Here, if you beat a bush, ’tis odds you’ll start a thief.

Buckinghamshire was, in old times, quite a forest, and a harbour for thieves, till Leofstane, abbot of St. Alban’s, caused them to be cut down. This proverb, from the expression, it’s odds, seems hardly old enough to have any reference to that circumstance, as it is doubtful whether our ancestors were then sufficiently advanced in the science of gaming, to calculate odds.