Chapter IX: Part 9

“Ah, it’s been lying a long time unused, mother. Eighteen months is a long time—in prison;” and Jim’s teeth became set, and his two hands shook as he tested the keenness of the point of the knife with his thumb. His mother saw that she had touched a sore spot, and remained silent. As soon as Jim’s task was over he set out to look for Joe. He wanted him particularly, and was quite joyful when he learned that Joe was still about the city, and not in prison. But search as he could he did not find Joe, and at length learned that that cautious customer had left for Glasgow on the very day of Jim’s release. No matter, Jim thought distance a trifle, and followed as soon as he could scrape enough money together. He took his knife with him. On the second day he did see Joe for a moment or two—met him full in the face in an entry off the Gallowgate; but the moment their eyes met, and Jim’s hand went into his pocket, Knevitt ran like a hound, and managed to distance Jim completely and escape. Next day Knevitt left for Perth, after saying that he was off to Edinburgh; but Jim met a man who had seen Joe take a ticket for Perth, and he followed. At Perth he traced Knevitt without difficulty to a house known to them both. But the hunted man had seen him approach, and by slipping on a woman’s skirt and shawl and bonnet boldly passed him on the stair, and escaped. Jim fathomed the trick a few minutes later, and cursed his own stupidity in allowing the unnaturally tall female figure to pass him; but by that time Knevitt was on his way to Dundee. The next train took Jim there also. After a day’s hunting he met his man in Couttie’s Wynd.

“By G—d! your hour has come!” he cried, darting his hand into his breast pocket; but again Knevitt put on that fearful speed and ran for life. Not far from the place is a ferry across to Fife. The pier at which the boat starts is guarded by a gate which is closed when the boat is about to move. Knevitt managed to get within that gate just as it was being closed, and scrambled into the boat nearly dead with terror, while Jim was thundering and shouting in vain outside the gate in hope of admission. Knevitt had thus a whole hour’s start, and, besides, had more money in his pocket. Jim, when he reached the other side, was uncertain whether the hunted man had decided to walk or ride; and his own funds being low, he resolved to walk. He had no doubt as to the next goal.

“Edinburgh! he’ll be sure to land in Edinburgh!” he muttered to himself, and thus he confidently tramped through Fife, reserving the little money he had to pay the ferry at Burntisland. It was the dead of winter, and bitterly cold, and when Jim arrived at his mother’s house he was nearly dead beat. He had got over with a goods boat, and reached home early in the morning. He lay down and slept all day—a fevered, unrestful sleep, full of dreams and mutterings, and suppressed threats and deadly words, which filled his mother with terror. At night he awoke, and moodily consumed the meal placed before him, and then limped to the door.

“Where are you for now?” asked his mother with a palpitating heart.

“Just going out to look about me,” was the answer, and then he was gone. His mother thought she would look about her too, and threw a shawl over her head and followed. During the two hours’ wandering which followed, she never lost sight of him. At last she discovered that he was following a man—Joe Knevitt—who appeared quite unconscious of the fact. Knevitt made for a tumble-down rookery in a close a little below the Bridges. It was his home, and had the advantage of being accessible from two sides—by the two flights of wooden steps on one side, and by a back window on a level with a higher close beyond. The garret on the top flat was all Joe’s, and he clearly indicated to his foe that no one else was within by unlocking the door as he went in. Jim had his shoes off in a twinkling, and then crept up the first flight of steps and patiently waited in the dark, with his knife ready unclasped in his hand. The poor mother understood it all now, and, having before heard the place described, she slipped round to the next close, clambered upon an outhouse, and astonished Knevitt by tapping lightly at the window and madly motioning him to come out and fly for his life. Knevitt needed no explanation; her face was enough, and he was out at the window and gone before she had well got over her excitement and terror. She waited there for a full quarter of an hour to give him time to escape; and then resolved to go in, open the door, and go down and tell Jim that his plot was discovered and his intended victim far beyond his reach. The door was opened, and Jim, watching below with the knife in his hand, dimly saw a female figure descend where only a man had entered.

“That trick won’t deceive me!” he cried, as he dashed up the steps and drew back his right arm. “You’ve tried it once too often, Joe!”

One plunge of the sharp steel with all the strength of his powerful arm, one low groan as the poor victim sank back on the steps, and it was done, and Jim flying for life and liberty. His mother was not dead when she was found, but it was quite evident that she was mortally wounded. When her state was known, and preparations made to take her deposition, she persisted that she had been stabbed by Joe Knevitt. The knife found by her side was Jim Hutson’s, but his mother, innocently or knowingly—I cannot tell which—said—

“Jim was aye a gude laddie, and though he was led away he wadna lift his hand against his mother. Joe Knevitt did it, the ungrateful scoondrel, after me daeing him a gude turn. _But dinna tell Jim_ or he’ll kill him, and twa deaths winna mak’ ae life.”

