telling me before he went that she would teach me some things which it behoved me to know.  I remained with her in the cottage upwards of a week; several of those who had been there coming and going.  The woman, after making me take an oath to be faithful, told me that the people whom I had seen were a gang who got their livelihood by passing forged notes, and that my father was a principal man amongst them, adding, that I must do my best to assist them.  I was a poor ignorant child at that time, and I made no objection, thinking that whatever my father did must be right; the woman then gave me some instructions in the smasher’s dialect of the Latin language.  I made great progress, because, for the first time in my life, I paid great attention to my lessons.  At last my father returned, and, after some conversation with the woman, took me away in his cart.  I shall be very short about what happened to my father and myself during two years.  My father did his best to smash the Bank of England by passing forged notes, and I did my best to assist him.  We attended races and fairs in all kinds of disguises; my father was a first-rate hand at a disguise, and could appear of all ages, from twenty to fourscore; he was, however, grabbed at last.  He had said, as I have told you, that he should be my ruin, but I was the cause of his, and all owing to the misfortune of this here eye of mine.  We came to this very place of Horncastle, where my father purchased two horses of a young man, paying for them with three forged notes, purporting to be Bank of Englanders of fifty pounds each, and got the young man to change another of the like amount; he at that time appeared as a respectable dealer, and I as his son, as I really was.

“As soon as we had got the horses, we conveyed them to one of the places of call belonging to our gang, of which there were several.  There they were delivered into the hands of our companions, who speedily sold them in a distant part of the country.  The sum which they fetched—­for the gang kept very regular accounts—­formed an important item on the next day of sharing, of which there were twelve in the year.  The young man, whom my father had paid for the horses with his smashing notes, was soon in trouble about them, and ran some risk, as I heard, of being executed; but he bore a good character, told a plain story, and, above all, had friends, and was admitted to bail; to one of his friends he described my father and myself.  This person happened to be at an inn in Yorkshire, where my father, disguised as a Quaker, attempted to pass a forged note.  The note was shown to this individual, who pronounced it a forgery, it being exactly similar to those for which the young man had been in trouble, and which he had seen.  My father, however, being supposed a respectable man, because he was dressed as a Quaker—­the very reason, by the bye, why anybody who knew aught of the Quakers would have suspected him to be a rogue—­would