AT WAR WITH SOCIETY;
OR,
TALES OF THE OUTCASTS.

BY
JAMES M‘LEVY,
(EDINBURGH POLICE DETECTIVE STAFF,)
AUTHOR OF “ROMANCES OF CRIME.”
CAMERON AND FERGUSON, PUBLISHERS.
GLASGOW: 88 WEST NILE STREET.
LONDON: 12 AVE MARIA LANE.

GLASGOW:
DUNN AND WRIGHT,
PRINTERS.

CONTENTS.

The Ingenuity of Thieves.
INTRODUCTORY.

IT would not be a hopeful sign of the further triumph of the good principle over the evil if the devil’s agents could shew us many examples where they have beaten us, and been enabled to slide clean off the scale. Since my first volume was published, I have been twitted with cases where we have been at fault. I don’t deny that there are some, and I will give one or two, of which I have something to say. In the meantime, I have consolation, not that I have contributed much to the gratifying result in being able to point to the fact, that, since the year 1849, the Reports of the General Board of Prisons have shewn a gradual and steady decrease of the population of our jails. I am free to confess that this result is only, to a small extent, due to us, and the reason is plain enough. The old rebel has had the advantage of us. We have, until very recently, been acting against him on the principle of those masters and mistresses, who, with a chuckle in their hearts, lay pieces of money in the way of suspected servants to catch them,—something in the Twelvetrees way, only they don’t wish their unwary victims “to die on the spot;” nay, having caught them, they only turn them off to rob and steal elsewhere. Yes, in place of our philanthropists meeting the arch-enemy at the beginning, when he is busy with the young hearts, detecting the first throb of good and turning it to a pulse of evil, we have been obliged to wait until the young sinner was ripe and ready for our hardening mould of punishment. There was no Dr Guthrie there—a good way cleverer than the enemy, I suspect, and capable of checkmating him by nipping the canker in the early bud; and then we have been hampered by our legal governors, who have been, and still are, always telling us we must keep a sharp look out for what they call, in their law jargon, an “overt act,” the meaning of which, I am informed, is, that we must wait until the rogues are able to do some clever thing, sufficient to shew us they have arrived at the age of discretion, and become meritorious subjects for punishment.

With this advantage over us, it is no great wonder we are sometimes outwitted; nay, the wonder rather is, that we succeed so often as we do, and I think it might be a great consolation to our philanthropists working among the Raggedier ranks, when I tell them, as I have already done, that I don’t hold the enemy at so much count as many do. His terrible reputation is due to our own laxity. We let him into the camp, hoof and horns, and then complain that we can’t drive or pull him out, whereas we have the power, if we would only exercise it, of keeping him out. To my instinctive way of looking at things in those days of improved tactics in war, it seems something like folly to trust to the strength of the wild boar’s tail in dragging him out when we can so easily barricade the hole.

Viewing crime even in its diminished extent, there is another consideration which has often opened my eyes pretty wide. We are always a-being told that the human heart has really some good soil in it—(I don’t go with those who think that people inherit evil as they do sometimes six toes)—and that, though the devil has always a large granary of tares, we have an abundance of good seed from Jerusalem. I would just ask what use we have been making of that good seed? Have we not been keeping it in the bushel just as we keep the light under the bushel? In my beat I see a routh of the tares; then I get a sickle put into my hands, and I cut away just as the gardeners do when they prune in order to make the old branches shoot out with more vigour, and, behold, the twisted saplings, how stiff and rigid they become!

But I suspect I am here getting out of my beat. I set out with stating that I had got thrown in my teeth cases where, by the ingenuity of thieves, we have been defeated. They are not cases of mine, any how. I may take one or two that relate to one of the most successful artists of the tender sex that ever appeared in Edinburgh, viz., the well-known Jean Brash. I knew her very well, but, strange as it may appear, her ladyship always contrived to keep out of my hands; not that she came always scaithless out of the hands of others, any more than that her victims came without damage out of hers, but that she usually, by her adroitness, achieved a miserable success, sufficient to form the foundation of a romantic story. At an early period, she could boast of some attractions, but she could boast more of making these run along with her power of extraction; yea, she had three wonderful powers, viz., those of captivating her cullies, retaining them if she chose, and of losing them by capturing their means. Of the last of these she was more proud than of the others, and if she could, in addition, enjoy the triumph of deceiving an astute constable, she got to the top of her pride—a creature or fiend, otherwise strangely formed, for if she seduced and robbed by instinct, she strengthened and justified the inborn propensity by a kind of devil’s logic, to the effect that, as she had ruined her immortal soul for the sake of man, she was not only entitled to receive from him the common wages of sin, but also to take from him whatever her subtle fingers could enable her to lay hold of by way of compensation. On one occasion, when, as I think, she resided in the Salt Backet, and when I had occasionally my eye upon her with a look of official love, which she could return with a leer of rather a different kind from that wherewith she wrought her stratagems, she had sallied out, after night-fall, to try her skill on hearts, gold watches, or little bits of bank paper. Doubtless, no more now than on any other occasion, did she imitate the old sirens of whom I have read somewhere. She did not sing them into her toils, that is, her art was not thrown out any more than when a cat purs at a mouse-hole. Her power could be in reserve, and yet be available, so that a man in place of being a dupe, might flatter himself that he was a duper seeking for her charms in the shape of shrinking modesty. So probably thought the happy Mr C——, a mercantile traveller in the hard goods line from Birmingham, but not himself a Brummagem article of false glitter,—a sterling man, if one might judge from the value of the money he carried. In her demureness, Jean appears a real jewel, and he would secure the prize, yet not in the way of an “uncommercial traveller,” for he could and would purchase, and surely in so modest-looking a creature he would make an excellent bargain. Look you, here is a little consolation for us, as we wander about seeking for the vicious to catch them and punish them into virtue. We see occasionally the vicious prowling, in the shades of night, seeking the vicious to deceive them into further vice, and yet sure to be deceived in turn and brought to ruin, while they are trying to make a capital of pleasure out of a poor wretch’s necessity. So it has always been: voluptuousness gets hysterical over modesty (Jean Brash’s modesty!) and how can we be sorry when we see it choked with the wind-ball of its desire? Then, look ye, is it not a little curious to see vice so conservative of virtue as to become a detective?