We easily picked up Knevitt, but he denied the whole with such manifest horror, and gave such explanations, that we set out to hunt for Jim, and I was the one destined to unearth him; and also, I regret to say, to inform him of the fearful crime he had committed. That scene I can never describe. He dropped on his knees, rolled and writhed on the floor, tearing his hair in a frenzy of agony, moaning out but the two words—“My mother! My mother! My mother!” Of course he confessed the whole crime in every detail; but his mother was never told of the hand that gave her the death-blow. She lingered for some months, and, the doctors said, did not actually die of the wound, but of some trouble of the heart, brought on by the excitement and pain. Jim was tried and convicted of manslaughter only, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The sentence may seem light, but _that_ was not his punishment. He carried that within him. Joe Knevitt’s bones now lie in the prison yard, but Jim’s dust is in a foreign land, where he died on a battlefield in a way that made men call him a hero. They did not know the secret of his daring.

THE HERRING SCALES.

The hawker of the herrings was not of the class usually seen in the streets of Edinburgh, where they seldom own more than the wheel-barrow containing the fish. He was a man of some substance, having a donkey to draw his cart, and a number of pigs, and a big garden, in which he worked during his spare hours. The place in which he lived is a town some miles from Edinburgh, and the time when the quarrel began the month of July. The quarrellers were a baker named Dan Coglin, and the herring hawker aforesaid, Jamie Burfoot by name. The baker was also a man of some means, being in business for himself, and he would have prospered had it not been for his uncontrollable temper. Coglin had in his time threatened to murder every friend and acquaintance in the place, and doubtless in the heat of his passion really meant to do so, but fresh objects for his resentment constantly arose to divert him from his purpose. He was one of those unhappy beings who meet with mighty wrongs, and slights, and insults every day of their lives, and feel called upon to set the world right in that respect, no matter at how great a risk to themselves.

The quarrel took place at the bakehouse door, and was witnessed from a stairhead above by a tailor named Thomas Elder, who had already had more than one disagreement with the hot-headed baker.

Burfoot had stopped his donkey cart at the bakehouse door, and offered some of his herrings for sale. They were fresh herrings, but that was just the point on which the dispute began. Coglin said they were stale, and added that Burfoot had cheated him often in the same way before, adding some lively reflections on his character, from which it appeared that the herring hawker ought to have been hanged many years before.

Now, as often happens quite providentially in such cases, only one of the men was violent. Burfoot was a quiet, canny customer, who only laughed at the most outrageous of the baker’s remarks. His character was in no danger from the insane ravings of such a man, and the herrings were there to speak for themselves. He lifted one of the finest, and handed it to the baker, saying simply—

“If that isn’t fresh out of the sea this morning I’ll give you the whole load for nothing.”

This was said laughingly. Coglin took the herring, affected to sniff at it, and then, with an expression of disgust, threw it back. Burfoot’s mouth was open, and the pitched herring dived into the cavity as neatly as if it had really been, what the hawker asserted, “living.” Burfoot sputtered and choked, while the tailor above, though wishing the quarrel to go the other way, could not restrain a burst of laughter at the comical appearance the hawker cut. There is a limit even to the endurance of a peaceable man. Burfoot no sooner was free of the unexpected mouthful than he wildly grabbed a handful of herrings from the cart, and battered them, as fast as he could fire them, in the direction of the baker’s head. Coglin retreated and closed the bakehouse door, and after some storming and threatening Burfoot picked up the missiles he had used, tossed them back into the cart, and drove on, shouting “Fine fresh herrings!” Four or five of them, which had been dashed in at the open door at the retreating baker, that worthy gathered up and complacently put into a dish in the oven for his dinner. He was in a good temper, for he thought he had got decidedly the best of the quarrel. He was to change his mind next morning. Coglin’s business was a small one, and, except at specially busy times, he did all his baking himself. He was therefore the first and only one on the spot next morning. The hour was an early one, but it was quite light, and he noticed at once that something was wrong. The principal window to the bakehouse had been raised, and the lower sash left wide open. The circumstance excited his curiosity and surprise, but did not at first greatly concern him. There was little of value in the bakehouse for thieves to take, and he thought the raising of the sash might be only the trick of some mischievous boy. He unlocked the door and got inside, looked around the place, and then groaned and cursed to his heart’s content. The batch for his early baking had been carefully “set” the night before, that is, the dough had been carefully mixed in a wooden trough, covered over with a board and some empty sacks, and left to “rise.” It had not risen as he had expected, for the coverings had been removed; his bakehouse “bauchles” had been stuck into the soft mass, with all the shapes and biscuit markers, and a dirty can of sugar and water, with its paint-brush, with which he anointed cookies when they came hot from the oven, added on the top. That was not all. A bag half-full of flour, which generally stood in a corner, had been dragged forward and turned out on the floor, while into the white heap had been poured his whole supply of barm.

When he had quite exhausted his stock of language, Coglin rose, and, closing the window and door, made his way to the chief constable’s house, where he roused that worthy man out of bed, and insisted upon him dressing and coming to see the wreck.

