Chapter IV: Part 4

The mother appeared stunned and stupefied by the discovery that she had helped to rivet fetters on him, and that he was likely to be tried for housebreaking with an alternative charge of theft. How the charge came to assume this form is the most striking and curious feature of the case. As soon as I got the two addresses I went first to the home of the prisoner, Alfred Scott, and searched in vain for the rest of the plunder; then I went to his employer’s workshop, and unearthed the treasure-trove from a most ingenious hiding-place under a pile of wood which took us ten minutes to remove. Everything was there but the gold chain and the servant’s silver ring, and the whole were still wrapped up in Shorty’s spotted cotton handkerchief, which unfortunately did not bear either name or address. But this discovery was not the most important made at that place. From Scott’s master we learned that our prisoner, along with a journeyman, had been employed making some alterations or repairs in the major’s house about six months before the robbery. The natural inference then was that he upon that occasion had provided himself with casts of some of the keys, and so prepared to commit the robbery—hence the framing of the charge on the serious lines I have indicated.

As soon as these facts were made plain, and when the major had identified Scott as one of the joiners who had worked in his house, I went to Shorty’s cell and said that we had got the thief, and that in all probability he and The Fin would be soon at liberty.

Shorty received the news not with the satisfaction I had expected, but with a stony stare which seemed to me absolutely idiotic. He made no remark of any kind, and showed neither gratitude nor resentment. It turned out, however, that he and The Fin did not get off so easily, but were convicted and sent for thirty days to prison for “loitering with intent.”

Meanwhile Scott persisted in his fatal and blundering silence, and his case came on for trial. He pleaded “not guilty,” and the case went to proof, when the evidence, which, link by link, appeared to demonstrate his guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt, took him completely by surprise. There was the selling of the chain; his contradictions and prevarications; the finding of the plunder, and the fact that he had worked on the premises—all damning.

The summing up of the evidence had been completed, and the jury were about to find him guilty without leaving the box, when Scott excitedly asked to be allowed to make a statement in his defence.

“I am innocent of either theft or housebreaking—such crimes never entered my head,” he tremulously declared. “If I’ve done wrong at all it was only in not giving up the articles when I found them. I was sent to a land in H—— Street to repair the fastenings on the hatches leading to the roof, which had been broken by the sweeps or some one. The landlord had been ordered by the police to have them repaired, and I was sent to do it. There were two hatches—one at the head of the stair, and one in the roof; and in the loft between was a cistern. It is a big one, and stands at the side of the loft. I had to get a candle to see my way across the beams, and when I was coming back, after putting on a new hasp, I saw something like the corner of a cotton handkerchief in the space behind the cistern. It just caught my eyes as I was passing, and I went round and pulled it out, and found in it all the things I am accused of stealing. I had no idea they were stolen, or how long they might have been hidden there, and I thought I might keep them.”

This statement produced no impression either upon the Bench or the jury, or, if it did, the impression was damaging to the accused. In the first place, there was an air of romance about his story—it looked like another ingenious lie—and did not account for the plunder being left there, or give any clue to the real thieves. Then, even supposing the strange statement to be true, it still left Scott self-convicted of a serious crime—appropriating to his own use what he perfectly well knew did not belong to him. Without hesitation the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, it being his first offence.

And he was innocent! what a shame! some one exclaims. Well, I don’t know. He was not innocent in intention. He was actually a thief, though not the actual first thief, and he suffered a just punishment.

And now to return to Shorty and The Fin. It does not appear that these amiable gentlemen met Scott in prison, or, if they did, that they exchanged confidences on the case which interested them so deeply, and in their seclusion the newspapers were not regularly placed upon their breakfast table, even had they been blessed with the ability to read them. It was agreed that Shorty should go over to the hide and get the plunder, while The Fin went to a safe reset to arrange about its disposal. This programme worked perfectly in all but one trifling item—the finding of the plunder. Shorty did himself up with soot to resemble a chimney-sweep, and with a ladder and the proper key of the hatch got up to his hide behind the cistern, only to groan and curse over the fact that the cotton handkerchief and its contents were gone. The truth flashed on him at once—some one had found the plunder. Shorty was as much enraged as if he had been robbed. While he stood there cursing, something bright caught his eye between the beams behind the cistern, and, stooping down, he picked up the servant’s silver ring—the sole remnant of the valuable plunder, which had in some way fallen out of the cotton handkerchief. Shorty was so furious that he was near pitching it as far as he could throw, but again that fateful second thought came to restrain him, and he put it into his pocket and returned to The Fin, to whom he related the facts, with the exception of the finding of the ring. The Fin, as I have noticed, was a silent man. He heard the whole with open eyes and shut mouth, and Shorty was himself too much enraged to notice that The Fin was displeased and suspicious. Some men would have stormed, and taunted, and uttered their suspicions, and even fought over it, but that was not The Fin’s style. He uttered no reflection, but when Shorty left him, The Fin took the precaution of following him.

