Galloping Dick
The report was no Jack o’Lanthorn, neither, for Timothy, as I discovered, had put the beagles upon her that very day, upon the news communicated by his spies that I was come to Town. The Law has no queasy stomach, and will undertake a scurvy job with any; but indeed there was no suspicion upon Polly, and the charge upon which they took her was, if you please, the possession of certain gold guineas with His Majesty’s viznomy upon them. These, they would make out, were a parcel of the King’s treasure, the which I had snatched out of Timothy’s own fingers by Dartford. I knew it was odds but the message was a snare for my feet, for all that I questioned the crimp so closely; but then, I was not for letting the risque hang over Polly. It made me mad to think upon her in Timothy’s hands, with his pink eyes a-cocking at her. I was not to be averted by such scum, whether it was my capture that was plotted or no; and that very evening, after the fall of dusk, I set forth on foot for the Ratcliffe Highway, counterfeited for a sailor, with a stout hanger at my thigh.
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