The constable came and examined all, and then very naturally asked who had been quarrelling with the baker. With a man of Coglin’s disposition it would have been safer to ask whom he had not been quarrelling with. Coglin went over the names of some of his foes, but, having had the best of the slight affair with the herring hawker, he never thought of naming Burfoot.

The constable made no great progress with the case, and I suspect did not exert himself much, as there was general rejoicing over the baker’s calamity, which was thought to be well deserved. Finding this to be the case, Coglin insisted on having a detective brought from Edinburgh. The case was important, he declared—nothing but a conspiracy conceived and executed by half of the town’s folks, including a magistrate and several leading town councillors, and he would have the law to them though he should have to call in the aid of the Home Secretary himself. Accordingly I went down to look at the place, and was greatly amused by Coglin’s wild statements of his troubles and daily martyrdom. In looking over the bakehouse, I chanced to notice on the board which had been used to cover the “batch,” or “sponge,” a number of herring scales—almost enough to convey the idea of a hand-print.

I said nothing of the circumstance till I had examined the window sash, and found two similar hand-prints of herring scales there also.

“Are you in the habit of handling herring often?” I asked, to which he gave a prompt response in the affirmative.

“Oh, yes; there’s often as many as two dozen dishes of them here in the morning to be fired in the oven.”

“And you take toll of a herring out of each?” I laughingly observed.

“No, no, I never touch them,” he hastily returned; and then I showed him the herring scales on the board and the window sash. He looked grave enough for some moments, and then burst out into a ferocious “Aha!”

It was all he said for a few moments, but it clearly indicated that the herring scales had suggested a great idea to him. What the idea was I soon knew, for he proceeded to describe the encounter with Burfoot, and ended by boldly affirming that the herring man and no other was the author of the outrage. The inference seemed a very fair one, and after getting a description of the quarrel, I decided to see after the herring man. The result of my investigations in that direction was absolute failure, so far as bringing home the guilt to Burfoot was concerned. I not only got clear proof that Burfoot on the night and morning of the outrage had been out of the town altogether, but that he had been confined to bed and too ill to move out of the house. Nothing could be clearer than the evidence on this point; and when I had finished I was convinced that, whether Burfoot had planned the outrage or no, he at least could not have been the actual perpetrator.

Nothing more seemed to come of the herring scales, and I reported the result to Coglin, who received it with a burst of abuse.

“And you call yourself a detective?” he scornfully shouted, and his private opinions which followed are not worth recording.

“I believe that is what I am called, and what I earn my bread by,” I quietly returned.

“Well, I’ll tell you what you are!” he shouted, working himself nearly black in the face; and he then proceeded to declare that I had been bought over by his enemies, and that he would now trust, not to the police or the law for redress, but to himself. He looked so like a maniac in his rage and fury, that I did not trouble to reply, but left him and got back to Edinburgh, where other work soon drove the recollection of the baker’s petty affair out of my head.

Coglin’s detective work did not begin where mine left off. He had quite settled in his own mind who was the guilty one, and his only difficulty was to decide on what punishment should be meted out to the herring hawker. Many plans suggested themselves, but they mostly had the objectionable feature of bringing the self-appointed judge and executioner within reach of the law. At length a chance remark of Burfoot—who, all unconscious of impending evil, was still on friendly terms with the baker—prompted him to a scheme as ingenious as it was diabolical. A son and heir had been born to Burfoot, and he gleefully told the baker that he should soon hold a party of rejoicing over the event, when the christening could conveniently take place. He did not invite Coglin to form one of the party, but that oversight did not distress the baker.

“I wish I could poison the whole of them,” was his inward comment as he turned to his bakehouse, and out of that remark sprang the great scheme.

Coglin of course knew something of the baking of fancy bread, and the same evening, as soon as his ordinary work was over, he set to and made a fine christening cake. He was careful to cover up the windows and every chink in the door before beginning. In making up the cake he hesitated long between some arsenic which he had got for the rats in the bakehouse and another powerful drug as a seasoning; but, having made his choice and hurried up the cake, he waited and watched the firing of it as eagerly and attentively as if a Princess Royal had been intended as the joyful recipient. The cake did not rise well, probably owing to the queer spicing it had got, but Coglin chucklingly decided that the sugaring would cover that. He snowed it over with a preparation of white sugar, and then flowered it over the corners and edges with pink, and finished up by lettering it boldly in sugar as “A Present from Edinburgh.”

When the cake was finished, he covered it with a strong wrapper of brown paper, and addressed it to “James Burfoot, Fishdealer,” adding the name of the town in which they both lived, and the words “_per_ rail—carriage paid.” He was careful, in writing the address, to disguise as much as possible his handwriting, and, it is needless to add, he did not as usual put a printed label on the parcel bearing his name and address.

Next morning he considerably astonished his son Bob, a boy of twelve, by telling him that he needed him to go an errand.