Being newly out of prison, Shorty’s funds were low, and he went to the reset who had just been visited by The Fin, and managed to extract two shillings out of him in exchange for the servant’s silver ring. Every article of the plunder was by that time known to The Fin, having been frequently described by Shorty, and more particularly this ring, which Shorty had been so near leaving behind.

Scarcely had Shorty got into a public-house and exchanged one of the shillings for some brandy, when The Fin was up at the reset’s house demanding to know what Shorty had sold, and how many pounds sterling he had got for it. The reset, rather staggered, at last declared that Shorty had sold only the silver ring, and showed the trinket in confirmation.

The Fin did not believe a word of it, but he was a still man, and said nothing. Before three hours were gone he was with me, and had given me such information regarding another feat of Shorty’s that at last I drew a long breath of satisfaction, for I was sure of a conviction and a good long sentence.

As soon as I had taken Shorty—not without a fight—The Fin regretted his hastiness. He saw that if Shorty got a long sentence, he, The Fin, would perhaps never get near him for vengeance, whereas, had he allowed him to remain at liberty, a quick shove down some stair or toss out at some window when Shorty was drunk would have settled the whole business. The Fin’s regret did not last long, for before many hours he was in the cells too, Shorty having in turn revealed some awkward facts which seemed likely to put The Fin as long out of harm’s way as himself. These expectations were fully verified shortly after, when they both received sentence of seven years’ penal, and were duly removed to the penitentiary.

And now I come to the bit of tobacco pipe, which will prove how a mean and insignificant trifle often comes into the world to accomplish a great work, and confer a blessing on all mankind. Every one who knows anything of prison life can understand how a bit of an old tobacco pipe is valued by convicts shut off from tobacco for years. The smallest crumb of it, having the faintest taste of nicotine, is treasured and passed from prisoner to prisoner, to be sucked and finally broken up and chewed to its inmost recesses. It is worth twenty times its weight in gold to them. When The Fin had spent a year in prison in almost absolute silence, he got into hospital for some trifling complaint, and so ingratiated himself with the doctor that he was once or twice allowed into the laboratory. There by some means he had managed to secrete a minute quantity of a deadly poison, which he inserted into the hole in a piece of old tobacco pipe shank. This bit of tobacco pipe he concealed till he was again among the working convicts. He and Shorty were tacit foes, but this difficulty The Fin got over in a manner worthy of the cause. Once, when the warder was approaching, and a search possible, he managed, in sight of Shorty, to conceal the bit of tobacco pipe in a place easily accessible to his old pal, and then, when the danger was past, forgot to go back for it until Shorty had had a chance of appropriating the treasure. Not many minutes later Shorty took a fit and dropped dead among the convicts.

Every one was horrified and astonished, till one of the warders noticed a smell of tobacco about the mouth of the dead convict, and fished out of his clenched teeth the bit of tobacco pipe. It was then supposed that part of the pipe shank had been bitten off by Shorty and drawn back into the windpipe so as to cause his death; and he duly occupied his six feet of prison soil.

And was The Fin convicted and hanged? Not a bit of it. He lived out his sentence and was released, and went about long enough to boast of his deed, though I am bound to confess that few believed him, and the general opinion was that Shorty died of the bit of tobacco pipe without the poison. However, The Fin claimed all the credit, and insisted that he was not to blame for the result, seeing that he did not administer the poison, and that Shorty, in appropriating what he knew was not his own, committed a grave offence against convict society, and could not complain if he suffered for the crime.

The Fin should have been a lawyer, and with education might have risen to be one, had he not been soon after choked by an overdose of shebeen whisky.

THE BROKEN CAIRNGORM.

I had to take Jess Murray for her share in a very bold robbery, in which a commercial traveller, peaceably walking home to his hotel, had been waylaid and stripped of pocket-book, purse, and watch, the haul altogether amounting to upwards of £100 in value, the greater part of which was not his own. The gentleman could give no description of the men, but remembered that they had been assisted at a critical moment by a woman, who, so far as he could judge, was tall and handsome, and not very old. It was the style of the robbery as much as that brief and imperfect description which directed my attention to Jess Murray. She was a bold wench, strong as a lion, and so thoroughly bad that I took the trouble of hating her—an exceptional case indeed, as in general one gets to look upon her kind with as much indifference as a drover does upon a herd of horned knowte, under his care one day and gone the next.

I believed Jess to be one of the few who have not one redeeming quality or trait, and was eager for the chance which should put her out of harm’s way for a good long term of years.

I had really no evidence, but an instinctive feeling, connecting Jess with the robbery; but when on my way to her place I chanced to pass one of her acquaintances on the street. I let him pass, and then a thought struck me, and I turned back and stopped him. A scared look at once came into his face, so I asked him to come with me—back to the Office. He came reluctantly, and the cause I speedily understood when he tried to throw away behind his back a £20 bank note taken from the pocket-book of the commercial traveller. The number and description of this note was already in my possession, and I picked up the paper money with the most lively satisfaction, when the fellow immediately began to protest that he had only been sent to change the note, and was willing to tell all about the robbery if things were made right for himself.