Well, Jean is caught by the commercial traveller, how unwittingly the reader may pretty safely guess, and not only caught, but led as a kind of triumph to the Salt Backet, where resides one of those “decent women” who take pity on errant lovers; probably if Jean had said that the house was her own, he might have doubted of a modesty which could belie itself at home among friends. Then, as they say love has quick wings where there is a shady grove in prospect—not always of sweet myrtle—not seldom of common pine firs, with a good many nettles and thistles growing about the temple—so they were speedily under the auspices of the decent priestess. How long it was before the heart of this lover, which had only been for a little absent from his commercial interests, returned to these so as to make him alive to the conviction that he had been robbed of a hundred-pound Bank of England note, I cannot say, for I was not in this case; but certain it is, that rather quiet part of the town soon echoed to a cry of horror, to the effect that he had been relieved from the anxiety of carrying about with him a bit of paper of that value.

Of all this I have no doubt, because I was perfectly aware that Jean was a woman who could confer the boon of such a relief from anxiety as easily as she could transfer that anxiety to herself; nor could any one who knew her doubt that she could contrive to make the care a very light one. Even the more romantic part of the story which “illustrates” the memory of this remarkable woman, I have no proper right to gainsay—how the commercial traveller rushed down stairs and bawled out at the top of his English voice for a constable—how the constable made his appearance while the traveller kept watch at the door—how they hurried up-stairs to seize when they should discover the money—how they found Jean quite in an easy state of conscious innocence—how she adjured the constable to search the house and her own body, and satisfy himself that the unfortunate man was in error—how, for that purpose, she quietly handed to him a lighted candle placed in a brass candlestick, and well fixed there by a round of paper not to oscillate in the way of unsteady lights—how the constable searched for the missing note with this candle, so fixed by the paper roll at the end thereof, all the while that Jean was muttering to herself, “The fool has taken the wrong end”—how he failed in his search, and how the traveller gave up all hope, if he did not suspect that he had lost his note elsewhere, and therefore resolved to avoid the fearful exposure of committing the woman—and how Jean was at length left quietly in her state of innocence. The reader may guess that Jean at her own time undid the piece of paper from the end of the candle, thus rescuing the “Governor and Company of the Bank of England” from their temporary degradation, and enjoying a quiet chuckle at her successful ingenuity.

Now, I confess I never liked very well to hear this romantic bit of Jean’s history, and simply for this reason, that I was not there to hold the candle.

On another occasion—though I am bound to say I have heard the credit of the adventure ascribed to a young unfortunate of the name of Catherine Brown, who lived in Richmond Street—our Jean was pursuing her nomade vocation in Princes Street. The night was dark enough, and the hour late enough, to inspire adventurers with sufficient confidence to flirt a little with the coy damsel, without being detected by curious friends. There are always numbers of these shy and frolicsome fish who are fond of poking their noses into the dangerous meshes, without any intention of entering the seine, where they would be pretty sure to be caught. The regular tramps, such as our heroine, are quite up to these amateurs, hate them heartily, and sometimes make them pay, and very deservedly too, golden guineas for silvern words. I can’t say I have much sympathy for them when they fall into misfortune, and ask our help to get money restored to their pockets, which pockets they voluntarily placed within the range of curious fingers. Why, if these fingers are delicate enough to be fondled and kissed without recompense, the men shew a bad grace in complaining that the same fingers fondled in their turn a bit of gold or paper supposed to be beyond their reach. Of course we do our duty, but always with a feeling in such cases that the victims did not do theirs, and impose upon us the trouble of rectifying the results of their folly, if not vice. Such fire-ships shew enough of light to enable these gay yachtmen to steer sufficiently aloof. (Were I able to be fanciful myself, I would not need to borrow the words of one of our well-read Lieutenants.) These young men play round the rancid candle-light of impurity, which at once enables them to see reflected in their self-conceit their immunity from danger, and imparts a little heat to their imagination. Rather fine language for me, but I see the sense of it.

