He confirmed the fad account Wefton had just given. The poor wretch could neither pray himself nor attend to the minister. could only cry out, "Oh! fir, what will be"come of me? I don't know how to re"pent. O my poor wicked children! Sir, "I have bred them all up in fin and igno rance. Have mercy on them, fir; let "me not meet them in the place of torment "to which I am going. Lord grant them "that time for repentance which I have "thrown away!" He languished a few days, and died in great mifery :-a fresh and fad instance that people who abuse the grace of God and refift his fpirit, find it difficult to repent when they will. Except the minifter and Jack Weston, no one came to fee poor Giles, befides Tommy Price, who had been fo fadly wronged by him. Tom often brought him his own rice-milk or apple-dumpling; and Giles, ignorant and depraved as he was, often cried out, "That he thought now "there must be fome truth in religion, "fince it taught even a boy to deny himself, "and to forgive an injury." Mr. Wilson, the next Sunday, made a moving discourse on the danger of what are called petty offences. This, together with the awful death of Giles, produced fuch an effect, that no poacher has been able to fhew his head in that parish ever fince. TAWNEY RACHEL; OR, THE FORTUNE TELLER: WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF DREAMS, OMENS, AND CONJURERS. TAWNEY RACHEL was the wife of poaching Giles. There feemed to be a confpiracy in Giles's whole family to maintain themselves by tricks and pilfering. Regular labour and honest industry did not suit their idle habits. They had a fort of genius at finding out every unlawful means to support a vagabond life. Rachel travelled the country with a basket on her arm. She pretended to get her bread by felling laces, cabbage. cabbage nets, ballads, and hiftory books, and used to buy old rags and rabbit fkins. Many honeft people trade in these things, and I am fure I do not mean to fay a word against honest people, let them trade in what they will. But Rachel only made this traffic a pretence for getting admittance into farmers' kitchens, in order to tell fortunes. She was continually practifing on the credulity of filly girls; and took advantage of their ignorance to cheat and deceive them. Many an innocent fervant has the caused to be fufpected of a robbery, while fhe herself, perhaps, was in league with the thief. Many a harmless maid has fhe brought to ruin by first contriving plots and events herself, and then pretending to foretel them. She had not, to be fure, the power of really foretelling things, becaufe she had no power of feeing into futurity : but she had the art fometimes to bring them about according as fhe had foretold them. VOL. II So So fhe got that credit for her wisdom which really belonged to her wickedness. Rachel was also a famous interpreter of dreams, and could distinguish exactly between the fate of any two perfons who happened to have a mole on the right or the left cheek. She had a cunning way of getting herself off when any of her prophecies failed. When fhe explained a dream according to the natural appearance of things, and it did not come to pafs; then she would get out of that fcrape by faying, that this fort of dreams went by contraries. Now of two very oppofite things the chance always is that one of them may turn out to be true; fo in either cafe fhe kept up the cheat. Rachel, in one of her rambles, stopped at the house of Farmer Jenkins. trived to call when fhe knew the mafter of the house was from home, which indeed was her ufual way. She knocked at the door; the maids being in the field hay making, |