The result of this chance capture was that we had abundant evidence against Jess and another, and I went for her with the greatest of pleasure. She was in the “kitchen” of the place among a crowd of her kind when I entered, and it needed only a motion of my finger and a nod of my head to chase the merriment from her face, and bring her slowly across the floor to my side. It is not usual for me to be communicative, but on the present occasion I was elated, and said in reply to her sullen inquiry—

“It’s that affair of the commercial traveller. It’s all blown, and you are in for five years at least. Jim White is in the office already, and the £20 bank note with him.”

Jess seemed struck in a heap with the news. She flashed deadly pale and sank feebly into a chair, with her bold, bright eyes becoming shiny with tears.

“Where’s Dickie?” she faintly articulated to some of the silent onlookers, and, fearing treachery, I snatched out a double brass whistle which can be heard a whole street off, and swiftly raised it to my lips.

“Stop! you needn’t,” Jess quickly interposed, understanding the motion. “Dickie’s only my laddie. Oh, what will become of him when I’m away?”

Dickie was said to be playing down on the street, so I told her we might see him as we left. Jess began to cry bitterly—Jess! whom I believed to have not one genuine tear in her! and thus we descended the stairs together. In the street a ragged and unkempt boy of seven or eight was brought to her side, and she clutched him to her breast, kissing his smudged face with a passionate fervour which gave me quite a fresh insight into her character. The boy resembled her in features, and would have passed for good-looking had he only been washed and dressed up a little.

“What’s to ’come o’ my bairn?—oh, what’s to ’come o’ my bairn?” wailed Jess, and the boy began to howl in concert, and I saw that it would be useless to try to separate them just then.

“Oh, he’ll be looked after as he has often been before,” I carelessly answered. “He’ll go to the Poorhouse. He’ll be safer there than under your care—and cleaner.”

The remark did not appear to console Jess in the least. Dickie was her only child, and the whole strength of her nature seemed concentrated in her love of that boy. I was astonished, and speculated on the matter all the way to the office, quietly wondering what “line of business” that same gutter child was destined to torment me and others by adopting, when he should be a few years older.

I had made a pretty shrewd guess at Jess’s sentence, for the list of previous convictions was so strong against her that she was awarded exactly the number of years I had named. I was convinced by that time that she did not grieve over the punishment at all, but over her separation from her child, and I remember thinking—“We are poor judges of one another. What a strong hold could be taken of that woman through that child, if one only knew how to use the power.”

Dickie was allowed to see his mother once before she was sent to the Penitentiary, and then he went back to the Poorhouse. He was a good deal cleaner by that time, and had on different clothing, but there was one plaything, or fetish, with which he had resolutely refused to part, and that still hung from his neck. It was a broken cairngorm stone, with a hole drilled at one end, through which a bit of twine had been drawn, that he might suspend the trinket from his neck. I had noticed the stone when I took him to the office with his mother, but merely glanced at it, thinking that it was but an imitation moulded in yellow glass. I was mistaken, for it was part of a real stone, and had probably been set in some stolen brooch which had been broken up for the metal.

It was of no great value, but it pleased Dickie, and kept him from wearying during his long confinement in the Poorhouse, which to him was as irksome as being shut up in a prison. He was a lively, spirited boy, and had never been checked or curbed, so it may be imagined he got into as many scrapes as the average boy of his age.

However, in spite of his mischief and wild pranks, Dickie had a soft spot in his heart, and could be tamed by a gentle word or appeal when lashing had been tried in vain. When he had been about eighteen months in the Poorhouse, a poor knife-grinder was admitted for a day or two, who told Dickie such grand romances of his free life on the road that the boy took an insatiable longing for freedom. Squinting Jerry was the man’s name, but though he had an evil look, he was really an honest fellow.

Jerry had been driven to the Poorhouse for a night’s shelter, and while there had been laid up for a day or two with a bad leg which troubled him at times, but as soon as he was able to move he hastened to quit the oppressive confinement. Before he had done so, Dickie, by a series of pathetic appeals, had extracted from him a consent to receiving him as an apprentice.

Jerry was really not reluctant to having an assistant, whom he needed sorely at times, but he was afraid that the arrangement might get him into trouble with the parochial authorities, should he be followed and Dickie taken back. Then there were Dickie’s antecedents to be considered—he was the son of a convict, and might have the “bad blood” in him, as Jerry expressed it. The old knife-grinder therefore agreed to the proposal with reluctance, as we often do with what turns out a great blessing. Dickie had no difficulty in fulfilling his part of the agreement, for he had already run away twice, and each time gone back of his own accord.