The command was an awkward one for Bob, who had arranged with two companions to spend the day at a town not far off, at which there were to be races, and no end of shows and sports. Bob accompanied his father to the bakehouse about as nimbly as a murderer going to execution.

Above the cover bearing the name and address, Coglin had tied a wrapper of paper to conceal the address, and inside that had placed a sixpence wrapped in paper to pay the carriage. The parcel thus arranged he sternly placed in Bob’s hands.

“You’re to take that to Edinburgh, and hand it in at the railway parcel office. They’ll find the address and the money inside. You’re to say nothing—just put down the parcel and walk out; do you understand?”

“Could I not take it to the railway station here?” sulkily returned his son. “It’ll go just as well.”

“No! You’re to go to Edinburgh, and ask no questions, or I’ll half murder you!” cried Coglin. “It’s a present, and the—the customer doesn’t want the folk to know who sent it, or where it comes from.”

“And am I to walk all the way to Edinburgh?” groaned the boy, ruefully.

His father tossed him a sixpence, with the words—

“You can take the train;” and Bob’s spirits rose somewhat, but scarcely to their normal level.

At the end of the lane he found his two companions patiently waiting. They were overjoyed to see the sixpence, but the sight of the parcel was a terrible damper. That load was all that lay between them and a day of pure, unalloyed joy. They could have kicked the parcel; and one seriously suggested to Bob that they should quietly drop it into the river or the sea, and go their way undisturbed. Bob reluctantly declined the proposal, but was easily persuaded to go to Portobello first instead of to Edinburgh, and have his fill of fun before taking the parcel to that city.

“It’s a present,” the boys reasoned, “and they’re not to know who sends it or where it comes from, so it doesn’t matter whether they get it soon or late, or whether they get it all, for that matter.”

Reader, did you ever, when a boy, tramp to Portobello and spend half a day there on a light—a very light—breakfast? I have, and can testify that the edge which that fine seaside resort puts on a boy’s appetite would make chuckie stones or hedge leaves seem princely fare. The wonder is—at least my wonder used to be, when we went in droves—that some small boy, juicy and tender, in the gang, did not mysteriously disappear on the return journey. The three travellers enjoyed themselves famously on the sands. The sixpence of train money vanished like magic. They bathed seven times, like the ancient pilgrims of Jordan. They saw the races, and Punch and Judy, and every kind of cheap delights, dragging that parcel about with them, and each taking turns at carrying it through the crowd. At length Bob and another decided to have another bathe, and left their clothes and the parcel in charge of the third on the hot sandy beach. When they returned, the wolfish guardian had the paper covers off the cake, and was volubly explaining how a bit of the sugar coating must have been broken off during their travels. He had eaten the bit, as it was of no further use, and “Edinburgh” had disappeared. The two bathers looked on with wonderful calmness. Their teeth were chattering, and they were longing for a “hungry bite.” The remaining words of the inscription were suggestive—“A Present from ——.” A mysterious unseen donor was offering them a present.

“The folk wouldn’t like to get a broken cake like that,” suggested one of the boys to Bob. “If we were to eat it, they’d never miss it.”

Hunger quickens the reasoning faculties. Bob at once saw the point, and without waiting to dress he broke up the cake, and they all filled their stomachs. The cake just fitted the three nicely; and then they tore up the covers, annexed the sixpence found within, and had a glorious somersault on the sands to celebrate their victory.

But “pleasures are like poppies spread,” and poppies, as everybody knows, contain a deal of poison. These three conquerors were in turn to be conquered—the fate of all. They began to feel queer, as if the wild war-dance had not agreed with them. They got worse, and another bathe was proposed; but their clothes were scarcely off, and their toes in the sea, when they fell down writhing and howling. It was a clear case of cramp. A great crowd gathered about them; rescue-men distinguished themselves in hauling the three boys out of a full inch of water; and they were borne howling to the baths. They roared while they had breath, and then lay limp and insensible. A doctor summoned in haste placed his hand on one of the stomachs—he must have been a family man—a pump was sent for, but before it arrived they had each begun to relieve themselves. Still they were very ill, and it was quite clear to the doctor that they had been poisoned. As they said nothing of the sugared cake they had devoured, but admitted that they had eaten a pennyworth of gingerbread among them, the poor seller of the gingerbread was pounced upon by the police, and lugged off to prison as a wholesale poisoner. The three hapless victims being quite unfit for removal, a telegram was sent to their parents, stating that they had been poisoned, but were expected to recover.

The effect of this message upon the parents of the two companions was alarming, but Coglin it only enraged. At first he stood horrified like the rest, but then, guessing something like the truth, he burst into a fit of passion, and said that it was all Burfoot’s doing. His mode of reasoning was this—Burfoot had been the cause of him having to prepare the poisoned cake; through him preparing that cake his own boy had been poisoned; therefore Burfoot, in addition to his past crimes, was guilty of a deliberate attempt to murder the baker’s son. What reprisal, what punishment, could be too great for such a wretch?

