Chapter IV: Part 4

"And fareweel, Sandy," cried a voice from the bed; "we'll maybe never see ane anither again. May the Lord prosper ye and mend ye!"

And finding matters in this favourable state, as I conceived, I bent my head over the lump of innocence:--

"Now, Mrs Dewar," whispered I, "just tell me how Sandy came by the ducks and hens."

"Aweel," said she in return, disappointing my hopes of an admission, "I'll say naething against my lawfu' husband. If the dukes and hens didna flee in at the window, it's now dead certain they'll no flee oot at the door."

These were the last words of the sonsy landlady, and I marched Sandy, with his burden, through an admiring crowd to the Office, where, having locked him up, I began to examine the dead bodies. The heads, as I have said, had been all taken care of, not a feather left upon one of them. Every corpse was so provokingly like another, that I could see no way of proving that they belonged to any one; and if, as was likely, Sandy had not been observed by any person about the place, I had no evidence to rest on but the equivocal words of Mrs Dewar, which pointed out no proprietor. I was in difficulty, but my difficulty was a stimulant as well; and there in the Office I sat, I know not how long, making my _post mortem_ examination with all the assiduity of a doctor. My honour was concerned. The bantam would crow if my hens were not identified; but oh the inestimable virtue of perseverance! Were I to recount what this power has yielded me, I would read a lesson to the sluggard better than any imparted by Solomon. I had made my discoveries, and was the more satisfied with the result, as, during all the time I had been engaged in the examination of my eighteen dead bodies, I had become the theme of much good-humoured laughter among my compeers, joined in by the Superintendent and Lieutenant themselves.

A short time afterwards, there came in a charge from Mr Beaton, Hope Park, Meadows, to the effect that nine ducks had been stolen from his premises on the previous night; and after the lapse of another hour, a second charge, involving the nine hens, came from Mr Renton of Hope Park End. To these places I repaired, and saw the servants, who could, of course, have had no difficulty about the identity of their favourites, fed and tended by them every morning, and relieved by them of the succulent treasure they dropt so industriously for the morning's meal, provided the feathers remained, but they all laughed at the idea of knowing their lamented favourites with bare bodies. As to the thief, no one could say that he was seen, or even heard. Sandy had done his work well. I then got the lasses to dress themselves, and accompany me to the Office, where we soon arrived; the bodies were all lying in the state in which I left them. The sight to the girls was nothing less than striking. They held up their hands, and really looked pitiful, for no doubt they had had an affection for the creatures; and the strongest of us, I suspect, have some feelings thus lowly, but not the less sympathetically directed, which even the savoury morsel of a fed favourite cannot altogether dissipate. My pig is a better pig than yours; but I'd rather eat yours, if you will eat mine.

So the girls turned over and over the bodies, examining them with all the minuteness in their power. Jenny declared it impossible, and Helen was in despair; Peggy thought she observed something, and Barbara declared it to be nothing. I watched them with some amusement, nor less the men in the Office. They stood around us laughing heartily at the remarks of the investigators, running up a joke to a climax, and then pursuing another, not always at the sole expense of the lasses, who could retort cleverly, impeaching their mockers as utterly unable to distinguish a male from a female fowl. At the long run, a happy thought struck Jenny.

"But where's the 'pensioner?'" cried she.

"Ay, the 'pensioner,'" responded her neighbour Nelly.

"Had he a spliced leg?" inquired I.

"Yes," replied the first, "a dog broke it, and Nelly and I bound it up with two thin pieces of wood and a string."

"Ay, and he got aye the best handful of barley," rejoined Nelly; "but the leg of the 'pensioner' was cured a month ago, and the bandage removed."

"Is that the 'pensioner?'" said I, as I shewed the leg of one which I had observed in the forenoon as having on it the appearance of a healed-up sore.

"Ay, just the creature," they both exclaimed. "It was the right leg, and you'll see yet the marks of the string."

The discovery was followed by the merriment of the men, who asserted that some one or other of the girls must have had a pensioner for a lover, with the designation of whom the drake had been honoured; but the girls indignantly denied the charge, declaring that they could not fancy a man pensioner, however much they might love a drake one.

"Besides," added Jenny, cleverly, "he was our pensioner, not the Queen's."

"So much for the ducks," said I; "and now for the hens and cocks; was there no pensioner among them?"

"No," cried Barbara, "but there was the 'corporal.'"

"Any mark beyond the coat?" inquired I.

"Ay," cried Peggy, "he was stone-blind in the right eye; he lost his sight in a battle with Mr Grant's cock, and never recovered his eyesight again. When toying with his wives, he turned aye round to the left side."

"Yes," struck in Betty; "before his misfortune, he was the king of a' the cocks in the Meadows."

"Is that the blind 'corporal?'" said I.

"The very creature," cried Barbara, as she examined the white orb of the animal which I had detected in the morning; "but oh," she added, "I am vexed to see him in that condition!"

And really I thought I could see some little humidity about the blue eye of the good-natured girl.

