, and ventured a few guesses at circumstances which might probably belong to it, the other entered into the business candidly enough, till at length Figgins's suspicions were confirmed, and he was enabled to speak to it from his own knowledge; for he found it to be this.
When he was a bridewell boy, he was applied to by a gentleman to carry him and another up the river, in one of those barges which it is well known the bridewell boys are very expert at rowing.
This expedition was to Wandsworth. It was conducted in the night, and Figgins and another, who were let into the secret, understood that it was set on foot for the purpose of stealing a young lady from a boarding school, and that the friend of the gentleman who hired the barge was to be married to her.
Being at that time anxious to get at as much of this secret as possible—probably from as honest a reason as that which now impelled the conduct of

Mr. Skinks, he took the proper methods, which he could do as cunningly as any body, to trace the conduct of the parties, and soon found where the marriage rites were performed.
This however accomplished, and concealment being no longer necessary, Figgins profited in no way, at that time, by the intelligence he had been so solicitous to procure. It being now however singularly serviceable to his friend, he rejoiced that it had struck him to use it.
The reader is now ready to ask why Mr. Figgins did not recollect all these circumstances at Lisle? To which I answer that Tadpole's real name was Poach, which, when he first conceived that very honest intention of marrying his wife to Zekiel, he warily changed, that he might be the less liable to a detection; and, as to their persons, he did not see either of them at the time of the elopement but very imperfectly, having never been in their company but between the hours of eleven o'clock at night and five in the morning.
Skinks however, who managed every thing, he recollected perfectly well, both as to his name and his person, and the whole business would long before

have occured to him but for the change of Poach into Tadpole.
Pretending to leave the negociation open between Skinks and Tadpole, he hastened to Mr. Balance, who, first imposing the most profound silence upon Skinks, under pain of inflicting that punishment he knew he had incurred, procured all those documents, the sight of which, as I have said, so completely silenced Tadpole, consisting of a certificate of the