Coglin resolved to be his own avenger as before, and went to Portobello to see his son. He affected to believe Bob’s story of being poisoned by the pennyworth of gingerbread, and reminded him of how often he had warned him against eating anything that was not baked at home. Bob was delighted to get off so easily, and humbly promised to remember the advice, which he did by never again putting a cake baked by his father within his lips. When the boys were brought home, and the unhappy seller of the gingerbread had been liberated, with his raven locks turned grey with terror of the scaffold, Coglin was at liberty to punish the criminal. This time he resolved to make his vengeance sweeping in its character, and to confide the execution of it to no one but himself. To decide on the special punishment required a deal of thinking, but all Coglin’s thinking pointed to one qualification—the retaliation must include personal loss to Burfoot. Coglin had already lost considerably by Burfoot’s crime; it was but just that Burfoot should suffer in the same manner. While Coglin was at a loss to decide the matter, the newspapers or public press kindly came to his aid. In these he saw described a case of fire-raising by wandering tinkers, who had made up a pellet of chemicals, procurable at any drysalter’s, which, on being thrown down among straw or wood, spontaneously ignited, and burned so fiercely that the whole place was speedily in a blaze. Coglin for nights on end devoted himself to amateur chemistry, and with such ardour that he at length produced a pellet, quite good enough to set the whole of Burfoot’s donkey-shed and pig-styes in flames. The pellet, when finished, resembled a lump of badly-dried clay; and to ensure its safety, Coglin, when it was finished, placed it in one of his metal confection pans, and locking it in his bakehouse, went to survey his foe’s premises and decide upon the best spot for throwing the pellet. He succeeded to perfection. There was easy access to the place, a convenient window to the shed, plenty of straw inside, and the whole of the sheds were of wood as dry as tinder, and promising a grand blaze. It gave Coglin additional satisfaction to know that Burfoot’s place was not insured. While the baker was thus settling matters at the other end of the town, a curious incident was taking place on his own premises. His shop and house were in the front street, and the bakehouse in a lane at the back. While Coglin was gone, his wife attended to the shop, and while doing so was asked by a customer for a little barm. To get that she had to take down the key of the bakehouse from its accustomed nail, and go down to the place herself, while the customer waited in the shop. She was not long gone, but woman’s curiosity in that short time had induced her to peep into the closed pot. Finding only a dirty piece of clay inside she examined it closely, and then tossed it into a corner among some chopped wood there stacked, and then hurried off to her customer with the barm. They conversed earnestly for a time, and then parted mutually pleased. When the barm-buyer had gone, a boy ran into the shop with the startling message—

“Your bakehoose is bleezing!”

It was blazing, and had been for some time, as the infuriated tailor above could testify. He had barely time to secure his kirkgoing suit and his spectacles when the whole tenement was in a blaze. He swore at the bakehouse and its owner as the ruin of him and his prospects. His furniture and effects were all lost, and he did not hesitate to hint that the whole had been done intentionally.

He was in the midst of these recriminations when Coglin appeared, and stood speechless before the blazing house.

“You did it on purpose, because you kent I wasna insured, and because you thought I went into your bakehouse and spoilt your batch,” cried the distracted tailor, pouncing on the astonished baker and trying to throttle him black in the face; “but I’ll hae the law to you, or I’ll tak’ your life wi’ my ain hands.”

They fought madly for some moments, and were then, considerably damaged, torn asunder by the bystanders. The tailor raved like a madman, and, astonishing to all, the baker listened to his frenzied accusations with the greatest meekness and calmness.

The truth is that the tailor, in his passion, had allowed several words and expressions to escape him which for the first time made Coglin doubt his own acumen in accusing Burfoot of the first outrage, and ask himself at the same time if it was not possible that the real perpetrator was Thomas Elder, tailor. The man had a strong hatred to him, and they had quarrelled quite as bitterly as he and Burfoot.

The words and expressions would admit of no other explanation than Elder’s guilt, and now several circumstances recurred to Coglin’s memory to confirm the idea. The tailor had bought herrings on that day, and witnessed the quarrel, and might easily have conceived the plan of entering the bakehouse and smearing the window and board with herring scales to convey the idea that the herring hawker was the criminal.

While Coglin was slowly evolving these ideas, a hand was placed on his arm, and, looking round, he found Burfoot at his side with genuine concern and consternation on his face.

“I’m real sorry for this,” he said, wringing Coglin’s hand, “and if the loan of thirty or forty pounds will help you in your strait, you can depend upon me.”

“Good God! no!” cried Coglin, chokingly.

“But I say, yes. I can surely help a friend in distress,” persisted Burfoot, warmly.

“A friend?” said Coglin, helplessly. “Yes.”

“And I’m almost glad to have the chance, for that tailor has lost everything,” added Burfoot, in a whisper. “Nobody can be sorry for him, for, between ourselves, I believe he was the man who entered your bakehouse and spoiled your flour.”

“What?”

“Yes; I was told by one who knows, but wanted to keep it quiet, that the tailor was seen coming out of your bakehouse window at about one o’clock in the morning.”