"That's the lass for a man," thought I. "Give me a qualm of pity in a woman even for a bird, and I tell you you may make sure of a good wife."

I once knew--permit me to go off the scene a little--a young woman who lived in Great King Street. She was a great belle, and admired for a kind of beauty not uncommon among our servants. A gentleman in town, whose name I could mention, saw her one day, as she was carrying home some books from the library in Dundas Street. He was smitten--followed her--spoke to her--and entertained the idea of making her his wife, whereby she would have become a lady. Time passed; and, in the meantime, he was informed that the pretty Margaret one night, when in the bed-room flat of the house, pitched the cat, which had offended her in her cleanly notions, out of the window. It was a bitter cold night, and the frost was intense. In the morning the cat was found spiked on the railing, and frozen stiff. This was enough for our lover, and he forsook her. She afterwards fell, became a street-walker, and died neglected and uncared for in the Infirmary. I suspect the little pearl in Barbara's eye for the blind corporal was worth all the beauty in the face and person of the once admired but forsaken Margaret.

My story of the ducks and hens concludes with this investigation; for though the scene was renewed before the Sheriff, it was not so rich as that which took place among ourselves. Sandy got sixty days' imprisonment for the ducks, and six months for the hens, as a kind of second offence; and Luckie Dewar could afford a few tears (common to certain amphibious animals on the banks of the Nile) over the misfortunes of Sandy Dewar, who had thus fallen from being master of the Cock and Trumpet to being the occupant of a prison. Such is the ascending and descending scale of profligate life.

The Widow's Last Shilling.

Do you know any one within the circle of your experience who is utterly renounced to himself--what is called a money-grub or hunks, eternally yearning for money, so as to deserve the address of Burns: "Fie upon you, coward man, that you should be the slave o't?" If there's any tear about that man's eye, depend upon't it's only a thinnish rheum; and as for anything like a response in the ear to the cry of pity, the drum will as soon crack at the singing of a psalm. Such a character is the result of an accumulation of _hardnesses_, increasing in intensity with his advancing years. We don't wonder so much at the hunks as hate him. But in regard to the brick-moulded thief, who seldom comes within the range of ordinary observation, you are apt to think that he is not so hard-hearted after all. You give him some credit for generosity,--nay, when he is picking your pocket, you lay to his charge more necessity than will. Yet there never was a harder-hearted wretch than a regular thief. He is as destitute of pity as of honesty, and will steal as readily the shilling from under the poorhouse pensioner's pillow as the ring from the finger of my lady. Even after "feeding time" he is still rapacious, and if he ever gives away, it is from recklessness, never from benevolence.

I have had many cases that go to prove these remarks, and one occurs to me worthy of recital, from the personal proximity into which I was brought to the condition of the hearts of the actors.

In the eddies at the bottoms of stairs leading to pawn-shops, a detective has often a chance for promising rises to his phantom minnow. In 1845, somewhere in August, I chanced to be coming up the stair leading from the Market to Milne Square. Just as I was arriving at the passage out, two women were coming down from the Equitable Loan Company's Office; and as they were engaged in conversation, I stood a few steps down where I couldn't be seen, and heard what they were saying to each other. The voices were those of a young brisk wench and an aged woman, with that kind of wail in her speech which sometimes comes to be a bad habit, but which at least shews that the heart is not so easy as it might be.

"I got five shillings on a plaid worth five pounds," said the younger. "What did he give you on the blankets?"

"No less than I sought," replied the elder, "ten shillings. It will just pay my landlord, and leave a shilling over; but it's a sore heart to me to pawn, for I never was used to it; yet better pawn than be poinded."

"And who will poind you?"

"My landlord for the rent, woman; ay, a rich man with thousands, who feeds his servants on roast-beef and pudding till they are ready to burst, and yet takes the two or three shillings of rent of me which I need for porridge; and it's not that these great people like their servants, only they like to get the name of their house being a good meat-house; and the fat limmers are as saucy to them, after all, as ever."

"But where have you put your ten shillings?" said the other. "Take care you don't lose it. Is it in your pocket?"

"Ay, all safe enough, along with the ticket. If I lose them, I lose all; and I may just as weel be coffined at once, and be done wi't. Ye're a young creature, and don't know the miseries o' the old."

"And don't want for a while," said the other; "but where do you live?"

"In Lady Lawson's Wynd," was the reply.

"And how do you go home?"

"By Hunter Square and the Bridge," said the simple woman; "for I've to go to Nicolson Square, where the factor lives, to pay him the nine shillings; but I doubt if he will ever get more, for now, with my blankets in the pawn, and nothing to redeem them, what is to cover me in the cold nights of winter?"

"What you can get, woman," said the other, harshly, as I thought, at least without the feeling due to age and poverty; "just as I do, what we all do--the world to the winner."

And what heartless creature can this young woman be? thought I, as, making a long neck, I looked round the side of the stair. My five times convicted Mary Anne Stewart, one of the nimblest pickpockets of the city, and for whom I was then looking as connected with a stolen plaid.

