Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/166

150 they put up (as it is called) their palls, or else speak of those circumstances ill-advisedly. However the facts may come out, the effects are the same, whether negligently or criminally mentioned abroad, that much property is in a house that is ill-pvotecfed. The robbery at the Countess of Morton's, a few years ago, was owing to a very slight cause, like this we have alluded to.

False keys, and pick-locks, with the addition of a crow bar, are favourite modes of getting into houses, or of making their way through them when the entry is once made. Servant girls, who go of errands at evening, with their keys, should be careful not to leave such a dangerous instrument of robbery behind them; nor to suffer such to be purloined from off the counter of a shop, nor to be snatched from their fingers, in a sort of sport. She who should be thus served would find it but ill sport to be tied to the bed post half the night, whilst her former play fellows are handing off all the portable articles they can find. When one rogue had got possession of the key, another would watch her home; and the thief obstacle being thus removed from the front-door, the prey would be easy and certain,—as would the loss of her life be, were she to recognize any one among the thieves, and say so.