d, and never rested until he had gained Finchley Common.

At break of day, when the world re-awoke from the fear of thieves, he
feigned a limp at a cottage door, and borrowed a hammer to straighten a
pinching shoe. Five minutes behind a hedge, and his anklets had dropped
from him; and, thus a free man, he took to the high road. After all he
was persuaded to desert London and to escape a while from the sturdy
embrace of Edgworth Bess. Moreover, if Bess herself were in the lock-up,
he still feared the interested affection of Mistress Maggot, that other
doxy, whose avarice would surely drive him upon a dangerous enterprise;
so he struck across country, and kept starvation from him by petty
theft. Up and down England he wandered in solitary insolence. Once,
saith rumour, his lithe apparition startled the peace of Nottingham;
once, he was wellnigh caught begging wort at a brew-house in Thames
Street. But he might as well have lingered in Newgate as waste his
opportunity far from the delights of Town; the old lust of life still
impelled him, and a week after the hue-and-cry was raised he crept at
dead of night down Drury Lane. Here he found harbourage with a friendly
fence, Wild's mortal enemy, who promised him a safe conduct across the
seas. But the desire of work proved too strong for prudence; and in a
fortnight he had planned an attack on the pawnshop of one Rawling, at
the Four Balls in Drury Lane.

Sheppard, whom no house ever built with hands was strong enough to
hold, was better skilled at breaking out than at breaking in, and it
is remarkable that his last feat in the cracking of cribs was also his
greatest. Its very conception was a masterpiece of effrontery. Drury
Lane was the thief-catcher's chosen territory; yet it was the Four Balls
that Jack designed for attack, and watches, tie-wigs, snuff-boxes
were among his booty. Whatever he could not crowd upon his person he
presented to a brace of women. Tricked out in his stolen finery, he
drank and swaggered in Clare Market. He was dressed in a superb suit of
black; a diamond fawney flashed upon his finger; his light tie-periwig
was worth no less than seven pounds; pistols, tortoise-shell
snuff-boxes, and golden guineas jostled one another in his pockets.

Thus, in brazen magnificence, he marched down Drury Lane on a certain
Saturday night in November 1724. Towards midnight he visited Thomas
Nicks, the butcher, and having bargained for three ribs of beef, carried
Nic