"Easy to say that," continued the old woman, "when you've health and youth on your side; but don't be too confident. I was once a winner when I won my poor husband; but what was there for me to win when I lost him who was the winner of my bread, and was left to fight the battle of life with nothing but my ten fingers? You've both to win and to lose yet, my lass; and may the Lord be kinder to you than He has been to me!"

"Best to look to one's-self and one's own pocket," was the consistent reply of the winner, Mary Anne.

And to the pockets of others, said I to myself, the graceless baggage.

"And you never look to Heaven, lass?" again said the woman.

"Never got anything from that quarter yet," was the reply, in the same strain. "Will Heaven enable you to take that pawn-ticket out of your pouch and get your blankets back?"

"Ay, and maybe mair," said the woman; "but though Providence may look sour on me, there's the Lord of providence, lass, mind that; and He can smile on you even when you're suffering, for He knows He can take you out of it. And what church go ye to with these notions in your head?"

"No one," was the saucy answer; "there's no kail in the kirks;" then with a laugh, "The ministers eat all the shewbread."

And what more of this kind of talk which I have reported, perhaps in a form different from what took place, but retaining the general sentiments of both, I cannot say, for they moved off. I saw them still at it in the midst of the square, and till they came to the end of the close opposite Hunter Square, where they parted. Meanwhile I went down the steps by the Bridge, and making a circle round, I saw the woman making for Hunter Square, where there was a crowd round an Italian with a puggy--general holding a levee--a more sensible animal than its master. Then keeping my eye on Mary Anne, I saw her join William Walker and James M'Guire, two of my very best friends, as ready to do me a service now as they had done before on more occasions than one. They did not seem at the moment to be in so playful a mood as the Italian's puggy; and I did not look for much sport till I got my expectations sharpened by their movement after Mrs Kerr (that was the name, I think) towards the two mountebanks, who had removed to the south of the Tron.

I then wheeled round the north-east corner of the church, and keeping my eye on my trio, I placed myself in a stair-foot on the east side of the South Bridge, from which I could see both sets of performers, as well as those performed upon. Mrs Kerr, who, in Lady Lawson's Wynd, had no opportunity of seeing monkeys from her garret window, seemed to have forgotten the sorrows of her rent-day and the pawn-shop, and was gaping, as all sight-seers do, at the evolutions of pug, one of whose best feats, general as he was, was to extract his master's pocket handkerchief from the one pocket of his cotton velvet coat and put it in the other, and then came the laugh, in which, I presume, the widow of the sorrowful face joined, when the Italian sought for the article in the wrong pocket. Mrs Kerr did not take the lesson, though the Italian, as a kind of philanthropist, might have had the credit of putting his crowd upon their guard. The simple woman, from whose mind all her sorrows seemed, for the moment, banished, enjoyed this trick wonderfully, for I could see the careworn face lighted up with the very extreme of satisfaction. Mary Anne was now at her back, apparently gaping too, and behind her stood Walker and M'Guire, as interested in pug's pocket-picking as if the trick had been one new to them, and worthy of being learned.

Now I fairly admit that, while I expected something, I was utterly unprepared for an attack on Mary Anne's part on her poor old friend of the entry; for however harsh her words were to the old woman, I still thought she had some qualms of pity excited in her by that sorrowful wail which had struck my own ears as something touching and heart-stirring. I had been simply false to my experience, while Mary Anne remained true to her heartless craft. Yes, I saw the young hopeless extract from Mrs Kerr's pocket something, doubtless the ten shillings, and hand it to M'Guire, whereupon they all three hurried away down the High Street.

My energy was roused in a moment, sharpened by the cruelty of this most heartless robbery. My course was, to myself, clear, though not, perhaps, what you might imagine. I have always had a horror of being seen rushing along the street, like Justice under hysterics flying after a victim. It's not decorous, and, besides, it does no good. The red-hand is a good catch, but I have often enough known a startled thief drop a valuable which never could be recovered, and I have found my account better balanced by knowing my man, and catching him with the booty, when he thinks all safe. In this case, I allowed the three to pass me, nor did I lay hands on them. I first hurried up to Mrs Kerr, and touching her on the shoulder,

"Is your ten shillings safe in your pocket?" said I.

"My ten shillings!" said she, nervously; "surely it is, but how do you know I had ten shillings in my pocket?"

"Never mind that, search quick."

"The Lord help me!" she exclaimed, as she fumbled in her empty pocket; "it's gone, with the pawn-ticket. I'm ruined, sir; it's all I have in the world, and how am I to meet the factor? I'm ruined, ruined!"

And she burst into tears, sobbing in the midst of the crowd.

"Get as fast as you can to the Police-Office," said I, "and I'll bring to you the pickpockets, and maybe your money. You know one of them."

"Who could be so cruel?" she inquired.

"The young woman you blabbed to in the pawnbroker's stair," said I.

"Oh, the Lord forgive her," said she, "for I told her the whole story of my grief."

"Which you should have kept to yourself," said I. "Away to the Office, and wait for me."

