A spare, lean frame; a small head set forward upon a pair of sloping shoulders; a thin, sharp nose, and rat-like eyes; a flat, hollow chest; shrunk shanks, modestly retreating from their snuff-coloured hose—­these are the tokens which served to remind his friends of Ralph Briscoe, the Clerk of Newgate.  As he left the prison in the grey air of morning upon some errand of mercy or revenge, he appeared the least fearsome of mortals, while an awkward limp upon his left toe deepened the impression of timidity.  So abstract was his manner, so hesitant his gait, that he would hug the wall as he went, nervously stroking its grimy surface with his long, twittering fingers.  But Ralph, as justice and the Jug knew too well, was neither fool nor coward.  His character belied his outward seeming.  A large soul had crept into the case of his wizened body, and if a poltroon among his ancestors had gifted him with an alien type, he had inherited from some nameless warrior both courage and resource.

He was born in easy circumstances, and gently nurtured in the distant village of Kensington.  Though cast in a scholar’s mould, and very apt for learning, he rebelled from the outset against a career of inaction.  His lack of strength was never a check upon his high stomach; he would fight with boys of twice his size, and accept the certain defeat in a cheerful spirit of dogged pugnacity.  Moreover, if his arms were weak, his cunning was as keen-edged as his tongue; and, before his stricken eye had paled, he had commonly executed an ample vengeance upon his enemy.  Nor was it industry that placed him at the top of the class.  A ready wit made him master of the knowledge he despised.

But he would always desert his primer to follow the hangman’s lumbering cart up Tyburn Hill, and, still a mere imp of mischief, he would run the weary way from Kensington to Shoe Lane on the distant chance of a cock-fight.  He was present, so he would relate in after years, when Sir Thomas Jermin’s man put his famous trick upon the pit.  With a hundred pounds in his pocket and under his arm a dunghill cock, neatly trimmed for the fray, the ingenious ruffian, as Briscoe would tell you, went off to Shoe Lane, persuaded an accomplice to fight the cock in Sir Thomas Jermin’s name, and laid a level hundred against his own bird.  So lofty was Sir Thomas’s repute that backers were easily found, but the dunghill rooster instantly showed a clean pair of heels, and the cheat was justified of his cunning.

Thus Ralph Briscoe learnt the first lessons in that art of sharping wherein he was afterwards an adept; and when he left school his head was packed with many a profitable device which no book learning could impart.  His father, however, still resolute that he should join an intelligent profession, sent him to Gray’s Inn that he might study law.  Here the elegance of his handwriting gained him a rapid repute; his skill became the envy of all the lean-souled clerks