With one of these gaudy night-moths our famous heroine had forgathered; and thinking probably that if he did not choose to consider her soft hand sacred from his squeeze, she was not bound to esteem his pocket tabooed against the prying curiosity of her fingers, she made free with the contents thereof. At least the youth thought so; for on the instant he bawled out to the passing bull’s-eye that he had been robbed. The constable, who knew Jean—as who didn’t—immediately laid hold of her, and as there were no passers-by to complicate the affair, the money would of course be got upon the instant. It was no less than a five-pound note, at least so said the young man; but Jean, whose coolness never forsook her, simply denied the charge.

It was a matter of short work for the constable to search her so far as he could,—an act in which he was helped by the young man. Her pockets were turned out, but with the exception of a scent-bottle, a white handkerchief, and some brown pawn-tickets, nothing was found there. All round the pavement the light of the lantern shewed nothing in the shape of the valuable bit of paper, and there was no sympathiser to whom she could have handed it.

“You must be under a delusion,” said the policeman.

“Impossible!” cried the youth. “There are as many folds in a woman’s dress as there are loops and lies in her mind. March her up.”

To all which Jean replied with her ordinary laugh of consummate self-possession, if not impudence. Nor was she at all unwilling to march—rather the contrary. She knew what she was about.

“Come away,” she said, “and we shall see who is right and who is wrong.”

And so away they went. Nor was it long before Jean was examined by one of the female searchers of the Office. No five-pound note was found upon her; and though the young man raved incessantly about the absolute certainty of the theft, the policeman, and not less the lieutenant on duty, was satisfied that there must have been a mistake,—a conclusion which the redoubted Jean confirmed by a cool declaration, in all likelihood false, that she had seen the young gentleman in the company of not less scrupulous women a very short time before. There was only one thing to be done—to set Jean free.

“And who is to pay me for all this time?” said she, as she turned to the lieutenant a face in which was displayed a mock seriousness, contrasting vividly with the wild, anxious countenance of the youth. “I could have made five pounds in the time in an honest way, so that I am the real loser; and who, I ask again, is to pay me?”

A question to which she no more expected a reply than she did the payment of her lost gains in an honest way. And with head erect, if not indeed with an air of injured innocence, she marched out of the office. Yet nothing would satisfy the young man that he had not been robbed; and he too, when he saw that he had no hope, left with the conviction that he was a greatly injured innocent.

The matter died away, leaving only the impression of some unaccountable mistake or indetectible priggery, though probably the presumption was against the woman, whose genius in this peculiar line of art was known to be able to find her advantage in a mystery through which the most practised eye of official vision could see nothing.

A day or two passed. No more was heard of the young man, who no doubt had made up his mind to the loss of the five pounds; nor did the constable, who was again upon his beat about the same hour, think any more of the mystery, unless perhaps the place brought up a passing thought of wonder how the bit of paper could have disappeared in so very short a time. A woman came running up to him. It was Jean, and she was all of a bustle. Laying hold of the man by the left hand—

“What now,” said the constable, who knew well that something not altogether useless to Jean was coming. “In one of your high jinks?”

“No; I have a secret for you, man.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, you’re such peaching fellows, one can hardly speak with you. Would you like the young sprig’s five-pound note? He can’t afford to lose it, and my conscience is queezy.”

“Ah, ha!” cried the constable, “Jean Brash’s conscience!”

“Aye, man, even Jean Brash’s conscience,” replied she, a little grandly. “A queer thing maybe, but still a thing. Aye, man, I would tell you where the five-pound note is if you would keep me out of the gleg’s claws.”

“Well, I will,” replied he, getting into official cunning. “Tell me where the note is, and I will do my best for you.”

“Ah, I know you won’t, and so I can’t trust you with an admission which you would use against me; but suppose I were to make a sign, eh? A nod is as good, you know, as——”

“Well, well, give me the nod to lead me to the note.”

“And you will say nothing? Well, who’s your tailor?” she cried, laughing.

“What has that to do with the note?” responded the man.

“Something that may astonish you,” said she, as she still held his arm, and fumbled about the cuff of his coat. “He gives you a deep cuff. Very convenient as a kind of wee pawn.”

“Nonsense. Get off. You are trifling.”

“Not just,” she replied, again laughing and thrusting her nimble fingers, so like instruments of legerdemain, deep into the cuff—“not just. Suppose you were to find the note in here after I am gone, would you just say you got it there, and nothing of me?”

“Perhaps I would.”

“Then search your cuff,” she cried, swinging his arm to a side, “and you will find it.”

And running away, she threw behind her the words: “But be sure and act honourably, and give it to the prig.”

The constable was a little confused, but he did not fail to begin to search the cuff, from which Jean, while pretending she had deposited the £5 in the receptacle, had absolutely extracted the spoil,—the identical note which she had placed there at the instant of her seizure on the night it was stolen, and which he had carried about with him for two days, altogether unconscious of the valuable deposit.

The man could swear, as in a rage he searched and found nothing, but he couldn’t detect, and I don’t think he ever knew the trick played off upon him; for it came out long afterwards when Jean was safe, and in one of her fits of bragging, how she did the authorities.

These are not my experiences, and I can give no guarantee of their truth; but, as I have said, I should have liked to be the man who held the candle, supported in the socket by such a valuable bit of paper; and I must add, that I should have liked also to be the man who wore the coat with the deep cuff.

