It was but a few minutes before M——­ appeared in sight.  They immediately stepped into the path, two before him, and two behind, and watching him to the corner of a hedge, the two who were behind him caught him by the shoulders, turned him round, and hurrying him about ten yards, pushed him into a dry ditch.  This they had no sooner done, but they all four leaped down upon him and began to examine his pockets, M——­ thought to have talked them out of a stricter search by pretending he had lost a great deal of money at play, and had but fifty shillings about him, which with a silver watch and a crystal ring he deemed very ready to deliver; and it very probably would have been accepted if they had not had better intelligence, but one of the oldest of the gang, perceiving after turning out all his pockets that they could discover nothing of value, began to exert the style of a highwayman upon an examination, and addressed the gamester in these terms.

Nobody but such a rogue as you would have given gentlemen of our faculty so much trouble.  Sir, we have received advice by good hands from Belsize that you won sixty guineas to-day at play.  Produce them immediately, or we shall take it for granted you have swallowed them; and in such a case, Sir, I have an instrument ready to give us an immediate account of the contents of your stomach.

M——­, in a dreadful fright, put his hand under his arm, and from thence produced a green purse with a fifty pound bank-note and eighteen guineas.  This they had no sooner taken than, tying him fast to a hedge stake, they ran across the fields in search of another booty.  They spun out the time, being a moonlight night, until past eleven, there being so much company on the road that they found it impossible to attack without danger.

As they were returning home, they heard the noise of a coach driving very hard, and upon turning about saw it was that of Sir W——­ B——­, himself on the box, two ladies of pleasure in the coach, and his servants a great way behind.  One of them seized the horse on one side, and another on the other, but Sir W——­ drove so very hard that the pull of the horses brought them both to the ground, and he at the same time encouraging them with his voice and the smack of his whip.  So he drove safe off without any hurt, though they fired two pistols after him.

About three weeks after this they were passing down Drury Lane, and observing a gentleman going with one of the fine ladies of the Hundreds into a tavern thereabouts, one of the gang who knew him, and that he had married a lady with a great fortune to whom his father was guardian, and that they lived altogether in a great house near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, immediately thought on a project.  They slipped into an alehouse, where he wrote an epistle to the old gentleman, informing him that they had a warrant to apprehend a lewd woman who was with child by his son, but that she had made her escape, and was now actually with him at a certain tavern in Drury Lane, wherefore being apprehensive of disturbance, and being unwilling to disgrace his family, rather than take rougher methods, they had informed him, in order that by his interposition the affair might be made up.