And having seen her off I proceeded down the High Street, in the direction taken by the thieves. That confidence I have so often felt, and perhaps somewhat vaingloriously expressed, I can account for in no other way than viewing it as a result of my knowledge of thieves and their haunts, joined to the impression of so many successes. On this occasion I was so sure, that I believed I walked as if I had been going to dinner, without being quickened by a very sharp appetite; but I did not feel the less desire to get hold of those who had so unknowingly to themselves roused sympathies in my breast, made sluggish, no doubt, by the hardening influences of official routine. Mary Anne was so well known about the High Street, that she couldn't pass without the observation of the loungers in that crowded resort of the poor. A few passing hints, like dots in a line, led me along till I came to Toddrick's Wynd, at the head of which I paused, and casting a glance down with my advantage of a good eye for a long wynd, I saw one of those little clots of human beings, generally so interesting to me, in proportion as they shew an interest among themselves. I was quicker now, and rushing forward, I came upon the three I wanted, all busy in the glorious ceremony of division, that is, giving every one _his own_, with the exception of the proprietor. The very sums were in their hands, with the unction inseparable from the acquisition of money.

"Five shillings to Mary Anne, and half-a-crown to each of you," said I, "is fair. I will settle it for you, since you seem to disagree. The pawn-ticket for the blankets is for my trouble."

There is seldom any hurry-skurry among these gentry, for they know the worst, and are made up to it.

"Come, give me the money."

And so they did, the whole ten shillings, and the ticket to boot.

"No kail in the police cell to night, Mary Anne," said I, "any more than in the church, where the ministers eat all the shewbread."

Mary Anne looked into my face, and burst out into a laugh,--such is the seared and hardened temperament of thieves; and it is as well that the punishment-mongers should know this, that they may endeavour to devise some other and more effectual mode of reclamation.

"So you had no pity for the poor old woman?"

"The whining hag had more money than I had," was the reply.

"You mean more than the five shillings you got for the stolen plaid?" said I.

"Who said it was stolen?"

"The lady in Gilmour Place you stole it from," said I. "I have been looking for you to settle that small matter for three days."

A streak of new light thus thrown upon an old subject, which qualified Mary Anne's fun, and silenced her.

At this moment my assistant came up, and we took the three to the Office, where I brought the young thief to face with Mrs Kerr. The look of relief which played over the grief-worn features of the woman when she saw her four half-crowns and pawn-ticket, can only be understood by those who are, or have been poor, and who know the narrow margin on the verge of which flit the few and desultory illumined figures of their happiness. It did not last long, for it was to give place to the old melancholy; but I believe the feelings with which she looked on the face of the hardened creature to whom she had poured out the simple history of her sorrows, would never pass away.

"I didn't think, for all I have heard of the wickedness of human creatures," she said, as she kept her eyes on Mary Anne, who did not seem to feel her situation more than as quite a natural one, "that it was in the heart of a woman to rob one, who might be her mother, of all she had in the world."

"'Twill learn you to look at monkeys again," replied Mary Anne, with a laugh, which gave so ludicrous a turn to the pathetic, that the Lieutenant himself could scarcely resist it.

She might have profited by the monkey, thought I, for it offered her a lesson which she did not take to heart.

And thus this act of the strange drama ended. The next was the retributive one--the issue or conclusion being proportioned, not to the amount taken, but to the enormity of the hardened depravity which it revealed. The three were tried before the High Court. Mary Anne, as the principal performer, getting ten years' transportation, and Walker and M'Guire seven years each. So that, had Mary Anne's mind not been closed against every good impression, she would have admitted that, if she had never previously obtained anything from that Power she so irreverently maligned, she had at length received a share of the stern and severe reward it invariably bestows upon the vicious and the guilty.

The Child-Strippers.

How different are the estimates people form of mankind! Some say that the world is just very much as you take it--the old notion that truth is just as you think it. If you wear a rough glove, you may think all those you shake hands with are rough in the palms; and if you wear a soft one, so in the other way; and no doubt if you grin in a glass, you will get a grin in return--if you smile, you will be repaid with a smile. All very well this in the clever way; but I've a notion that there are depths of depravity not to be gauged in this short plumb way, just as there are heights of perfection not to be got at by our own estimates of ourselves. As for the general "top-to-toe rottenness" so congenial to some religious sects, why there's a little truth there too--at least I would look sharp at a man who could turn his eye in and about his own heart, and just say, with a nice smirk, "Well, I am glad to find that man is an angel after all." It is as well for me anyhow that I am not given to making a kaleidoscope of my heart, turning up only varieties of beauty, without considering that a few hard pebbles form the elements of the fine display, otherwise how could I have had any belief in the existence of such beings as Kate Lang and Nell Duff. I would as readily have believed in M. Chaillo's account of the Gorillas; only these optimist gentry do admit, with a smile of satisfaction, that a hungry tiger is not to be trusted with a live infant--no more is Kate Lang, say I.

