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.
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