And well would it be for the gullible public if the mischief done by the advertising fraternity of horse-racing quacks was confined to the “fourteen uncut stamps” they have such an insatiable hunger for. There can be no doubt, however, that this is but a mild and inoffensive branch of their nefarious profession. In almost every case they combine with the exercise of their supernatural gift of prophecy the matter-of-fact business of the “commission agent,” and, if rumour whispers true, they make of it at times a business as infernal in its working as can well be imagined. They can, when occasion serves, be as “accommodating” as the loan-office swindler or the 60-per-cent bill-discounter, and a profit superior to that yielded by either of these avocations may be realised, and that with scarce any trouble at all. No capital is required, excepting a considerable stock of impudence and a fathomless fund of cold-blooded rascality. Judging from the fact that the species of villany in question has never yet been exposed in a police-court, it is only fair to imagine that it is a modern invention; on that account I am the more anxious to record and make public an item of evidence bearing on the subject that, within the past year, came under my own observation. It can be scarcely within the year, though, for it was at the time when an audacious betting gang “squatted” in the vicinity of Ludgate-hill, and, owing to some hitch in the law’s machinery, they could not easily be removed. First they swarmed in Bride-lane, Fleet-street. Being compelled to “move on,” they migrated to a most appropriate site, the waste land on which for centuries stood the infamous houses of Field-lane and West-street, and beneath which flowed the filthy Fleet-ditch. But even this was accounted ground too good to be desecrated by the foot of the gambling blackleg, and they were one fine morning bundled off it by a strong body of City police. After this they made a desperate stand on the prison side of the way in Farringdon-street, and for some months there remained. It was at this time that I made the acquaintance of the subject of the present little story. I had noticed him repeatedly, with his pale haggard face and his dull eyes, out of which nothing but weariness of life looked. He was a tall slim young fellow, and wore his patched and seedy clothes as though he had been used to better attire; and, despite the tell-tale shabbiness of his boots and his wretched tall black hat, he still clung to the respectable habit of wearing black kid-gloves, though it was necessary to shut his fists to hide the dilapidations at their finger-tips.