So much for such talk as goes on amongst us. But I have had enough of experience of Jean to enable me to say that she was the most “organic thief” of my time. So much was her make that of a thief, that I doubt whether training in a ragged school would have had much effect upon her. The house she occupied in James’ Square was a “bank of exchange,” regularly fitted up for business. In the corner of a door-panel of every bedroom, there was a small hole neatly closed up with a wooden button, so as to escape all observation. Then the lower panels were made to slide, so that while through the peep she could see when the light was extinguished, she could by the opened panel creep noiselessly in on all fours and take the watch off the side-table, or rifle the pockets of the luckless wight’s dress. She made occasionally great catches, having once “done” £400; but she was at length “done” by the paltry sum of 7s. 6d. I have heard that she is still alive in Australia, and married, perhaps driving, like a pastoral Arcadian, “the yowes to the knowes.”

The Orange Blossom.

HOWEVER assiduously I have plied my vocation, I have never thought that I was doing the good which our masters expect of us in stopping the sliders on the slippery scale of criminal descent. They only commence again, and when they slide off altogether others rise to run the same course. If I have taken credit for a diminution, I suspect that Dr Guthrie has had more to do with it than I. Sometimes I have had qualms from a conviction that I have been hard on many who could scarcely be said to be responsible. I have been, no doubt, often an unwelcome intruder upon merry-makings and jollifications, but then it may be said for me that these merry-makers were merry at the expense of others. Well, “you have stopped marriages where one of the parties was innocent.” True, but the innocent party was attracted by the glitter of stolen gold, and why should a resetting bridegroom escape a loss any more than a resetting pawnbroker? A dowried thief in stolen orange blossom may be a pretty object to a loving snob—to me, however, she is nothing else but a thief, and if I am bound to tear her from his arms, I have just the satisfaction that I transfer her to the arms of justice, who will hug her a good deal closer.

In 1842, our office was inundated with complaints of house enterings by false keys. There had been no fewer than sixteen in six weeks, and not a trace could be discovered.

“Why, M‘Levy,” said the Lieutenant one day to me, “we will lose caste. Aberdeen will mock us, and Berwick hold up the finger at us. What’s to be done?”

“There’s a difficulty,” replied I. “In the first place, I am satisfied there is only one thief; in the second place, there is only one place of deposit; in the third place, I am only one man; and, in the fourth place, I am not an angel. Yet, notwithstanding, I have a hope.”

“What is it founded on?”

“This little bit of swatch,” replied I, shewing him a paring of print not larger than two crown pieces.

“Why do you place faith in a rag like that?”

“I got it,” replied I, “from Mrs ——, the proprietor of a house in Richmond Street, the last one operated on, and Mrs Thick, the broker in the Cowgate, thinks she will be able to match it.”

“That promises something.”

“I think I have the sex too,” said I, with an intention to be jocular.

“Man or woman?”

“Woman,” replied I.

“Oh, something peculiarly in the female line,” said he. “I hope not an object in the greening way?”

“No; something preparatory to, and going before that. Can’t you guess?”

“No—yes—let me see—orange blossom?”

“Yes, orange blossom,” said I. “The thief wants to be married. She has laid in the dowry from the same house in Richmond Street, and finished off with the bride’s badge.”

Our conversation terminated with a laugh, for, after all, we were scarcely serious, and I repaired to Mrs Thick, a fine specimen of her class, who, rather than pocket a penny from stolen goods, would have surrendered her whole stock, amounting to hundreds of pounds. As I went along I continued my former ruminations on this wonderful succession of robberies. That they were all done by one hand I had, as I have said, little doubt; but, considering the short period of time, the difficulty of watching and accomplishing even one house, the multiplied chances of being seen, the obstructions of locks, the accidents so rife in pledging or disposing by sale, the many inquiries and investigations that had already been made by sharp people, I could not help being filled with admiration at a dexterity so unexampled in my experience. And then, if I was right in my whimsical conjecture as to sex, what a wonderful creature of a woman she must be!

“She is worthy of me anyhow,” I said to myself; and as we illiterate people are fond of a pun, I added, just for my own ear, “I will catch her through thick or thin.”

Now, don’t be angry at my wit; it is better than you think; for don’t you remember of one of the name of Thin, with the three balls above his door?

And not insensible to the effect of my solitary effort at being clever out of my sphere, I entered the shop of the broker.

“Now, Mrs Thick,” said I, “have you got a match for my swatch?”

“Indeed I think I have,” replied the good woman, although she knew she would in all likelihood be a heavy loser by her honesty. “Here’s the gown,” and, taking the pattern out of my hand, “see, it’s just the thing—aye, just a bit o’ the self-same. Whaur in a’ the warld got ye the swatch? Surely it’s no canny to meddle wi’ you, you’re an awfu’ man; but, do ye ken, I canna think after a’ that that gown was stown.”

“I never said it was, Mrs Thick.”

“Aye, but it’s a sign o’ dead hens when the farmer rins after the fox that has loupit the yett.”

“And I never said it was not,” replied I, for I had reasons to be cautious.

“Weel, to be honest, Mr M‘Levy, I really dinna think it was.”

