hard fighting. He was the very type of a hedge ruffian, and a most
proper person to meet any one "by moonlight alone."

----"He looked as if his blood
Had crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood."

The very sight of this model of his tribe brought vagrancy, with all
her train, before our eyes, mugger's-carts, tinker's wives, bull dogs,
donkeys, creels, kail pots, and all the trumpery of a gipsey's camp.
This elegant individual, we found afterwards, answered to the very
proper appellation of "Cadger Jack." He was leaning over the table,
resting his arms on a bundle of matches, and grumbling heavily about
the times, "Cadging," he said, "was gone to the devil! He had been
out ever since the morning, and had not yet broke his fast; but if he
lived till Monday, he would go to the lord mayor." Here he used some
emphatic language, and swore he would not stir until he got relief.

"You will get three months to the tread-mill," observed a woman,
sitting opposite (the only one in the room, and a happy compound
between the slut and the sot).

He d----d the tread-mill, declared he had played at up and down before
now--and would go--they were compelled to give him something--the law
did not suffer any man to starve, and so on.

He was rattling on in his way, without any one paying the least
attention to what he said, when a lad about fourteen, decently
dressed, came in, carrying a box. He placed himself beside the window,
and began to display the contents of his trunk, offering for sale
several respectable articles of clothing for mere trifles.

"Go home, boy," (said a man who had just come in, with his arms
loaded with good things). "What brought you here? do you want to be
ruined? you have run away, you young rascal, and stole them things."

The younker, who was the very image of a spoiled child and natural
vagabond, replied with all the pertness and insolence of one that had
been over indulged, "that the things were his--he had paid for his
lodgings, and nobody had anything to do with him."

"When did he come here?" enquired the man, (the landlord by this time
had gone out).

"On Thursday," he was answered.

"It is a shame," he said, "to take in so young a boy; he should have a
stick laid across his back, and sent home again."

In defence of the landlord, it was argued, that if he did not take him
in, others would; and that his things were safe here, which might not
be the case elsewhere. This was adm