Page:Memoirs James Hardy Vaux.djvu/117

94 soon as any of these goods were brought home, I immediately packed them up in small portable parcels, which I sent up to London by the coach, consigned to a pawn-broker with whom I was on intimate terms; desiring him to receive and keep them safe, until he saw me. I also coached off in the same clandestine manner, such of my own apparel, &c., as I had in my trunk, in which, to prevent discovery, I deposited stones or bricks to preserve its gravity. By these means I had nothing to impede my sudden departure, when rendered necessary by the arrival of the expected quarter-day.

I must here observe, to meet any surprise the reader might feel on the subject, that as I had never at this time been connected with downright thieves, so I had never yet committed an actual theft, save the embezzlement of money at Liverpool; (which indeed the law has lately made a felonious taking;) though I therefore scrupled not at practising a fraud; I was not yet sufficiently depraved to commit a robbery. This will account for my not robbing the premises of Mr. Dalton, which at a subsequent period of my life, would have been my primary object, as I had access to every part of the house, and have frequently viewed with longing eyes, the servant cleaning a handsome service of plate in the pantry.

I had now been about two months at Bury, and had no intention of absconding till the expiration of