268 GULL-GROPERS. 



who frequented the ordinary to save the charge of house- 

 keeping, under the pretext of meeting with travellers and 

 seeking company, and carried in his pouch some hundred 

 or two hundred pounds in twenty-shilling pieces. By 

 long experience he knew to an ace how much the losing 

 player was worth, and as he scratched his head and paced 

 uneasily up and down the room, as if he wanted the 

 ostler, he takes him to a side window and tells him that 

 he was, forsooth, sorry to see so honest a gentleman in 

 bad luck, but that ' dice were made of women's bones and 

 would cozen the wisest,' and that for his father's sake, Sir 

 Luke Littlebrain (he had learned the name from the 

 drawer), if it pleased him he need not leave off play for 

 a hundred pound or two. The youth, eager to redeem 

 his losses, accepted the money ordinarily with grateful 

 thanks. The gold was poured upon the table, and a hard 

 bond was hastily drawn up for the repayment at the next 

 quarter-day, deducting so much for the scrivener's expense 

 at changing the pieces. If he lost, the usurer hugged his 

 bond, and laughed in his sleeve. If Sir Andrew won, the 

 gull-groper would then steal silently out of the noisy 

 room to avoid repayment. The day that the bond 

 became due, Hunks was sure not to be within, and if 

 seen, in some way contrived to make the debtor break 

 the bond, and then transformed himself into two sergeants, 

 who clapped the youth in prison. From thence he usually 

 escaped shorn of a goodly manor or fair lordship, worth 



