I had heard, he was gone away determined to commit some more desperate
act of fraud; and, to convince me of the correctness of his judgment, he
got up at four o'clock the next morning, and stole down to my brewery,
and there he detected him in the fact of practising upon me a fraud
similar to that of which he had been previously convicted by his own
confession. Mr. Waddington came back to breakfast, and informed me of
the fact, and urged my taking immediate criminal proceedings against the
offender. I, however, preferred giving him an opportunity to escape, and
having ordered my curricle I called at the brewery, to say that I was
going to Chisenbury for a few days. He inquired as follows--"_Pray,
Sir, what day shall we have the pleasure of seeing you back again?_" I
replied that it would be in about a week. These were the last words I
ever heard from him. When I returned I found, as I expected, that he had
sailed for America, bag and baggage, two days: after I left Bristol.

I discovered that the concern was in a most wretched state; the debts
had been collected to a shilling, where they were good for any thing.
The cellars were filled with bad beer, although he had had the unlimited
control of the best malt and hops. I had sent my own best barley down
from Chisenbury, and had made fifty quarters of malt a week, for two
whole seasons, for which I had no return, and the amount of my losses
in this concern is incalculable. When he first began brewing I made him
make oath, before the Mayor of Bristol, that he would use only malt and
hops in the brewing of the beer and porter at the Jacob's Well Brewery.
Some time after this, I had some ground of suspicion that the brewer
purchased some small quantity of copperas, to assist his faults in
brewing. I, therefore, ever afterwards made the brewer, as well as his
master, take the oath before the Mayor, that they would use nothing but
malt and hops in brewing.