escape being caught in replacing the stakes they had pulled out for
the cattle to get over. For Giles was a prudent, long-headed fellow;
and wherever he stole food for his colts, took care never to steal
stakes from the hedges at the same time. He had sense enough to know
that the gain did not make up for the danger; he knew that a loose
fagot, pulled from a neighbor's pile of wood after the family were
gone to bed, answered the end better, and was not half the trouble.

Among the many trades which Giles professed, he sometimes practised
that of a rat-catcher; but he was addicted to so many tricks, that he
never followed the same trade long, for detection will sooner or later
follow the best-concerted villany. Whenever he was sent for to a
farm-house, his custom was to kill a few of the old rats, always
taking care to leave a little stock of young ones alive sufficient to
keep up the breed; "for," said he, "if I were to be such a fool as to
clear a house or a barn at once, how would my trade be carried on?"
And where any barn was overstocked, he used to borrow a few rats from
thence, just to people a neighboring granary which had none; and he
might have gone on till now, had he not unluckily been caught one
evening emptying his cage of young rats under parson Wilson's
barn-door.

This worthy minister, Mr. Wilson, used to pity the neglected children
of Giles, as much as he blamed the wicked parents. He one day picked
up Dick, who was far the best of Giles' bad boys. Dick was loitering
about in a field behind the parson's garden, in search of a hen's
nest, his mother having ordered him to bring home a few eggs that
night, by hook or by crook, as Giles was resolved to have some
pancakes for supper, though he knew that eggs were a penny apiece.
Mr. Wilson had long been desirous of snatching some of this vagrant