The practice of child-stripping, which is not so common now, is one of those depths of depravity to which I have alluded. It is not that there is so much cruelty done. It forms a fine subject for very tender people who wail about the poor innocents left shivering in their shirts. But there is more fancy than fact here; they don't shiver long in a crowded city; nay, the stripping is sometimes productive of good, in so much as the neighbours contrive to get the victim pretty well supplied with even better clothes than those stolen. There is more sympathy due to the case which happens sometimes where a heartless thief makes off with the clothes, shirt and all, of a bather, about the solitary parts of Granton; for here the situation of the victim is really terrible. To run after the thief is nearly out of the question as regards success, even if he could make up his mind to a chase in his very _natural_ condition; nor is his remaining remedy much better--a walk so unlike that of Adam through Paradise to the nearest house, a mile off, where he must knock at a door, drive away the opener with a scream, bolt like a robber into a bed-room, and get a walk home in a suit of clothes in which his friends cannot recognise him. Our feelings depend often upon such strange turns of thought, that a case of this latter kind, so replete with even agony, can scarcely be told without something like a smile working among the gravely-disposed muscles of the face of the hearer; while that of the child, almost always left its _skin_ linen, is viewed with indignation and pity. I cannot explain this difference; but it is not difficult to see how, independently of the rather exaggerated notions we entertain of the condition of the victim, the crime of child-stripping should be visited with the execration it generally meets.

In 1838, and thereabouts, this offence of child-stripping increased to an extent which roused the fears of mothers. The depradators were of course women. My only doubts were, whether there were more than one; for, as I have taken occasion to remark, all such peculiar and out of the way offences are generally the work of some one ingenious artiste; and if more are concerned, they are only parties to a league in which the inventor is the leader. I confess I was more inclined to believe in the single performer, but I was destined in this instance to find myself wrong. I was at least determined to get at the bottom of the mystery, and it wasn't long until I was gratified. In the month of May of the year mentioned, the cases had accumulated, and as yet my inquiries had been unsuccessful. In the new town the cases had been limited to the narrow streets, and latterly they had increased about the foot of the Canongate. In that quarter, accordingly, I found it necessary to be, though not very expedient to be seen, and I soon got upon my proper scent. One day I observed coming from the Watergate three or four women, all of the lowest section of Conglomerates--not altogether a perfectly applicable name here, in so much as my "clear grits" were not rounded by healthy washings, but sharpened by the abrasion of vice and misery. They were busy tying up a bundle, and after indulging in many stealthy looks to the right and left, they made forward up the Canongate. I might safely have stopped them and made inquiry into the contents of their bundle, but I had something else in view, and was content with noting them, all known to me as they were--cast-off Fancies, not genteel enough for being leagued with respectable thieves, and yet below the summer heat of love--trulls or trollops--troganmongers during day, and troglodytes during night.

I have said I had hopes, and accordingly I had scarcely lost sight of them when I encountered, a little on this side of the Abbey strand, a small Cupid of a fellow standing in the middle of the street, (he had crept from a stair foot,) having a little bit of a shirt on him coming down to his knees, and crying lustily with beslubbered face.

That's my robbed traveller, said I to myself, as I made up to the young sufferer who had so early fallen among thieves.

And just at the same time as the wondering women of the Watergate were pouring in to see the interesting personage, up comes the mother, who (as I afterwards learned) having sent out Johnny for a loaf of bread, and finding he didn't return, issued forth to seek for him. One may guess her astonishment at meeting him within so short a time, probably not ten minutes, in a state approaching to nudity, but the guess would hardly come up to the real thing. The notion of his having been robbed and stripped didn't occur to her, and her amazement did not abate until I told her the truth, whereupon the women--like so many hens whose chickens had been seized by a hawk--broke into a scream of execration which excited the wit of an Irishman, "Have the vagabonds taken the watch from the gintleman? Why didn't they take the shirt too, and make a naked shaim ov it?" And having taken the name of the mother, I made after my strippers.

Nor was it long until I got them again within my vision. It seemed to be a feasting-day with the ogresses. They met and parted, every one looking out for some little Red Ridinghood, who was doubtless unconscious of the tender mercies of the she-wolves. The league consisted of five, all of whom had been through my hands for thefts and robberies--Catharine Lang, Helen Duff, Mary Joice, Margaret Joice, and Robina Finnie. If you have ever been among the wynds, you can form an idea of these hags; if you haven't, you must excuse me--squalor-painting is at best a mud-daub. Amongst all, mark this strange feature--that though some of them had been mothers, the mother was here inverted, the natural feelings turned upside down; the innocent creatures for whom some stray sympathy might have been expected, changed into objects of rapine and cruelty for the sake of a few rags. I soon not only marked their movements, but saw that an opportunity waited them--for where in the old town will you not find clots of children? and are not these, when engaged in play, artless and confiding? Who, however degraded, will harm them? Nay, if there is any creature secure from the drunkard, the libertine, or the thief, it is the merry playmates of the pavement, whose gambols bring back to the seared heart of the vicious the happiness and innocence they have so long been strangers to. Yes, all true, though a little poetical; but I suspect there is a depth even _below_ vice.

