Page:Singular life, adventures, and depredations of David Haggart, the murderer.pdf/4

4 road side, and rode home, where he kept it for some time in an outhouse, where he had formerly kept a cuddie; he kept it there for several days, until the owner found it out by accident. At Leith Races, in 1813. he enlisted in the Norfolk Militia, and learned the drum and bugle-horn; the regiment was disbanded in about a year afterwards, and he was discharged. His father was then living in the south back of the Cannongate, Edinburgh, and he went home, when he was put as an apprentice to the millwright and engineering business, with Cockburn and Baird, Cannongate, where he behaved with honesty, and was very well liked by his employers.

His master having given up business he was of course thrown idle, and at this time got acquainted with many worthless characters, among whom was one Barney, an Irishman, who had been bred a tailor in Dumfries; he was older than Haggart, of great bodily strength, and a most skilful pickpocket. - Barney put him up to a number of tricks, and they agreed to travel together, in August, 1817, when just on the point of going to England, they past a day at Portobello Races, and picked a gentleman's pocket of eleven pounds, the first ever Haggart attempted in day-light; with this they took outside places on the Jedburgh coach, and