“And why?”

“Just because it was brought to me by that industrious creature Lizzy Gorman.”

“That’s the handsome hawker, as the young chaps call her?” said I.

“Just the same.”

“And what makes you have so much faith in Elizabeth?”

“Just because I have kent her for years; and naebody could look into her bonny face, sae simple and sweet, without being sure she’s an honest creature. Then she has hawked sae lang through Edinburgh, that had she been dishonest, she would hae been fund oot.”

“Well, she does look like an honest girl,” said I. “Have you had many articles from her besides the gown?”

“Just a heap,” replied she. “But ken ye what, Mr M‘Levy?”

“If I knew the what, I could perhaps tell,” said I, keeping my friend in humour.

“This is Elizabeth’s marriage-day,” she whispered in my ear.

“Orange blossom!” muttered I.

“Aye, orange blossom,” repeated Mrs Thick; “Lizzy’s as far up as even that.”

Now I had no wish that Mrs Thick should have heard my muttering, but the answer satisfied me I had muttered to some purpose.

“And who is the happy man?” inquired I; though I would not have given the sprig of orange blossom for the other sprig.

“Just a snab,” replied she; “but then Elizabeth has money, and a full house, a’ by her ain industry, and she says she’ll set him up.”

“Well, the affair looks promising,” said I, adding, as I meditated a little, “unless the swine runs through it.”

“Oh, it’s ower near now for the sow; you’re no Scotch, and maybe dinna ken the auld rhyme—

‘Lang to woo, and then to marry,
That’s the way to mak’ things miscarry;
But first to marry, and then to woo,
Is the surest way to keep out the sow.’

Aye, the beast seldom comes on the marriage-day to scatter the ribbons and the orange blossom.”

“Not sure,” said I, somewhat absent. “But letting the marriage of this most industrious girl alone, I have a favour to ask of you. Will you take care of this gown, and all the other articles Elizabeth has brought to you?”

“I will,” replied she; “but the Lord kens how I’m to get them a’ collected. There’s a cart-load o’ them; but I hae nae fear they’re a’ honestly come by.”

“I hope so,” said I, as I left the shop, with the intention of returning to the Office for a list of the property stolen from the sixteen houses, and then perhaps to call and see the bonny bride.

And as I went along, I began to gather up the fragments of my prior knowledge of my handsome hawker. She was pretty well known for several peculiarities. Her face was that of a gipsy, with the demureness of the race mixed with a simplicity which they seldom exhibit; and her dress, plain almost to Quakerism, had all that dandyism which extreme care and an excellent taste can bestow on very plain things. Quite an exception to the crowd of town-hawkers, she was far above their baskets and bundles of troggan. We see these every day. Some are enveloped in a mountain of shining articles of tin,—others are surrounded with a whole forest of wicker-work in the shape of baskets and reticules,—others rejoice in a heap of black tin shovels,—many are devoted to kitchens, where they shew their white caps to the servants out of a basket neatly covered with a white towel,—the apple and orange troggars are everywhere, the red-herring female merchants being probably at the foot of the tree. Despising all these, Elizabeth was seldom burdened with more than a neat paper parcel. Even that she was often without, and indeed I had heard it often remarked that no one knew what she hawked. Yet the readiness with which she was admitted at pretty high doors was remarkable, and once in, the secret article, probably drawn from under her gown, was an easy sale—at to her, no doubt, a remunerating price—under the charm of a winning simplicity, aided by the ready tale of the interesting orphan. A little consideration of these things soon brought me to the conclusion that it was only by such an adept, thoroughly acquainted with the inside of so many houses, by means of a daring eye and a quick ear, that all these sixteen entries in six weeks could have been effected. Nor would it be too much to say that the orange blossom was not accidental, if it was an object which she had known to be in the house where a marriage was on the tapis, and of which she had obtained the knowledge by a prior visit.

I had now got thoroughly interested in my pretty hawker. Her movement on the scale was now upwards. It is seldom that thieves slide up to Hymen’s bower; and if I had had no other motive than simply to see the young woman who could perform such miracles, I would have gone twenty miles to see her in her marriage dress, orange blossom, and all. I soon got my list completed; indeed, I was now somewhat in a hurry. The apathy with which the Lieutenant had charged me was changed into enthusiasm. Strange perversity of the human heart! I felt a jealousy of the snab. He was unworthy of such perfection. The bride must be mine at all hazards, even if I should be obliged to renounce my beauty to the superior claims of the Colonial Secretary.

Having got my list, I made again for the Cowgate, where, as I passed the stair-foot leading to the room of the intended, I saw the beginnings of the crowd which was to honour this match between the son of Crispin and the daughter surely of that famous goddess who got her skeleton keys from Vulcan for a kiss. I would pay due attention to the crowd by and by, and gratify it perhaps more than by the raree-show it was gaping to see. It was Mrs Thick I was now after; and having again found her at her old post, I went over with her as quickly as I could the long list, and became quite satisfied that her estimate of a cart-load was not much below the mark.

“Now, you are upon your honour,” said I to her. “You must be careful to retain all those articles for an hour or so, for I am sorry to inform you I must take them from you.”