“And you never told me!” cried Coglin, reproachfully.

“I can’t tell you even yet; I only say I think it,” said Burfoot, cautiously.

Coglin was conquered at last, and he and Burfoot left the spot arm-in-arm and fast friends for life. Some of these facts came out long after, when I had the tailor in my hands on another charge, and some were given me by Coglin himself. He is in business still, and prospering in a town on the opposite side of the Forth, and Burfoot often goes through to spend a few days there with his firm friend, golfing on a nice links near the place. As he knows all about the baker’s misconceptions and plans for his punishment, and the names are all changed here, I have decided that the giving of the details can do no harm now, and may at the same time teach those seeking revenge that it is possible for punishment intended for another to drop very neatly on to their own shoulders.

ONE LESS TO EAT.

The number of mysterious disappearances in great cities can be calculated upon with almost the same certainty as the death rate. A very few of these are accounted for; a body is found and identified, or a man vanished is found to have been in difficulties, and it is shrewdly or rashly surmised that he has fled to escape the consequences; but the majority of the cases pass into the great unknown, so far as either police or public are concerned.

No. 7 Hill Place, at the South Side, leads to a back court of wretched dwellings occupied by the very poor. At the west side of that court is a block or “land” of houses which are now rather worse than they were at the time of which I write, for a theatre has been built up against the back windows, almost shutting out the light of day from one side of the building. At that time the top windows looked into an auctioneer’s yard, and, having a better share of light than the lower flats, were considered rather respectable abodes for working men. In one of these lived George Mossman, a journeyman baker. The house consisted of two rooms, and had been at one time very nicely furnished; but on the Saturday night of which I write the two places were almost empty, for Mossman had been off work for many months with a poisoned hand, which refused to heal, and so kept him and his wife and family “living on the furniture.” At first Mossman, who was of a cheery, blithe disposition, had made a joke of his disabled hand, and laughingly declared that he had “an income in his hand, but nane in his pouch;” but as month after month went past, and the hand showed no signs of healing, joking was hushed on his lips. Hunger, starvation, and perhaps death stared them in the face; for Mossman shared the common horror of pauperism, and would have dropped dead before he could have applied at the Poorhouse for a dole.

The terrible pinchings which had been endured by that family were scarcely known outside their own door, for it was believed that Mossman was getting an allowance off some sick fund or trade society. There were two boys and three girls, the youngest of these being an infant at the breast, and the eldest only ten; but these children were so drilled and trained by their parents in their own spirit of independence, that not a whisper of the truth reached the neighbours.

“When things are at their worst they begin to mend.” These were the words of the poor, disabled baker to his wife on this Saturday night, but as they did not satisfy hungry bairns, a council was held to accelerate the mending. The house was empty, and the whole family almost naked, so of late they had been seldom outside the house. The general messenger was Johnny, the eldest boy, and he it was who appeared to feel the position most keenly. Johnny was ashamed of his rags, and had a firm opinion that he was a strong, able-bodied man, instead of being the skinny little shadow he was, and that his proper sphere was the sea, to which he had more than once threatened to run away, not returning till he was a captain all covered with gold lace, and with a fair share of the same metal in his pockets for his parents.

“If I was away,” he remarked on the present occasion, “there would always be one less to eat.”

“We might all say that,” said his father, who had grown somewhat sharp and fierce with famine and fretting. “I have thought about it myself often of late. A poor man in trouble and without a friend in the world would be far better out of it.”

This sentiment was received with a strong and general protest, the mother especially having got frightened of late at some of the desperate looks and words of the disabled baker.

“You’re not without friends, if you like to apply to them,” she remarked, after a pause, to let him cool down a little. “There’s Borland, for instance, your old companion.”

“He’s a master now,” said Mossman, snappishly.

“So much the better—he may be the readier to help you, for you could work it up to him when you are well. At any rate, something must be done to-night, for the bairns canna want ower Sunday.”

“I quarrelled wi’ him over a game at draughts,” said Mossman, stubbornly, “and I havena spoken to him for ten years, and I winna now. He’d only crow over me.”

“You were at the schule thegither, and apprentices in the same shop. I dinna believe he would laugh at ye,” persisted the wife, “but if ye like I’ll gang mysel’.”

“I winna gang, and I winna let you be seen in such rags,” said her husband, determinedly.

“I’ll gang then, faither,” eagerly cried Johnny. “I dinna care though he laughs at me, if he only helps us.”

Johnny was kissed by his mother for the brave speech, and the darkness hid the tear that came with it, though Johnny felt the tear all the same. It fired his mind and made him blurt out a thought which otherwise he would have kept in his own head.

“It couldn’t be so very bad to steal a loaf,” he remarked with a wistful look round on the hungry ones. “I felt near doing it this mornin’ when a baker asked me to help his board off his heid. The smell o’ the new bread just took my heart, and I was like to bolt wi’ ane.”

