Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/242

226 ground, and found he had taken a whet (of gin) in Spitalfields market.

What was the precise nature of his business remained to be solved. I went to Covent Garden, and upon enquiry found that two watches had passed through the hands of a neighbouring housekeeper, where I knew he was sweet, not to say nutty, upon the covess. But I learnt no more for nearly a month, when I met him again in the same line of march: we took our drops together at the first vaults we came to. Here I suddenly demanded of him "What is o'clock?" He would have evaded the question, but I taxed him with having a watch, for that "I heard it beating." This, although a lie, puzzled his canister, and he pulled it forth like a gaby, acknowledged that he was "taking it to the Transmuter," and I sucked him of two dollars for quietness sake.

Of other little offences, we have seen a good deal that was written formerly, and reprinted latterly, about Kidnappers and Crimps, of Pimps, Procuresses, and Waggon-hunters, Bawdy Houses, and Conjurors, which, if ever they did exist as there set down, exist no longer; the method of doing having greatly altered like most