“And can it be possible!” she exclaimed, no doubt with reference to the guilt of her industrious protegé; and then relaxing into a kind of smile, “Surely, surely you’re no to act the animal we were speaking of. The bride’s dressed, the bridegroom is up, the minister is waited for, and the crowd is at the door. Poor Lizzy, poor Lizzy, could ever I have thought this of you!”

“Well, I admit that I intend to be at the marriage anyhow,” said I. “They have not had the grace to invite me; but I am often obliged to overlook slights from my friends.”

And leaving my honest broker in the very height of her wonder—if not with uplifted hands and open mouth—I made my way to the house of rejoicing, shaded as all such are with that quiet decorum, if not solemnity, which the black coat and white cravat have such a power of casting over leaping hearts and winged hopes. The crowd had by this time increased; and among the rest was my assistant waiting for me—though ostensibly there to overawe the noisy assemblage. The Irish boys and girls were predominant, shouting their cries, among which “The snab and the hawker, hurra,” would not sound as an honour up-stairs. When I say Irish boys and girls, I mean to include adults of sixty, grim and shrivelled enough in all save the heart, which is ever as young and green as an urchin’s. Then who does not feel an interest in the evergreen of marriage, albeit its red berries are often full of bitterness and death? The young look forward to it, and the old back upon it—the one with a laugh, the other with a sigh; but the interest is ever the same. Nay, I’m not sure if the sigh has not a little hope in it, even to that last dripping of the sands, when even all other “pleasure has ceased to please.” Excuse me, it is not often I have to sermonise on marriage, except those between the law and vice, where the yoke is not a pleasant one, and yet perhaps less unpleasant than many of those beginning with love on the one side, and affection on the other. And now I am the detective again.

“Are the constables ready?” I whispered to my assistant.

“Yes; they’re in the stair-foot beyond the meal-shop on the other side.”

“Then keep your post, and have an eye to the window.”

“For ha’pennies?” said he, with a laugh.

“I’m just afraid I may reduce the happiness,” replied I, not to be outdone in Irish wit on a marriage occasion, however bad at it.

And pushing my way among the noisy crowd, whose cry was now “M‘Levy!” “He’s to run awa’ wi’ the bride!” “The snab has stown his varnished boots!” “The bride is to sleep in a police cell!” and so forth, I mounted the stair till I came to the marriage-hall. Uninvited as I was, I made “no gobs,” as they say, at entering, but, opening the door, stood there among the best of them. A more mysterious guest perhaps never appeared at a marriage before since the time of the famous visitor at Jedburgh, where the king danced; but I had no attention to bestow on expressions of wonder. The scene was of a character to be interesting enough to any one. To me the chief object of attention was the head of the bride, where the orange blossom ought to be; and there to be sure it was, set off, as it ought to have been, with green myrtle. With this I was so much occupied, that I cannot say it was just then that I scanned Elizabeth’s dress—a fine lavender glacé silk, adorned with as many knots as would have bound all the lovers in the room in silken bands; collar and sleeve of lace, of what kind goes beyond my knowledge; grey boots, necklace, and armlets; white kid gloves, with no doubt a good many rings under them. These notices came rather afterwards, my practical eye ranging meanwhile—the party being dead silent as yet—round the room, where, according to my recollection of my list, I saw a perfect heaping up of all manner of things collected from the sixteen opened houses, which the pretty bride had so industriously entered.

My survey was the result of a few rapid glances, and I recurred to the parties. The amazement was just at its height, yet strange to say the only one who stood there unmoved, and with no greater indication of internal disturbance than a cast-down eye, overshaded by its long lashes, was Elizabeth Gorman. That she understood the object of my visit, I had no doubt; nor was I surprised that a creature of her nerve, capable of what she had done, should stand before me in the midst of all her friends, and in the presence of her intended husband, as immoveable as a lump of white marble—no additional paleness, no quiver of the lip, no hairbrained glances of fear.

“And who are you?” at last cried the souter futur; “you are not invited.”

“No; I have taken the liberty to come uninvited,” replied I, as I threw my eye over the body of the young snab arrayed in absolute perfection, from the glossy cravat to the shining boots, so spruce and smart that the taste of Elizabeth must have been at the work of preparation. Nor was he without some right, if one might judge of the number of houses laid under contribution for a dowry which was to be his, and by the help of which he was to become a master.

Whereupon there arose a perfect Babel of voices—“No right;” “M‘Levy has no right here;” “Turn him out.” To all this I paid little attention; I was more curious about a movement on the part of Elizabeth, whose right hand was apparently fumbling about her pocket. A pocket in a bride’s dress!—ay, just so. Elizabeth Gorman was a bride of a peculiar kind; she had a pocket even as a part of her bridal apparel, and there was more there than a cambric handkerchief.

“I will help you to get out your napkin, Elizabeth,” said I.

And putting my hand into the sacred deposit, I pulled out two check-keys.

With these two keys, she had opened (I speak in anticipation) the whole sixteen houses. I managed this movement in such a manner that I believe no one could know what I abstracted except Elizabeth herself, who seemed to care no more for the discovery than she had as yet done for any part of the ceremony.

“And the orange blossom,” said I, “I have a fancy for this too,” I said, as I, very gently I hope, took off the wreath, and, in spite of the necessary crumpling of so expressive an emblem of bliss, put it in my pocket.