The wolves' eyes were, as I could see, on the merry Red Ridinghoods; and as their number was five, I beckoned to a constable to get one or two of his brethren and watch in the neighbouring close-mouths. As for myself, I betook me to a stair-foot at the top of New Street, where, besides the advantage of a look-out, I had the chance, according to my calculation, of being on the very spot of the expected operation, for there were but few convenient places about. The women were so intent upon their victims, that they seemed to have forgotten that while they were supervising they might themselves be supervised. Nor was it long before I began to see that my expectations would be realised. Lang had almost immediately the best dressed of the gambolers in her _motherly_ hand, and the bit of sugar-candy was working its charm; so true it is that there is awaiting every one a bait at the end of the standing line, stretched out in the waters of life, about which we are always swimming and flapping our tails, passing and repassing without ever dreaming of the hook. Ay, there are big fish intent upon large enterprises among the deeper places, who will snap at the dead worm even in the midst of living gold-fish. And is it not a pleasure sometimes to see them caught by the garbage when one can net the angler as well as the angled? My moral applies not to the gudgeons, but the pikes.

Yes, I was right, Lang, with the girl in her hand, and followed by Duff and one of the Joices, made right for my entry. I stepped up the stair a few paces to be out of the way. I wanted for ardent reasons that the operation should be as complete as possible, for the cancer had become too deep for any good from mere skin-cutting. The moment they got the confiding soul in, who no doubt thought herself in hands far more kindly than her mother's, the sugar-candy of temptation was changed for the aloes of force. The three, stimulated by the fear of some one coming in upon them, either from below or above, flew at her like hawks pouncing upon a gowdie. Did ever before the fingers of ogresses go with such rapidity to strip the clothes that they might gobble up the body? The little mouth, still stuffed with the sweet bait, was taken care of by a rough hand. The plucking was the work of an instant--bonnet, pinny, napkin, frock, petticoats, boots and stockings.

"It's a good shurt, Kate."

"Worth a shilling, Nell."

"Off wid it," cried Joice.

The little chemise is whirled over the head, and the minum "nude" is left roaring alone--a chance living lay figure, which would have charmed even Lord Haddo, if he had a palette and brush, with its exquisite natural tints.

If I had had time to wait and see, I might have observed a bit of child life also worthy of a Paton or a Faed; for just as I was hurrying down, in came rushing the playmates, all with wondering eyes to see Phemy (I ascertained her name afterwards) standing naked within a few minutes after she had left their play. Do you think they would ever forget that sight all their born days? But I had another sight in view more interesting to me--even one in wolf-life, with some difference in expression and tints--the grandmammas with the canines and long claws, so formidable to the Ridinghoods. Nor was I disappointed. I had set my trap so well that I had no need of the candy-bait. The instant the constables had seen what was going on, they had laid hold of the other Joice and Robina Finnie, and the three who had been engaged, having seen their dear sisters in custody, turned down New Street, up which they had gone a few steps, and were seized by me and another constable from behind. Meanwhile the cries of the little nude, mixed with those of her tiny sisterhood, brought a crowd, who, instantly ascertaining the cause of all the uproar, showered their indignation on the culprits with a severity that excluded even Irish humour. Nay, so furious were the hen-mothers, that unless we had taken good care of our sparrow-hawks, there would that day have been more stript than Phemy and her brother-victim of the Watergate; nor would I have answered for discolorations or broken bones. But care was also taken of the tender chicken, who, rolled up in a shawl, became in the midst of the crowd a little heroine, honoured with more endearing epithets and sympathetic condolences than would perhaps ever fall to her portion again.

At the top of the street we collected our prisoners, and marched them gallantly up the Canongate and High Street. One likes to possess the favour of the female part of the people, and this day I got as much of the incense of hero-worship as if I had stopped a massacre of the innocents. I am not sure if some males, too, much given to baby-love, did not glugger with reddened gills in anger at the spoilers of their wives' darlings; all which was no doubt heightened by the impression then in the public mind, produced by the repeated accounts of the instances of this nefarious traffic. The prisoners had even during the previous part of that day committed four strippings of the same kind besides those I had witnessed.

It was not long till I ascertained that I had been wrong in my original conjecture, and that the whole of these thefts had been perpetrated by a gang. During their confinement, and when we expected that they would hold out in their denial of guilt, it was quite a scene to witness the identifications. The witnesses were, of course, the little victims themselves, on whose minds the features of the women had been so indelibly impressed, especially where, like the case of Phemy, "the shurt was a good un," that they not only knew them, but screamed with terror the moment they were brought before them. And to the women, no doubt, they were of that kind of terrible infants so well described by the French, the more by reason, perhaps, that among that people the children have more strange things to see than in our decent country. From searches we got the evidence of the little wardrobes themselves, chiefly through pawns, shewing the immense extent of their assiduous labours. Nor had it been an unprofitable traffic to them; many of the dresses were taken from well-dressed youngsters in the new town, and you have only to buy those things to know what money it costs to rigg out a little man or woman in our day, when the children are taught pride and a love of finery with the supping of porridge. But, after all, it came out that we didn't need these evidences. The vagabonds broke down in the end under the accumulation of proof, and admitted to I do not know how many strippings. They each got eighteen months' imprisonment, and the community was relieved from the cold-blooded and unfeeling practice of child-stripping for a long period afterwards.