His father’s bony fingers gripped him by the ear, and the touch was no gentle one.

“If ever you turn thief while I’m living,” he fiercely hissed out, “never come near me or look me in the face again! I wad rather see you deid, ay, and mysel’ too,” he brokenly added, with a quiver getting into his tones.

The boy was moved and awed, and hurriedly answered—

“I ken that, faither, but I couldna help the thought getting into my heid. I’ll run down to Mr Borland’s, and ask him to trust you two loaves till your hand gets weel. It’ll be nothing to him; I’ve seen you bring hame as much into your wages.”

The father remained silent, but after a little pressing and pleading, said with a weary sigh—

“Do as you please; it’ll sune be a’ ower noo.”

The boy darted out of the house, afraid that his father might change his mind and command him to stay.

Johnny, be it observed, was in rags, and wore boots which a cinder-gatherer would have passed in contempt in a dust-heap. Pinching hunger had given him a haggard and disreputable look, and all that he wanted to pass for one of my “bairns” were a dishonest heart and hand.

Ten minutes’ walking brought him to the baker’s shop, which he thought was Mr Borland’s, but which had been quitted by that master more than a year before, in favour of one in a better locality. However, it was a baker’s shop still, and Johnny, noticing no change in the name, and seeing the place closed, began to knock gently at the door in hope that the occupant might be still within. There was no answer, and at length the boy, with a hazy idea that the baker might live behind the shop, went through a narrow entry to have a look at the back.

By the dim light he picked out the window of the back shop. There were bags of flour and shelves of loaves dimly discernible within, but no light and no human face. A moving thing he did see, and a pair of shining eyes gruesome enough to have frightened the wits out of one less hungry, but a steady look for a moment or two showed him that the living creature was only a cat, which had got shut in, and was now mewing most piteously, as if imploring to be let out. The misery of another creature often draws us from our own. Johnny became interested in the cat, and its desperate scratchings and mewings, and, after watching it for some time—quite forgetful of the fact that he might be watched as well—said to himself—

“It would be easy to push up the window and let the puir brute out.”

Accordingly, putting his small strength to the frame, he raised the sash high enough to let the cat scramble out into freedom. But, alas! his efforts did not end there.

When the cat was gone his own desperate condition returned to his mind with redoubled strength. There were the loaves in dozens on the shelves within, but there was no sympathising friend present to whom to appeal. How much easier it would be to take a loan of two loaves, and come back on Monday and explain all about them to Mr Borland. If he went home without the loaves, Johnny had an idea they would all be dead before Monday, and then his father need never know anything about it till it was all explained and adjusted.

I am not trying to give his reasoning as sound, but rather to show that when a child is wolfish with hunger he and reason have for the time parted company.

Johnny prised the window sash a few inches higher, and wriggled himself inside. The first loaves that came to hand were grasped at. He meant to take only two, but there happened to be four sticking together, and he concluded that he might as well take the lot. He placed the big square of bread out on the window sill, and then clambered out, and was turning to reclose the window, when something glaring and far more terrible than a cat’s eye caught his gaze, and riveted him helpless and speechless to the spot. It was a bull’s eye, and the holder was a policeman, who had first been attracted by Johnny’s knocking at the front door, and then had slipped in by another entry to watch the whole proceedings from the other end of the green.

The slide of the lantern had been closed till the critical moment when Johnny had accomplished his burglary, when out shone the light, and with a few quick strides the man was upon the trembling boy.

“What! you’re young begun,” said the policeman, throttling Johnny nearly black in the face, and then shaking him violently lest there should be any breath left in his body by the throttling. “How old are you?”

“Twelve,” gasped Johnny at random.

He was barely ten, but with the wild, reproachful thought at his heart that he had disgraced and ruined himself for ever by his rashness had come a queer resolve.

“And what’s yer name?” continued the man, who was from the far north, and thought he saw the gallows written in every line of the boy’s face.

“Peter M^cBain.”

It was the first name that came to the tongue of the boy, and he blurted it out, with death at his heart.

“And far dee ye live?” continued his captor.

“In the West Port.”

Lies, lies! every word of it. Johnny simply named the place farthest from his own home, but then he had an object in view, and the lies wrung more agony out of him than the truth would have done. He was thinking of his father and that fierce warning in the dark—“If ever you turn thief while I’m living, never come near me or look me in the face again.”

“How did I ever come to do it? how did I do it?” he bitterly added to himself; but to that there came no answer.

He did not know that famine and excitement had slightly unhinged his faculties; he knew only that in some amazing manner he had become a housebreaker and a thief in the face of his father’s commands, and got captured by the police in the very act.