The hubbub was now general, and Crispin thinking that his honour was touched, waxed magniloquent. He even put himself into a fighting attitude, and sparred away with all the valour of a gentleman called upon to protect injured innocence. Nor Dowsabell, nor Dulcinea, nor any other heroine of romance, had ever so formidable a champion; but then I did not choose to take up the snab’s gage. I contented myself with stepping between one or two of the guests to the window, gave two or three knocks, and then took up my station by the side of Elizabeth. The door opened, and in came my assistant.

“I choose to claim this young woman for my bride,” I said, with a little of an inward chuckle. “I will dispose of her property; meanwhile, all of you leave the room. Clear-out, officer,” I added, as they seemed to loiter and murmur.

And so to be sure, my assistant, to make short work of emptying the room, hurried them off, the last loiterer being the snab, whose look at Elizabeth carried as much of what is called sentiment as might have touched even her, who, however, received the appeal with the same cold indifference she had exhibited all through the strange scene. I do not say she did not feel. It is hardly possible to suppose that a young woman dressed for marriage, and in the hands of the police, with banishment before and shame behind, could be unmoved; but the mind of these creatures is so peculiarly formed that they make none of nature’s signs, and are utterly beyond our knowledge. That something goes on within, deep and far away from even conjecture, we cannot doubt; but it is something that never has been known, and never will be, because they themselves have no words and no symbols to tell what it is. When thus left alone with her, it might have been expected that she would give me some token that she was human, but no; there she stood in all her finery, unmoved and immoveable, her gipsy face calm, if not placid, her eye steady, and without uttering a single word. “And now, Elizabeth,” I said, “I daresay you know the reason of this intrusion; you are accused of having entered no fewer than sixteen dwelling-houses, and stealing therefrom many valuables, and I must apprehend you.”

“Very well.”

“Have you any more keys than those I have got?”

“No more.”

“Were these all you used?”

“You can find that out; I confess nothing.”

“Well, then, make yourself ready to go with me; get your shawl and bonnet.”

And without further sign of being even touched with any feeling of remorse or shame, she proceeded calmly to put on these articles of dress.

“I am ready.”

“Too serious,” thought I, as I looked to a side-table and saw the wine and the cake. I wanted to give things a more cheerful look.

Was ever bride taken away without the “stirrup-cup,” even a glass of her own wine?

But no, it wouldn’t do. Elizabeth would neither take nor give, and so I, too, went without my glass.

“Keep the house,” said I to my assistant, “till I return. I will post the constables at the foot of the stairs.”

And, taking Elizabeth by the arm, I sallied forth amidst a noise that roused the whole Cowgate; and no wonder, perhaps such a scene was never witnessed there before, certainly not since. Mrs Thick’s hands were uplifted as we passed; nor was the wonder less among the other neighbours, who looked upon Elizabeth as a pattern of industry and strict behaviour.

After depositing my bride I got arrangements made for clearing the house of the stolen property. Every thing was removed except the table, chairs, and frame of the bed, and pages would not contain a catalogue of the fruits of this young woman’s industry. But the recovery from Mrs Thick was a different process. I was up till four in the morning getting out and identifying the numerous articles of all kinds stored away in her premises.

By and by, my bride was tried before the High Court; and here I may be allowed a remark on the apparent calosity of people of her stamp. I have often noticed that these dumb, impassable victims are more ready at the end to give way than your loquacious asserters of innocence. I take this peculiarity for a proof that they bleed inwardly, and that while we are angry with them for being what we call unnatural, they are paying the forfeit in another shape. This extraordinary girl, after all her silence and apparent indifference, pled guilty to ten different cases of house-entering, and they were all effected by the two keys I took out of her pocket at the scene of the contemplated marriage. Fourteen years’ transportation was her punishment, and she heard the sentence without a sigh or a tear.

I need scarcely add, that this was the only thief I ever discovered through the means of orange blossom.

The Blue-Bells of Scotland.

THERE are apparently two reasons that influence some of our Edinburgh gentry in locking up their houses and ticketing a window with directions about keys when they go to the country. The first is, that they save the wages of a woman to take charge of the house; and the second, that they may tell their less lucky neighbours that they are able to go to the country and enjoy themselves. No doubt they trust to the watchfulness of a policeman, forgetting that the man has no more than two eyes and two legs, with too often a small portion of brains, which he uses in silent meditation—a kind of “night thoughts,” not always about housebreakers and thieves. I have heard of some of the latter making fun out of these inviting locked-up mansions. “Bill, there’s a ticket in the window about keys, but it’s too far off to be read, and besides, you know, we can’t read.” “No, and so we’ll use a key of our own; we can’t help them things.”

