bothering him with an insuperable difficulty, it
was abandoned for a Roman breastplate
(pectoral), which was constructed forthwith. This
was a remarkably successful effort. Jack made
it to fit himself, adapting it neatly to his own
arms and neck, with holes for thong-lacings
over the shoulders and round the waist. After
finishing it, he walked into Malton, wearing the
"armour" under his coat. On arrival he had
an "ancient" piece of armour for sale, found
near the encampments at Cawthorne; and a
purchaser was again found, whose suspicions had
not yet been excited. The "relic" is now at
Scarborough.

About this time Jack heard of the discovery
of a Roman milestone. The idea was new. He
therefore set to work to make one, taking care
to render the inscription as puzzling as possible.
The stone he found on the roadside near
Bridlington. The mock milestone was duly
produced and sold, and, according to Jack's
statement, is now in the British Museum.

Of this milestone story we have another
version. The locality of Bridlington is named as
that where Jack found the flat slab, and, after
his rough lettering, grinding, and chipping, he
buried the stone in a field for subsequent
discovery and disinterment, which farce was
solemnly carried out. First of all, a lad wheeled
the exhumed stone in a barrow to Bridlington;
but as the bait did not get taken quite so quickly
as Jack desired, he set off with his treasure-trove
to Scarborough, where the Bridlington
antiquaries were represented as wanting
judgment, thereby losing a prize. One of Jack's
patrons in the medical profession is alleged to
have given five pounds for the stone, and that it
is not now in the British Museum, as Jack
fancies it is, but that the buyer presented it to
the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.
The milestone trick is regarded as one of Jack's
most famous exploits.

During this same period of his career, he
undertook the manufacture of seals, inscribed
stones, &c. Of the latter, he professed to have
found one in the stream of the Pickering
marshes. In passing the railway gate-house
there, he went to the stream to drink, and
in so doing, noticed a dark stone at the
bottom of the beck. This he took out, and
found it had letters on it: "IMP CONSTAN
EBUR" round the Christian symbol. Jack
being then but little known, no suspicion of a
forgery was entertained. In course of time,
this stone was submitted to Mr. Roach Smith,
Mr. Newton, of the British Museum, and other
antiquaries, but no conclusion could be arrived
at, its form suggesting most, if anything, the
ornate top of the shaft of a banner. But the
ability of the Romans in working metal made
it unlikely that they should use so rude a stone
ornament for such a purpose, so that theory was
obliged to be rejected. The article still
remained a puzzle; it is now considered a
curiosity. Its parentage was afterwards discovered;
having been duly traced to Flint Jack's hands.

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Jack's
tide was turned, appropriately, by too much
liquor. In 1846, a change came over him. he
continued to be the same arrant rogue; but, in
addition, he began to indulge in the dangerous
delights of intemperance. "In this year," he
says, "I took to drinking; the worst job yet.
Till then, I was always possessed of five pounds.
I have since been in utter poverty, and frequently
in great misery and want."

Jack seemed to have been "led away" at
Scarborough. If he was it only served him
right; for he did not, at that place, reform his
practice of leading other people wrong. While
there, he got introduced to the manager of one
of the banks, but he says he could not "do"
him; for he bought no flints, and only cared for
fossils. Jack had not yet set about forging
fossils, as he afterwards found it expedient to
do. While at Scarborough, however, he made
and disposed of a "flint comb." This article
was a puzzle to most people, and the purchaser
submitted it to Mr. Bateman, who could not
find any use for it, except that it might have
been the instrument by which tattooing of the
body was effected.

At the end of that year, Flint Jack visited
Hull, where, being short of money–he had been
"always short of money since he took to drinking"
–he went to the Mechanics' Institute,
and sold them a large stone celt (trap),
represented to have been found on the Yorkshire
wolds. The imposture was not detected. But
Hull proved a barren place; and, not being
able to find out any antiquaries or geologists,
Jack crossed the Humber, and walked to
Lincoln. Here he called upon the curator of the
museum, and sold him a few flints and fossils,
the flints being forgeries. As this was the only
sale he was able to effect, he set off for Newark,
and there found out the only geologist in the
place, who was making a collection of fossils.
Jack remained there a week, collecting and
making fossils and working flints, his patron
supposing that all, both fossils and flints, were
genuine.

The fossil-forging business was being pushed
on now; it was so much more convenient to
make a fossil than to look for it. Jack answered
curious inquirers by stating that the flints were
all picked up on the high lands in the county,
and he was always careful to particularise the
neighbourhood of camps, entrenchments, &c.,
the positions of which he learned by reading
local histories; and he invariably visited the
sites in person. As for the fossils, he, knowing
the different strata, found them where the
open quarries were, and, if not findable, they
were always makable. Rarely, therefore, if
ever, was he at a loss.

And so he went, on and on, sinking deeper
and deeper in the mire of rascality;
sometimes, in his wanderings, reaching places
where there were no antiquaries to take in,
sometimes stumbling upon collectors whose
names he has forgotten now, having probably
good reasons of his own for remembering to
forget them. At Cambridge the chalk and