He therefore got out of the Poorhouse easily, and joined Jerry a mile or two out of the city. He took with him his only treasure, the broken cairngorm, which some one had declared to him was a diamond, and worth a great deal of money. This opinion was not shared by Jerry, who failed to find a purchaser for the stone, and finally relegated it to a little box in the grinding machine, which they trundled before them wherever they went. Perhaps the parochial authorities were glad to get rid of Dickie, for he was not followed or taken back. The new life suited him—it was free and untrammelled; it had constant variety, and there was a certain spice of romance about it, which made sleeping in the open air, or getting drenched with rain, or lost and benighted, as they often were, mere trifles, to be forgotten with the first blaze of sunshine. Compared with his life in the Poorhouse Dickie found it heavenly, and very soon a new and altogether unexpected result began to arise from his changed condition.

When Dickie had taken to the road it was sheer impatience of restraint that sent him thither, and he had many ideas of right and wrong which are tolerated only among my “bairns.” Now Jerry was an ignorant man, who did not know one letter from another, but there was one lesson he had learned—that a life of crime is the worst paying trade in the world. Halting by roadside hamlets, resting under shady hedges, or wandering along green lanes, Jerry laid down his ideas to Dickie in a homely fashion, which would have thrown a teacher of grammar into hysterics, but which nevertheless carried conviction to the heart of the boy. Not that Dickie had ever meant to wrong Jerry, but he had only taken to this life as a make-shift till his mother should be released from prison.

When questioned as to his intentions for the future, and especially after rejoining his mother, he coolly said that he supposed he should take to her trade. It was this callous idea that Jerry set himself to undermine, and admirably the old man succeeded, thus affixing a brighter gem to his brow for all eternity than if he had gone as a missionary to the heathen and converted a whole troop of savages. Dickie first listened in respectful patience to the new doctrines of honesty and hard work, then began to imbibe them and manfully adopt them himself, and finally became as firm and resolute in their dissemination as Jerry himself. Out of this sprang a strange act. Dickie had once written to his mother describing his new life, and promising to rejoin her on her liberation; he now wrote a final letter, asserting his intention of separating himself for ever from her and her influence, and declaring his intention of growing up “on the square.” Jess was nearly insane over the news—not that she cared whether he grew up honest or a thief—but that he should think of separating his life entirely from her own. Three months elapsed before she was able to reply to his letter, and by that time Dickie was hundreds of miles away, leaving no address, and the letter was returned to the Penitentiary, marked “_Not Found_.” Jerry was an Irishman, and though he always earned less money in his own country than in Scotland or England, he inclined more to wander at that side of the Channel, where, if the people could give nothing else, they were always ready with a kindly greeting or a sympathetic answer, and, of course, Dickie accompanied him, and gradually acquired such a strong smack of the Irish brogue that he would have passed for one of themselves.

When the queer partnership had first been formed, Dickie did little but go round the houses at which they paused and ask for knives or scissors to grind, but gradually, as he grew stronger and mastered the intricacies of the grinding as taught by old Jerry, the position of the partners became inverted, Dickie taking the heavy part of the work and Jerry the light. A strong affection had sprung up between them, and Dickie never thought he could do too much for the feeble old man, whose bad leg at times held them in a poor locality till they were literally starved out of it. During these detentions, Dickie, not at all dismayed, sturdily faced the road alone, sometimes making a round of thirty miles in a day, and faithfully returning with the grinding machine and his earnings at night. In this way he had “eaten the district bare,” as he said, while Jerry’s leg showed no sign of mending or allowing him to move.

“Ye’ll have to take another county, Dickie, darlint,” he said, after they had discussed the matter, and found some action imperative. “I’m not afeard of ye running away an’ forgetting your poor owld grandfather. I’ve teached ye better nor that, more by token they can never expect to prosper that wrongs the helpless or the suffering.”

“May I drop dead the minute such a thought enters my head!” said Dickie with energy. “Rest where you are, Jerry dear—and get well and take all the comfort ye can, for sure ye’ve been a blessed friend to me, and made a man of me when I’d have turned out nothing but a jail bird and a vagabone.”

The “man,” as he termed himself, was then just twelve years of age, but his sentiments, as the reader will admit, were worthy of twice that number of years.

Thus it was that Dickie came to face the world as an independent traveller. He moved over a great part of Ireland in this way, always sending the net gains regularly to old Jerry, and, on the whole, doing nearly as well as before the separation. He almost invariably met with kindness and sympathy, but once he was attacked and robbed of three days’ earnings. But in taking the money the wretches took also Dickie’s carefully cherished talisman, the broken cairngorm, and by that they were identified and convicted, while the trinket was returned to Dickie, who cherished it and guarded it, with greater faith than ever in its power. He would not have parted with that senseless bit of stone for a twenty-pound note, for it was the only link which connected the present with the past, and he never looked at it, as he was wont to declare, without remembering what he might have been but for old Jerry.

“Faith, I believe if I were to lose that stone my good luck would go with it,” he repeatedly asserted, from which it will be seen that there was mixed up with Dickie’s well-doing a spice of superstition, which, however, is not a bad thing, when it keeps in the straight path feet inclined to wander.

On one of the rare occasions when Dickie was able to get back as far as Belfast to see Jerry, he found the old grinder unusually weak and worn. Hitherto Jerry had doctored his leg himself, but now it had assumed such a strange appearance that he was glad to have Dickie by his side to advise him. It had begun to grow black, and, what was more strange, the pain had all gone out of it. Dickie had been doing pretty well on his travels, so he promptly decided that they should call in a doctor.

