ere on his son's, who,
having committed a small larceny, was in trouble. Young Fulcher,
however, unlike my father, got off, though he did not give the son of a
lord a hundred guineas to speak for him, and ten more to pledge his
sacred honour for his honesty, but gave Counsellor P--- one-and-twenty
shillings to defend him, who so frightened the principal evidence, a
plain honest farming man, that he flatly contradicted what he had first
said, and at last acknowledged himself to be all the rogues in the world,
and, amongst other things, a perjured villain. Old Fulcher, before he
left the town with his son--and here it will be well to say that he and
his son left it in a kind of triumph, the base drummer of a militia
regiment, to whom they had given half-a-crown, beating his drum before
them--old Fulcher, I say, asked me to go and visit him, telling me where,
at such a time, I might find him and his caravan and family; offering, if
I thought fit, to teach me basket-making: so, after my father had been
sent off, I went and found up old Fulcher, and became his apprentice in
the basket-making line. I stayed with him till the time of his death,
which happened in about three months, travelling about with him and his
family, and living in green lanes, where we saw gypsies and trampers, and
all kinds of strange characters. Old Fulcher, besides being an
industrious basket-maker, was an out and out thief, as was also his son,
and, indeed, every member of his family. They used to make baskets
during the day, and thieve during a great part of the night. I had not
been with them twelve hours, before old Fulcher told me that I must
thieve as well as the rest. I demurred at first, for I remembered the
fate of my father, and what he had told me about leaving off bad courses,
but soon allowed myself to be over-persuaded; more especially as the
first robbery I was asked to do was a fruit robbery. I was to go with
young Fulcher, and steal some fine Morell cherries, which grew against a
wall in a gentleman's garden; so young Fulcher and I went and stole the
cherries, one half of which we ate, and gave the rest to the old man, who
sold them to a fruiterer ten miles off from the place where we had stolen
them. The next night old Fulcher took me out with himself. He was a
great thief, though in a small way. He used to say, that they were
fools, who did not always manage to keep the rope below their shoulders,
by which he meant, that it