The Tobacco-Glutton.

It is almost a peculiarity of the thief that he is in his furtive appetite omnivorous. Everything that can be reduced to the chyle of money is acceptable to him. While others have predilections, he has absolutely none. It is not that he is always, however, or even often in need, and therefore glad to seize whatever comes in his way. I have known instances where he was by no means driven to his calling by necessity, and yet not only was the passion to appropriate strong in him, but he was at same time regardless of the kind of prey. Yes; it would seem as if his passion sprang out of an inverted view of property, so that the word "yours" incited him to change its meaning. As a certain valorous bird becomes ready for war the moment a brother of the same species is placed opposite to him on the barn-floor, so the regularly-trained "appropriator" gluggers and burns to be at a "possessor," as representing in his person some actual commodity. As a consequence of this strange feeling I have found, however unlikely it may appear, that thieves have really nothing of the common sense of property--that is, love to it--after they obtain it. Unless for the supply of a want, they often treat what they have stolen as if they not only did not care for it, but absolutely wished it out of their possession,--not from fear of being detected by its presence, but for some _loathing_ not easily accounted for. I have a case, however, of a real predilective _artiste_, the more curious that it stands in my books almost alone.

The way in which I became acquainted with Peter Sutherland was singular enough. I was, in April 1837, walking in the Meadows, where I have more than once met wandering stagers whom I could turn to account of my knowledge of mankind. I came up to a young man very busy sending from a black pipe large clouds of tobacco smoke. Always on the alert to add to my number of profiles, I felt some curiosity about this lover of the weed, and going up to him, I made my very usual request for a light.

"By all means," said he, as he drew out his matchbox (and matches were then dear, sometime after Jones's monopoly) and struck for me what I wanted; "and I can fill your pipe too," said he, "for I like a smoker."

"Very well," said I, as I handed him my pipe, which was not out of the need of a supply; "I like a smoke, though I cannot very well tell why."

"Why, just because, like me, you like it," said he laughing; "it makes one comfortable. I deny the half of the rhyme--

'Tobacco and tobacco reek,
It maks me weel when I'm sick;
Tobacco and tobacco reek,
When I'm weel it maks me sick.'

It never makes me sick,--I smoke at all times, sick or well, night or day, in or out, working or idle."

"You carry it farther than I do," said I, "or, I rather think, than any body I ever knew. I cannot touch the pipe when I'm unwell."

"I never found myself in that way yet," replied he. "I believe if death could take a cutty within those grinning teeth of his, I would smoke a pipe with him."

"But it must cost you much money," said I, as I glanced at his seedy coat and squabashed hat.

"Oh, I can keep it off the price of my dinner," was the reply.

"But does it not dry your throat and make you yearn for ale?"

"Never a bit; though water, I admit, is a bad smoking drink. I take the ale when I can get it, and if you'll stand a pot, this minute I'm ready. If I can't get it, I stick to the tobacco."

"And if you can't get the tobacco," said I, with more meaning perhaps than he wotted, "what do you do?"

"That never happened yet," replied he, with a chuckle, "and it never will."

"You wouldn't steal it, would you?"--a question much in my way.

"I hope not," said he; "but if I did, 'twould only be the starved wretch taking a roll out of the baker's basket, and you know that's not punishable. My roll is just of another kind."

"You'd better not try the experiment."

"Never fear," said he; "I intend always to smoke my own twist, and have a bit to give to a friend in need."

And under the influence of this generous sentiment, he sent forth a cloud worthy of Jove's breath to send it away into thin air, and leaving me, he struck off in the direction of the links, probably to see the golfers. As I looked after him, there he was blowing away in the distance, and apparently not less happy than King Coil, albeit that king was of a nation that loved another weed. I have known great smokers, but never found that the passion, like that of opium, goes on without a term. It has a conservative way about it, I think, and cures its own excess by producing a reaction in the stomach somehow. I have noticed, too, that the greatest smokers give up at some period of their lives, almost always--at least much oftener than the moderate-cloud compellers.

