All their odd time was taken up under the pretence of watching these asses on the moor, or running after five or six half-starved geese; but the truth is, these boys were only watching for an opportunity to steal an odd goose of their neighbor’s, while they pretended to look after their own.  They used also to pluck the quills or the down from these poor live creatures, or half milk a cow before the farmer’s maid came with her pail.  They all knew how to calculate to a minute what time to be down in a morning to let out their lank, hungry beasts, which they had turned over night into the farmer’s field to steal a little good pasture.  They contrived to get there just time enough to escape being caught in replacing the stakes they had pulled out for the cattle to get over.  For Giles was a prudent, long-headed fellow; and wherever he stole food for his colts, took care never to steal stakes from the hedges at the same time.  He had sense enough to know that the gain did not make up for the danger; he knew that a loose fagot, pulled from a neighbor’s pile of wood after the family were gone to bed, answered the end better, and was not half the trouble.

Among the many trades which Giles professed, he sometimes practised that of a rat-catcher; but he was addicted to so many tricks, that he never followed the same trade long, for detection will sooner or later follow the best-concerted villany.  Whenever he was sent for to a farm-house, his custom was to kill a few of the old rats, always taking care to leave a little stock of young ones alive sufficient to keep up the breed; “for,” said he, “if I were to be such a fool as to clear a house or a barn at once, how would my trade be carried on?” And where any barn was overstocked, he used to borrow a few rats from thence, just to people a neighboring granary which had none; and he might have gone on till now, had he not unluckily been caught one evening emptying his cage of young rats under parson Wilson’s barn-door.

This worthy minister, Mr. Wilson, used to pity the neglected children of Giles, as much as he blamed the wicked parents.  He one day picked up Dick, who was far the best of Giles’ bad boys.  Dick was loitering about in a field behind the parson’s garden, in search of a hen’s nest, his mother having ordered him to bring home a few eggs that night, by hook or by crook, as Giles was resolved to have some pancakes for supper, though he knew that eggs were a penny apiece.  Mr. Wilson had long been desirous of snatching some of this vagrant family from ruin; and his chief hopes were bent on Dick, as the least hackneyed in knavery.  He had once given him a new pair of shoes, on his promising to go to school next Sunday; but no sooner had Rachel, the boy’s mother, got the shoes into her clutches, than she pawned them for a bottle of gin, and ordered the boy to keep out of the parson’s sight, and to be sure to play his marbles on Sunday, for the future, at the other end of the parish, and not near the churchyard.