had one captain; the Schutz gang must have a
leader, and that leader was undoubtedly a great
actor, a clever mimic, a wily artful rogue, who
had taken many careful and accurate soundings
in the lowest ooze of the human heart.

Eager to seize Price, who had already
passed one or two thousand exquisitely forged
bank-notes, and who seemed to be as double-faced
as Janus, and as watchful as Argus, Sir Sampson
Wright, successor at Bow-street to the celebrated
blind magistrate, Sir John Fielding, the
great novelist's relation, covered the dead walls
of London with the following notice:

              PUBLIC OFFICE, BOW-STREET.
                             A FELONY.

Whereas a woman answering the following
description stands charged with felony; whoever will
apprehend her, and bring her before Sir Sampson
Wright, at the above office, shall receive two hundred
pounds reward upon her commitment.

The said woman lately lived in a house, No. 3,
on the Terrace, Tottenham-court-road, by the name
of ANN POLTON. She then was dressed in a black
silk gown, black cloak, and a black bonnet; she
appears, or affects to be, very old and decrepid,
though there is strong reason to believe that it is
fictitious. She is rather above the middle size, thin
face; and when she hired the above house, and
until Monday last, usually wore clothes as above
described, but on that day was dressed in a dark blue
striped linen or cotton gown, black bonnet and
cloak, a black handkerchief tied round her neck, a
black patch on her chin, and another on her right
cheek, and had a bundle tied in a white handkerchief,
light-coloured hair in loose curls, without
powder. She has lately been seen as affecting a
desponding situation, in the fields in the above
neighbourhood. She is connected with a man who
has appeared very aged and infirm, but,
notwithstanding, hath been observed to walk very well
when he supposed he was unnoticed.

The man appears to be aged, about five feet
seven or eight inches high, generally wearing a
morning gown, with a cap over his face, and a large
hat flapped; walks decrepid, with a stick, as if infirm,
and wears spectacles; has several times walked
down to the stables adjacent to the Terrace, and is
the same person frequently before advertised, under
different descriptions.

It is earnestly requested that all housekeepers
in the several streets, &c., between the Middlesex
Hospital and the out-buildings towards Marylebone
will give particular attention to this advertisement.

While this notice was staring in the face
of London, and smaller handbills were being
sown broadcast in every high road, lane, and
alley, Mr. Price had a narrow escape.

Every morning an old decrepid gentleman in
a large flapped hat and goggling spectacles
used to stroll down to the stables near the Terrace
in Tottenham-court-road (just beyond the
chapel), and watch a certain stable-boy curry-
comb a specially vicious horse, as daily the
lad would thrash the spiteful and unruly
beast with a broomstick, the old gentleman,
leaning on his ivory-crutched cane, would
silently smile and chuckle. One day, a Bow-street
officer, issuing handbills, heard this boy exclaim
to his companion:

"If this is not my old man, I'll be d——"

The old man had only just hobbled off; so
after him dashed the runner to the gardens of
the Adam and Eve (the place, by-the-by, Hogarth
sketched in the " March to Finchley"), which
Mr. Price was known to frequent. Whisk in
at the door whips the runner, but too late; for
Mr. Price had just whipped out of another door,
and left no trace even for the keenest bloodhound.

A few days afterwards, the same old gentleman
went to several coffee-houses round 'Change,
and hired boys to take forged notes to the bank.
He ordered these boys to bring him the tickets
sent by the teller to the cashier. He then
altered the ten pounds on the tickets to one
hundred pounds, the fifty pounds to one hundred and
fifty pounds, and sent them by fresh messengers
to the cashier, who paid them without suspicion.

Por some weeks before these forgeries, a
neatly built, rather corpulent man, of about fifty,
named Powel, had repeatedly called and pledged
articles of value at the shop of Mr. Aldus, a pawn-
broker, in Berwick-street. Mr. Powel was an
erect, active, good-looking, well dressed man, with
very aquiline, perhaps almost vulturine, nose,
small sunken keen grey eyes, pinched lips, pale
complexion, very few teeth, and a pointed prominent
nutcracker chin. On the last occasion he had
passed a forged note with many altered
indorsements.One indorsement, by accident left entire,
enabled the Bank to trace the note to Mr. Aldus,
who had already had suspicion of the gentleman
with the nutcracker face and vulturine nose.
The Pawnbrokers' Act being then in agitation,
Mr. Aldus entertained a suspicion that Mr.
Powel was an informer, who was going to inform
against him, and bring qui tam actions against
him for taking usurious interest. He had,
therefore, employed a spy to track him home;
but the spy had always lost him in the
neighbourhood of Portland-street, or near a mews
in Tottenham-street. The runners were for instantly
searching the two suspicious places near
the rogue's burrow; for they were now sure
that Price and Powel were the same man, and
belonged to old Patch's, alias Schutz's, gang;
but no, said Mr. Clarke, who understood trap
to perfection, Price has some plan against Aldus.
He has done well here; his suspicions are
unexcited; leave well alone; keep watch for him
at Aldus's.

And now may we be permitted an Homeric
metaphor.

As when the leather-gaitered trapper from
his lair in the fern and brambles sees the shy
weasel come gliding towards the pendent rabbit,
up the dangerous leaf-strewn path that leads to
the keen-toothed gin, he holds his breath, nor
moves his haind to the trigger though the little
creature, winding like a snake, trots and sniffs,
and then slips again into the high grass, knowing
that it will certainly return if he only remains
silent as the snow, and still as death, so
did the runners in the dusk steal behind the
shadow of the three golden balls, and plan their
treacherous ambush.

On the 14th of January, 1786, the keen-eyed,