When that gentleman came he looked at the leg, and then at the emaciated face of the old man, and then said compassionately—

“Why did you send for me?”

“To mend me leg, plase God,” said Jerry.

The doctor quietly covered up the limb and shook his head.

“Ye’ve more need of a praist, good man,” he said, shortly, but not unkindly. “No doctor alive will ever make you well.”

Dickie felt his heart suddenly grow cold and empty within him; then a revulsion came and he burst into tears. Jerry alone was calm, and even radiant.

“I’ve been expecting the message,” he quietly returned. “Plase the Lord, I’m ready to die. Dickie, avourneen, don’t sob the heart out ov ye like that. Sure, it’s rejoicing ye ought to be that I’m getting rid of all my troubles and pains at wanst; and, blessed be God, it’s aisy dyin’ when love smooths the pillow. Ye’ve been a true son to me, and my own heart’s blood couldn’t have been affectionater. Pay the gintleman for his trouble, Dickie, aroon, and then run for a praist, for I feel the blackness creeping up on me, and when it covers my heart I’ll be in heaven. The Lord is always good; He’s kept me alive till you got back, Dickie, to take my hand an’ help me over the dark stile.”

The doctor would accept of no fee, and Dickie ran off and got a priest, who came and went, leaving Jerry happy and peaceful, with one arm round Dickie’s neck and the other clasping his hand. He had a great deal to tell his young partner, but the most important of all was a strong injunction that he should continue honest and industrious.

“There’s some money in the owld snuff-box under my head,” he continued. “I’ve tuck care of it for ye, for ye’ve earned the most of it, and deserved it all. You’ll get all that, and give me a dacent funeral, and keep the rest. It’ll maybe start ye in a better way of doing some day, but if the other way isn’t the straight way, ye’d better pitch the money into the salt say and go on as ye are.”

The next morning the blackness crept up on Jerry’s tender heart, and Dickie, still clasping the old man’s hand and wetting it with his tears, helped him over the dark stile, and stood alone in the world.

The courage had nearly gone out of Dickie under this blow, but youth is buoyant, hopeful, and active. After laying the head of Jerry in the grave, and paying every one, Dickie found that he had nearly £20 left, all in gold sovereigns, for Jerry had imbibed the national distrust of bank notes. Dickie left the money in safe keeping, and started once more with his grinding machine. It was only when going over his old rounds that he discovered how much Jerry had been beloved and respected—truly another testimony that “honour and shame from no condition rise.” Every one had a good word for his memory, and many a tear was shed as Dickie described his peaceful and courageous end. After another year of this wandering in Ireland, Dickie crossed to Liverpool, and spent a year in England, at the end of which time he sold his grinding machine, and became a hawker of cheap jewellery.

He was now a smart-tongued lad of fifteen, nicely dressed, with a good stock, all bought with Jerry’s careful savings, and found the new line much more congenial, and quite as profitable as the old. Much of the Irish accent dropped from his tongue, and at length it would have puzzled even an expert to decide his nationality by his speech. As he increased in experience and accumulated capital, he was enabled to deal in a finer class of jewellery, which he carried about in a mahogany box having several lifting trays and compartments, and having on the side a stout leather handle, and on the top a brass plate bearing the words—

“RICHARD MURRAY, Licensed Hawker.”

Till he was seventeen he never thought of coming near Scotland, and had long since forgotten his mother’s features, and given up any idea of seeking her out, or joining his fortunes with her own; but some one then fired his mind with a glowing account of what could be done in his line in some of the towns, and Dickie crossed the Border and worked his way to Glasgow, in which city he succeeded well. Saturday afternoon and night were his best times for business, as then the working folks were all free and plentiful of money.

After one of these successful days he had wandered into a big, flashy public-house, close to one of the theatres, for a last effort before going home to his humble lodging. The place was crowded, bar and boxes, for the theatre had just disgorged its contents, and it was near closing time. Dickie sold some of his wares, and then found himself in one of the boxes offering a silver brooch, set with imitation diamonds, to a company of three there seated—two men and a big muscular woman, with some traces of beauty still about her face.

The woman fancied the brooch, and appeared resolved on buying it, but among them they could not muster the price of the trinket, and as Dickie would not abate to their price, the brooch was reluctantly handed back and shut up in his box. The moment he had gone a significant look ran round the three.

“It would be easily done, and he’s quite a boy,” said Jess Murray eagerly. “He won’t give it for a fair price; if you’ve any spirit at all, you’ll take the boxful.”

