rig, are more cunning in their manoeuvres to turn their wares
into the ready blunt.{4} The pretending to find a ring being one of the
meanest and least profitable exercises of their ingenuity, it forms a
part of their art to find articles of much more

1 Flash-screens or Fleet-notes--Forged notes.

2 Cleaned out--Having lost all your money.

3 Easy cove--One whom there is no difficulty in gulling.

4 Ready blunt--Cash in hand.

~361~~ value, such as rich jewelry, broaches, ear-rings, necklaces set
with diamonds, pearls, &c. sometimes made into a paper parcel, at others
in a small neat red morocco case, in which is stuck a bill of parcels,
giving a high-flown description of the articles, and with an extravagant
price. Proceeding nearly in the same way as the money-droppers with the
dupe, the finder proposes, as he is rather short of _steeven_,{1} to
_swap_{2}his share for a comparati