“Then jist you tak’ up your bundle and come awa’ wi’ me to the office,” said the policeman; and Johnny lifted the loaves and obeyed, the man closing the window, and taking down the name and address before leaving. While the pair were passing up St Mary’s Wynd towards the High Street, I chanced to be coming down, and stopped to learn the nature of the crime. Johnny’s face was quite unknown to me, and I could not believe that he or his relatives belonged to the West Port, a suspicion which was strengthened when Johnny became taciturn, and refused to reveal aught of his antecedents. I turned back with them, and went as far as the Central, trying in vain to draw the truth from the poor quivering boy. I should not have taken half the trouble with him but for the fact that he was evidently labouring under great excitement, and that more than once I saw his eyes become brimful of tears. Your true gutter child—the raggamuffin who steals as naturally as he draws his breath—is case-hardened against either tears or trembling. There is no mistaking him; and the first glance at Johnny half convinced me that in spite of his wretched clothing and haggard looks, he was not of that class. As he refused to speak, he was entered as “Peter M^cBain, West Port, aged twelve,” and locked up, charged with breaking into the shop of a baker whom I may name Brown, “and stealing therefrom four loaves of bread, of the value of 2s. 8d. or thereby.”

My idea was that he was a runaway from some distant town, who had tramped the boots off his feet, and then been forced by sheer hunger to the robbery. I therefore had him tested with the offer of food. But Johnny was now too excited and overwhelmed with grief and shame at his position, and refused the food with unaffected loathing. Then the last prop was soon driven from my theory by a policeman on the West Port beat declaring, on being shown “Peter M^cBain,” that he believed he knew him well as one who had long been a pest to that district.

While this small and terrible burglar was thus seeing the inside of a cell for the first time, his parents were awaiting his return in anxiety and trembling expectancy. Hour after hour passed, and still the light footfall failed to strike upon their ears, and at last, near midnight, the father could bear the strain no longer, and started out to search for the wanderer. Had the hour been an earlier one, Mossman would have gone in the same direction as the boy had taken, and probably have discovered that the name had been changed. But he logically reasoned that now the shop must be shut, and Borland at his own home, which was a street or two further off.

“He’ll have taken pity on the boy and asked him to go home with him,” was his parting remark to his wife, and to the home of his old friend he turned his steps—a shabby shadow, walking softly and hurriedly upon stocking soles, for his boots had long since gone to feed the hungry bairns. He was thoroughly ashamed of his appearance, and nothing short of his great anxiety for the boy would have roused him to brave the humiliation of appearing before Borland. The house was a respectable flat in Lothian Street, and the same which the baker had occupied for years. Mossman made certain by examining the bell-plates by the light of the street lamps, and then rang and was admitted. To his relief the door was opened by Borland himself, who had been busy looking over his books at home after the rest of the household were in bed. The prosperous baker stared at the gaunt and poorly-clad figure rising before him out of the darkness of the stair, and then exclaimed, in lively horror—

“Good God! it’s not Geordie Mossman?”

“I’ve come after my laddie,” said the other, hurriedly. “I sent him to your shop hours ago, to—to ask a favour, and he’s never come back.”

“I’m no an hour hame,” said Borland, “and he never came near while I was there. But I’m no in the auld place now, and maybe he’s wandered a bit in lookin’ for the new shop. Man, Geordie,” he added with deep feeling, and wringing the other’s hand with a fervour unmistakable, “is it possible ye’ve been in distress and never let me ken? Come in by and tell me a’ about it.”

Kindness is more overpowering than cruelty. The poor baker staggered, trembled, and then fairly broke down, and was then hurried into the house, planted down by a rousing fire, and there forced to sit at ease, while the stout baker hastened to pile before him half the eatables in the house. While thus busy diving in and out the room as a means of concealing his own emotion, Borland managed to draw from his broken-down visitor an account of his misfortunes, and the state of things in his home; and then he quietly slipped out of the room, roused his wife out of bed, and sent her off in that direction with a bundle and a basket, which she and the servant girl could scarce carry between them. Then he got a pair of boots and a coat and muffler for Mossman, and the two set out to search for Johnny. Borland advised that they should go to the Police Office first, but that Mossman would not hear of, declaring that that was the last place Johnny would go near. When they had spent an hour in the streets they went to Hill Place in full hope that the boy would be there before them. They found some appearance of comfort in the house, but the poor mother was in tears, and the cause of her grief was explained in a few words—

“Johnny said that if he was away there would be ane less to eat, and he said he would run away and be a sailor. He’s away now, and we’ll maybe never see him again.”

“I never thought of that,” gasped Mossman, with a sinking heart. “One less to eat—he’s been craiking aboot that for weeks. We’ll never see him again;” and then in that relieved household there was more of tears than mirth or rejoicing.

“If I had only gone myself!” the father cried in unsparing self-reproach.

“If I had only known an hour or two earlier,” said the kind-hearted master baker.

But the mother was most inconsolable.

“I made him gang—if it hadna been for me he would have been here yet!” she sobbed. “I have done it all.”

“Tuts, the laddie is not out o’ the world surely,” said her husband, with more lightness than he really felt. “I’ve often heard him speak of trying to find out his uncle, who is a fisherman in Kirkcaldy, and of learning under him. Have patience for a day or two, and we’ll hear of him all right.”