But be all that as it may, it is certain that I looked upon my friend as a kind of tobacco-glutton, only a curiosity not in my way, nor did I expect that he would ever be so. I say not, being unaware that I have learned my readers a bad habit in looking for some ingenious connexion where none as yet exists--just as if I were a weaver of a cunning web, where the red thread is taken up where it suits me. By no means so, I may say; but will I thereby prevent you throwing your detective vision before my narrative, when I begin to tell you that some considerable time after this interview with my tobacco-fancier, I got information of a robbery of a grocer's shop at Ratho, from which a great many articles were taken, among the rest several rolls of tobacco, besides a number of ounces? Just the man, you will say, and so said I, as I went over the description of the thief as given to the grocer by some neighbours who saw him hanging about the shop. I recollected my friend perfectly; but in order to abate your wonder at such coincidences, please to remember that I was in the habit of going up to every lounger I met, and that I have so retentive a remembrance of faces, that I have a hundred times picked out my man from impressions derived from these casual encounters. I had never seen my tobacco-lover before nor after, and knew no more where to go for him, than where to look for another such jolly smoker out of Holland.

One night (just the old way) I was walking, with Mulholland behind me, down towards the west end of West Crosscauseway. My object at the time, I recollect, was to observe what was going on about Flinn's house in that quarter; and I frankly confess, that so little hope had I of ever seeing my old friend of the Meadow Walk, that I was thinking nothing about him; nor when I saw a lounging-like fellow--it was in the gloaming--standing at the turn of the street speaking to a woman, had I the slightest suspicion that he was one on whom I had any claims for attention; and perhaps if there is to be a miracle in the matter, by hook or crook, it consisted in this, that with a view to get a nearer look of him to see whether he belonged to Flinn's, I again went up to ask, what I did not want, a light. My first glance satisfied me that I had my tobacco-fancier before me; but I was perfectly satisfied he had no recollection of his friend of the Meadow Walk, and with this confidence I could enjoy a little fun. He took my pipe quite frankly.

"Why, there's nothing in it," said he, with the old generosity, "I will fill it for you, for I don't like to see a smoker with his pipe not only out, but empty."

And taking out a pretty large piece of tobacco, he twisted off a bit, took out a knife, and bidding me hold my hand, he cut it into shreds, filled my pipe, and lighted it.

"You seem to have plenty of tobacco," said I.

"Oh yes," said he; "and since you seem to be smoked out, I'll give you a quid for supper."

And to be sure he was not slack in giving me at least a quarter of an ounce.

"Capital stuff," said I, as I blew away; "where do you get it?"

"Special shops," said he; "I won't have your small green-shop article."

I admit to have been a little cruel in this case, for I felt an inclination to play with my old friend, and straightway gave him the end of the thread he had drawn in the Meadows. By and by he got on in the old strain in praise of the object of his passion.

"It makes me comfortable," and so forth, reverting again to the rhyme, to the half of which he again demurred, and which I really rejoiced to hear, nor can help repeating--

"Tobacco and tobacco reek,
It maks me weel when I'm sick;
Tobacco and tobacco reek,
When I'm weel it maks me sick."

Restraining my laughter, and recurring again to the subject of the shop where such excellent stuff was to be got,

"In Edinburgh?" said I.

"No," said he, grandly, "there's no such thing in Edinburgh. It's made by a special manufacturer, who uses the best young leaf from Virginia, and who wouldn't put a piece of common continental stuff in--no an' it were to make his fortune. Ah, he likes a good smoke himself, and that's the reason, as I take it."

"It's so wonderfully good stuff," said I, preparing for my last whiff, "that if I knew where to send for half a pound, I would be at the expense of the carriage. I see no reason why you should keep it a secret; such a manufacturer deserves encouragement. Come, is it at Leith, where so much of the real thing is smuggled?"

"Never uses smuggled tobacco," said he, as he looked to the woman with complacent smile, as if, according to my thought, he wanted to appear big in her presence--a little simple even I myself in this thought, as you will see immediately. "I find no use," he added, "in blowing in the Queen's face."

"Ratho?" said I.

And the word was no sooner out, than the girl went off like a flash, proving thereby that she was an accomplice, and he at the same instant; and, before I could seize him, he made up the Potterrow like a Cherokee Indian throwing away his calumet of peace in escaping from war. I made instantly after him, quickened by the conviction of my folly in uttering the charmed _word_ without using at the same time my _hand_. Being supple in those days, and, though I say it, a first-rate runner, sufficient to have coped with Lapsley himself--whom I had afterwards something to do with, though not in the running line--I made up with my man in the entry leading from the Potterrow to Nicolson Square, where, collaring him, I brought him to a stand. He became quite peaceful, and as I walked him to the Office, I let him up to our old acquaintanceship--the recollection of the part he took in which, so like the conversation into which I had so playfully led him, made him bite his lip for his stupidity.

"I fear you will now know," said I, "whether your case of the starved wretch and the roll is applicable to your _roll_. I put you on your guard at the time, and you see what you have made of it."

"Tobacco!" said the poor fellow with a groan, which went to my heart like so many other groans necessitated to be shut out. "I began to smoke when a mere child. I imitated my father. The passion grew upon me by degrees, till I came to spend more money on't than I did upon meal. I was never happy unless I was steeped in the beloved lethargy, and always miserable when I could not get it. It has been to me what drink is to so many. I would have pawned my coat for a pipeful; ay, and I _have_ pawned for it. Surely this is God's work following the devil's."

And letting his head drop upon his breast, he groaned again deeper than before.