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 