One of the men, Bob Lynch by name, was indifferent whether they adopted the suggestion or not, and rose carelessly to follow the lad; the other, known as “Jockey” Savage, thought that the boy, as Jess called him, was not such a stripling, and might give them more trouble than they bargained for. They all agreed, however, that it was worth while following him, and, if a suitable spot were found, making the attempt. They left the public house and separated, one man going on either side of the street, and Jess following some distance behind, to assist in any emergency. Dickie’s lodging was in a narrow close off the Gallowgate, and they had to follow him thus far before any opportunity occurred for attacking him, as, though he did no business on the way, he kept persistently to the main thoroughfare, thronged with passengers. The moment he entered the close the men exchanged signals and dived in after him. Dickie had scarcely walked twenty yards when a garrotting arm was thrown round his neck, and a snatch made at the box in his hand. But Dickie had not knocked about the world so long without learning something. He held on to the leather strap of his box with all his strength, and at the same time delivered a backward kick at Jockey Savage’s shin bone, which made him slacken his grip, and squirm and howl with agony. As the intended victim made a great outcry at the same moment Bob Lynch made a desperate effort to bring out a leaden-headed life-preserver, but then Dickie, divining what the motion meant, grasped at the villain’s arm with his disengaged hand while he tried to pin the other to Lynch’s side with his teeth. Just then there was a swift rush to the spot, and Jess Murray, snatching the “neddy” from Lynch’s pocket, brought it down with a crashing swing on the fair brow of the lad. Dickie dropped like a log, and Jess caught the box as it fell from his hand, tossing the neddy back to its owner, and saying—

“You bunglers would take all night to it. Now bolt! I’ll take care of the swag.”

They vanished from the spot like magic, and by different routes gained a den further east, known to them all, and peculiarly handy in their present condition, as it was kept by a man who would reset anything—the Great Eastern, even, if anyone chose to steal it. Jess was the last to arrive, with the box hidden under her shawl, and she tossed it down on the table with much pride and satisfaction.

“You hit him twice, Jess,” observed Lynch, who was a bit of a coward, and was now very pale and concerned. “I hope to goodness you haven’t croaked him.”

“His own fault if I have,” coolly answered Jess. “Turn out the box and see what we’ve got, and then into the fire with it before the spots come.”

The order was speedily obeyed. The stock was of greater value than they had anticipated, but in addition, in the bottom compartment of the box, they found five or six pounds in money, and a bank-book representing a good deal more.

“What a pity! what a pity!” cried Jockey reflectively; “banks are a nuisance—if the money had only been here instead of the book!”

“What’s that in the tissue paper?” said Jess eagerly—“a pile of sovereigns, very like. Turn them out—the greedy beggar was as rich as a Jew.”

Jockey obeyed, and gave a whistle of disappointment. All that the tissue paper contained was a broken cairngorm stone, with a bit of dirty twine drawn through a hole at one end.

“There’s your pile of gold,” he said, tossing Dickie’s talisman over to Jess. “I hope you like it.”

Jess lifted the trinket and stared at it with her face slowly becoming ghastly, and her heart freezing within her.

“I’ve seen that before!” she slowly whispered, as the men stared at her in awe-stricken wonder and silence. “It was his when he was taken from me. Perhaps it is a mistake—perhaps I have not killed my own bairn. Read! read! you that can read—read what is on that brass plate on the lid of the box.”

Jockey glanced at the plate, and sprang to his feet in horror.

“God alive! it’s there,” was all he could articulate.

“What? what? tell me what?” moaned Jess, beginning to clutch at her breast with her hands, and to writhe about like one grown mad.

“RICHARD MURRAY, Licensed Hawker,”

was the awe-stricken response, and only the half of it was heard. Shriek upon shriek went pealing through that rookery. Nothing could check her outcry; she screamed at every one; tore at them like a tiger; denounced them with every gasp and mad exclamation, and finally drew to the spot the police by struggling to throw her two accomplices out at the window. They were all marched off to the Central—with the reset as a make-weight, and Jess was there put in a padded cell and watched the long night through, or she would never have seen the light of another day. The first thing that helped to soothe her was the news that Dickie was not killed, and though there was concussion of the brain, he was likely to recover. When he did recover he was allowed to visit her in prison, and put his arms through the bars and clasp her close and hear her say that she was done for ever with a life of crime.

Jess and her companions were tried shortly after, when she, on account of the peculiar circumstances of the case, and the tearful appeal to the jury by the chief witness—Dickie—got the mild sentence of two years’ imprisonment. Jockey and Lynch got ten each, as by a fiction of the law Jess was supposed to have acted under their influence.

When Jess was released, Dickie waited for her, and they vanished together.

THE ROMANCE OF A REAL CREMONA.

A grand ball was being given one night in November at the mansion of the Earl of ———, a great castellated place a good bit within a hundred miles of this city. The dancing room was a perfect picture—the floor polished mahogany in mosaic work, the walls panelled in white flowered satin, with gold slips at the edges, and the whole lighted by hundreds of wax candles inserted in brackets and chandeliers of cut crystal, glittering with pendants, while flashing in the head-dresses and on the necks and bosoms of the fair guests were enough diamonds and other precious stones to have bought up the Regalia twice over.

It was in this scene of brightness and grandeur, and strictly exclusive gaiety, that the curious robbery which was to cause me so much trouble and concern took place.

