“During the ’sizes I had made acquaintance with old Fulcher.  I was in the town on my father’s account, and he was there on his son’s, who, having committed a small larceny, was in trouble.  Young Fulcher, however, unlike my father, got off, though he did not give the son of a lord a hundred guineas to speak for him, and ten more to pledge his sacred honour for his honesty, but gave Counsellor P-—­ one-and-twenty shillings to defend him, who so frightened the principal evidence, a plain honest farming-man, that he flatly contradicted what he had first said, and at last acknowledged himself to be all the rogues in the world, and, amongst other things, a perjured villain.  Old Fulcher, before he left the town with his son,—­and here it will be well to say that he and his son left it in a kind of triumph, the base drummer of a militia regiment, to whom they had given half-a-crown, beating his drum before them—­old Fulcher, I say, asked me to go and visit him, telling me where, at such a time, I might find him and his caravan and family; offering, if I thought fit, to teach me basket-making:  so, after my father had been sent off, I went and found up old Fulcher, and became his apprentice in the basket-making line.  I stayed with him till the time of his death, which happened in about three months, travelling about with him and his family, and living in green lanes, where we saw gypsies and trampers, and all kinds of strange characters.  Old Fulcher, besides being an industrious basket-maker, was an out-and-out thief, as was also his son, and, indeed, every member of his family.  They used to make baskets during the day, and thieve during a great part of the night.  I had not been with them twelve hours before old Fulcher told me that I must thieve as well as the rest.  I demurred at first, for I remembered the fate of my father, and what he had told me about leaving off bad courses, but soon allowed myself to be over-persuaded; more especially as the first robbery I was asked to do was a fruit robbery.  I was to go with young Fulcher, and steal some fine Morell cherries, which grew against a wall in a gentleman’s garden; so young Fulcher and I went and stole the cherries, one half of which we ate, and gave the rest to the old man, who sold them to a fruiterer ten miles off from the place where we had stolen them.  The next night old Fulcher took me out with himself.  He was a great thief, though in a small way.  He used to say, that they were fools, who did not always manage to keep the rope below their shoulders, by which he meant, that it was not advisable to commit a robbery, or do anything which could bring you to the gallows.  He was all for petty larceny, and knew where to put his hand upon any little thing in England, which it was possible to steal.  I submit it to the better judgment of the Romany Rye, who I see is a great hand for words and names, whether he ought not to have been called old Filcher, instead of Fulcher.  I shan’t give a regular account of the larcenies he committed during the short time I knew him, either alone by himself, or with me and his son.  I shall merely relate the last.