His first accomplice was Barney M'Guire, who--until a fourteen stretch
sent him to Botany Bay--played Clytus to David's Alexander, and it was
at Portobello Races that their brilliant partnership began. Hitherto
Haggart had worked by stealth; he had tracked his booty under the cloud
of night. Now was the moment to prove his prowess in the eye of day, to
break with a past which he already deemed ignoble. His heart leaped with
the occasion: he tackled his adventure with the hot-head energy of a new
member, big with his maiden speech. The victim was chosen in an instant:
a backer, whose good fortune had broken the bookmakers. There was
no thief on the course who did not wait, in hungry appetence, the
sportsman's descent from the stand; yet the novice outstripped them all.
'I got the first dive at his keek-cloy,' he writes in his simple, heroic
style, 'and was so eager on my prey, that I pulled out the pocket along
with the money, and nearly upset the gentleman.' A steady brain saved
him from the consequence of an o'erbuoyant enthusiasm. The notes were
passed to Barney in a flash, and when the sportsman turned upon his
assailant, Haggart's hands were empty.
Thereupon followed an infinite series of brilliant exploits. With Barney
to aid, he plundered the Border like a reiver. He stripped the yeomen
of Tweedside with a ferocity which should have avenged the disgrace of
Flodden. More than once he ransacked Ecclefechan, though it is unlikely
that he emptied the lean pocket of Thomas Carlyle.
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