In an assemblage of this kind, one would expect a thief, if he managed to get into the place at all, to turn his attention to the guests and their jewels; but such was not the case, and it was there that the first puzzling element came into the affair.

At one end of the room, partly in a large recess formed by one of the bow windows, and partly in a portion of the room screened off by a rope covered with red cloth, was a raised kind of a dais for the orchestra. This corner was at the end nearest the door, and clustered within the rope, with stands and music complete, was an orchestra of local musicians, under the leadership, for that night only, of a more distinguished player from England. This gentleman, whom I may name Mr Cleffton, had been engaged at some high-class concerts in Edinburgh, and was about to return to England when he was asked as a great favour and at a high fee to play at this distinguished gathering. To play at a dancing party was rather out of this gentleman’s line—to accept a high fee was not, so he went—much to his grief as he soon found.

About midnight, when the room was beginning to become uncomfortably warm, the guests filed out grandly to a supper room close by, and shortly after the musicians were similarly entertained in a smaller room, to which they were led through a long range of carpeted lobbies by the butler himself. Most of the players left their instruments on the seat they had occupied or on the music stand or floor—Mr Cleffton alone took the trouble to return his to its case. He was about to shut and lock this for additional security when he chanced to notice that all the others were waiting on him, and said hurriedly to the butler—

“I suppose the violins will be perfectly safe here? No one will meddle them while we’re out?”

The butler smiled lightly at his concern, and said emphatically—

“Not a soul will go near them.”

So the fiddle case was left open and unlocked, and its owner went away with his companions to regale himself upon cold fowl and tongue and champagne, or whatever wine he fancied most.

Now, when I say that Mr Cleffton fairly worshipped his own instrument, I am, I believe, giving only an ordinary case—all fiddlers, I understand, do that, and the more wretched the instrument the more devout is their homage. Whether this particular fiddle merited the slavish devotion I cannot say. It was very ugly, and rather dirty-looking; but its owner, besides never tiring of admiring it from every possible point of view, had given £40 for it, and afterwards spent a good many more, as I shall presently show, in trying to establish at law that the fiddle he had bought belonged to him; so I suppose it must have had good qualities of some kind.

When, therefore, the orchestra had finished supper and strolled back under the guidance of one of the servants to the ball-room, Mr Cleffton’s first look was towards his fiddle—or rather towards the case in which he had so tenderly deposited it before leaving the room. Then he started, and blinked sharply to make sure that the champagne had not affected his vision. The case was there, as was also a beautifully quilted bag of wadding and green silk in which he was wont to tenderly wrap the fiddle when done playing, and before inserting it in the case; the fiddle bow, too, was there, but the Cremona was gone.

“Hullo! what’s this!” exclaimed Mr Cleffton, in his quick, sharp way, and trying to smile in spite of his concern and pitiable pallor. “Which of you has been meddling with my fiddle.”

Nobody had been touching it, as they all hastened to assure him, reminding him at the same time how he had been the last to leave the room; and then, with concerned looks and widely opened eyes, they looked everywhere about the recess for the missing fiddle, narrowly inspecting every one of the instruments left; but it was all in vain—the fiddle had vanished.

“My beautiful _Strad!_ my beautiful _Strad!_ worth £400!” was all Mr Cleffton could moan out, as, wringing his hands, tearing at the few hairs left in his head, and almost shedding real tears of grief, he trotted feverishly and excitedly round the ball-room, peering into every corner in search of his treasure.

“Perhaps some of the servants may have taken it out to have a scrape while we were at supper,” suggested another player, keeping his own instrument tight under his arm so that there might be no danger of a second tragedy. All the other fiddlers echoed the suggestion, and, carrying their instruments under their arms, followed the distracted leader through the lobbies in search of the butler, or any of the servants likely to throw light on the strange disappearance.

The butler was soon found, and brought out from the supper room proper to hear the story of the Cremona; and in amazement and incredulity he followed the players to the ball-room, where, however, he could only stare and count over the instruments left, with the invariable result of finding them one short. Then the servants were questioned closely and searchingly, but not one of them had thought of looking at the fiddles, far less of taking one out of the room to try it, and the end of the investigation found them exactly where they had begun—that is, staring blankly at each other and saying, “Well, that is strange—how on earth could it have gone?”

By and by odd couples of the guests began to drift into the ball-room, and at length Lady ——— herself, the amiable hostess, appeared, and was informed in a whisper by the butler of the unexpected difficulty.

“One of the violins taken out of the room? oh, impossible,” she incredulously echoed, with a coolness which must have stabbed Mr Cleffton like a sword of ice. “You will find it lying about somewhere when the dancing is over. Could you not play on one of the other violins, Mr Cleffton, and look for your own afterwards?”

Mr Cleffton looked at the honourable lady in pitying and profound contempt for her ignorance, and deep reproach for what to him seemed an indifference absolutely brutal. What! sit down and calmly play on another instrument while his own—to him the best in the world—might be speeding in the hands of the exultant robber to the other end of the world.

This was more than fiddler humanity could endure. High fees and even the countenance of earls were not to be despised, but they were as nothing compared with the loss of his darling instrument, and in a torrent of excited language, such as the lady was seldom favoured with hearing, the bereaved musician told her so. Not another note would he play till he got his own fiddle.

A horrible pause followed, but in the end a compromise was effected, by which all but Mr Cleffton continued to play, while he followed the butler from the room to prosecute his inquiries in the regions below.

A tardily stammered-out word from one of the servants had given them a slight clue to the strange disappearance. During the interval occupied by supper, some of the strange servants being entertained below—that is, the coachmen and footmen of those who had come a distance, and merely put up the horses to wait till the party was over—had proposed that they should take a peep at the glories of the empty ball-room, and, this being readily agreed to, they slipped quietly upstairs under the guidance of one of the servants, and gratified their curiosity.

“But they had been only a moment in the room,” the quaking servant added, “and hardly inside the door.”

The butler made no reply, but to Mr Cleffton he hopefully remarked—

“I suspect some of the coachmen will have your fiddle down in the kitchen,” and to the kitchen they went to find there more than one coachman, but no fiddle, or trace of one. Every one there seated swore that they had not as much as noticed the fiddle, and then they voluntarily underwent a process of searching. Greatcoats were produced and inspected, pockets turned out, and every means tried without success. Then some suggested that they should see if all in waiting were there; they counted off at once, and found that, by comparing the number with that of the plates set for supper in the servants’ hall, they were exactly one short. Who was the missing one! No one could tell, till one jolly-faced coachman said—

“Where’s the surly chap that sat next to me, and never took off his driving coat all the time?”

“Ay, where was he?” every one echoed, and soon to this was added the question, for the first time asked, “Who was he?”

There was no answer to either question. Nobody had noticed the man particularly, though to the jolly-faced coachman he had gruffly said that his name was “Smith, or Jones, or something,” and that he had been “driving some of the folks up stairs.”

Every one in this case, down to the servants of the house themselves, had imagined that every body else knew all about the strange man, and so had paid little attention to him and his odd manner.

Smith had done little but smoke and stare, though he had shown great alacrity in going up to see the ball-room; some, indeed, insisted that it had been he who proposed the treat. More, he had gone up with his heavy driving coat on, and some of the servants had a faint recollection of him loitering near the music stands while the rest of the servants walked round the room looking at the decorations.

“That’s the man that has stolen my violin,” cried Mr Cleffton at this stage of the inquiry. “He would have a big pocket inside his coat,—probably made for the occasion,—and has slipped my Cremona into it when no one was looking or thinking of him. Who does he serve with?”

“Who, indeed?” All echoed the question; but when guest after guest had been enumerated or appealed to by the butler, there came the still more surprising discovery that Smith served no one—came with no one—and was known to no one—had gained admittance, indeed, entirely by the dress he wore, his own cool audacity, and the general flurry in which every one was plunged by the party being held up stairs.

“Get out your horses, and let the villain be pursued,” cried Mr Cleffton, more and more distracted, “the whole robbery has been systematically planned and carried out; but the wretch can’t be far off, and we may overtake him yet. I will give ten pounds to any of you who help to put it into my hands again.”

The incentive was little needed, for a good deal of Cleffton’s excitement had communicated itself to those about him. In a few minutes several vehicles were horsed and ready in the stable yard behind, and on one of these Mr Cleffton took his place beside the driver and with a grand lashing of whips and excited whooping they were off down the avenue, at the foot of which they separated to take the different roads running from the spot. Mr Cleffton, from some idea of his own, had chosen that leading to Edinburgh; but, though the night was clear, and the moon and stars out in the sky, not a trace of the fugitive did they come upon between the mansion and the city. Several tramps they did overtake and rouse up and search without ceremony, but as none of these answered the description of the surly Mr Smith, they were allowed to resume their tramping or snoring, while the agonised fiddler entered the city. Of course his first visit was to the Central Police Office, where he made known his loss to the lieutenant on night duty, and then excitedly demanded to see a detective. It was explained to him that detectives require sleep as well as ordinary mortals, and are not usually kept at the office during the night waiting for such exceptional cases, but this produced little impression upon the musician.

“Everything depends on this matter being seen to with promptitude,” he said. “Give me the man’s address, and I’ll go to him myself.”

They ought to have given him M^cSweeny’s address, considering the hour and the work I had done the day before, but they didn’t; they gave him mine; and out to Charles Street he came at half-past four in the morning, and roused me out of bed, sleepy, stupid, and dazed with having got only three hours rest instead of eight, and, without waiting to see if I understood him, at once began to bemoan his loss.

“My lovely Cremona! my beautiful _Strad!_ spirited away—stolen from under my very eyes! Good heavens, what am I to do? What is to become of me if you don’t trace out the thief?”

“Strad! Strad! Who is she?” I vacantly asked, thinking from the man’s tears that he must mean some young and beautiful maiden, violently abducted from her home and friends.