I don’t suppose that Mr Jackson, of Coates Crescent, entertained any such notions when, in June 1843, he locked up his house on the occasion of a short absence of some five or six days; but certain it is, that when he returned he found all outside precisely as he had left it—blinds down, shutters close, doors locked. All right, he thought, as he applied the key and opened the door; but this confidence lasted no longer than a few minutes, when he discovered that his top-coats which hung in the lobby were gone. Now alarmed, he hurried through the house, and wherever he went he found almost every lock of press, cabinet, and drawer, either picked by skeleton keys or wrenched off, wood and all—the splinters of the torn mahogany lying on the carpets. All right! yes, outside. If he had been cool enough he might have thought of the good man’s cheese of three stones, laid upon the shelf for the christening, and when taken down (all right outside) weighed only the avoirdupois of the skin, the inside having been enjoyed by artists scarcely more velvet-footed; and yet the parallel would not have been true, for the thieves here had been most fastidious gentry—even refined, for, in place of carrying off most valuable articles of furniture, they had been contented with only the fine bits of jewellery, gold, and precious stones, such as they could easily carry away, and easily dispose of.

Finding his elegant lockfast pieces of furniture thus torn up, Mr Jackson had no patience to make inquiry into the extent of the depredations before coming to the Office and reporting the state in which he had found his house. When I saw him he was wroth, not so much at what might turn out to have been stolen as at the reckless destruction; but the truth was, as I told him, that there was no unnecessary breakage. The thieves behoved to steal, and they behoved to get at what they wanted to steal. Few people understand the regular housebreaker. In almost all cases the clay is moulded, in infancy, moistened with the sap of stolen candy or fruit, and the glare of angry eyes only tends to harden it. We always forget that the thief-shape is the natural one, for can it be denied that we are all born thieves? I know at least that I was, and I suspect you were no better. If you are not a thief now, it’s because you were by good monitors twisted and torn out of that devil’s form; and how much pains were taken to get you into another, so that it is only at best a second nature with you to be honest. In short, the thief is a more natural being than you are, although you think him a monster. Nor is it any wonder he’s perfect, for your laws and habits have only wrought as a direct help of the character he got from the mother of us all, and probably his own mother in particular. Any obstruction he meets with is, therefore, something that ought to give way, simply because it shouldn’t be there; for how can you prove to him that an act of parliament has greater authority than the instinct with which he was born. No doubt he won’t argue with you. If you say you have a right to lock up, he won’t say that he has a right to unlock down, but he’ll do it, and not only without compunction, but with the same feeling of right that the tiger has when he seizes on an intruder upon the landmarks of his jungle and tears him to pieces.

On proceeding to Coates Crescent, I ascertained that the thieves had obtained entrance by opening the outer main-door with keys or pick-locks, and all the rest was easy. The scene inside was just what Mr Jackson had described it—there wasn’t a lock to an escritoir or drawer that was not punched off. Every secret place intended for holding valuables had been searched; and it soon appeared that these artistes had been very assiduous, if not a long time at the work. It would not be easy for me to enumerate the booty—valuable gold rings, earrings with precious stones, brooches of fine material and workmanship, silver ornaments of price, pieces of plate, and articles of foreign bijouterie. They had wound up with things they stood in need of for personal wear—top-coats, boots, and stockings; and, to crown all, as many bottles of fine wine as would suffice to make a jolly bout when they reached their home. I have not mentioned a small musical box, because by bringing it in as I now do at the end, I want to lay some stress upon it, to the effect of getting it to play a tune.

I soon saw that I had a difficult case in hand, and I told Mr Jackson as much. The thieves were of the regular mould. I had no personal traces to trust to, and the articles taken away were of so meltable or transferable a nature that it might not be easy to trace them. My best chance lay in the articles of dress, for, as I have already hinted, thieves deriving their right from nature have all a corresponding ambition to be gentlemen. There’s something curious here. Those who work their way up by honest industry seldom think of strutting about in fine clothes. Social feelings have taken the savage out of ’em. It is the natural-born gentleman who despises work that adorns our promenades and ball-rooms. ’Tis because they have a diploma from nature; and so the thieves who work by natural instinct come slap up to them and claim an equality. Certain it is, anyhow, I never knew a regular thief who didn’t think he was a gentleman, and as for getting him to forego a nobby coat from a pin, he would almost be hanged first. I have found this my cue pretty often.

I had, therefore, some hope from the coats, but while getting a description of them and the other articles I felt a kind of curiosity about the peculiarities of the musical box.

“A small thing,” said Mr Jackson, “some six inches long and three broad.”

“Too like the others of its kind,” said I; and giving way to a whim at the moment, “What tunes does it play?”

“Why, I can hardly tell,” replied he, “for it belongs rather to the females. But I think I recollect that ‘The Blue-Bells of Scotland’ is among them.”

“Perhaps,” said I, keeping up the humour of the thing, “I may thereby get an answer to the question, ‘Where, tell me where, does my highland laddie dwell?’ ”

Mr Jackson smiled even in the midst of the wreck of his house.

“I fear,” he said, “that unless you have some other clue than the tune, you won’t get me back my property.”

“I have done more by less than a tune,” said I, not very serious, but without giving up my hope, which I have never done in any case till it gave up me.

So with my list completed, and a promise to the gentleman that independently of the joke about the box I would do my best to get hold of the robbers, as well as the property, I left him. I felt that it was not a job to be taken lightly, or rather, I should say, that I considered my character somewhat at stake, insomuch as the gentleman seemed to place faith in my name. There is an amount of routine in all inquiries of this kind. The brokers, the ‘big uncles,’ (the large pawns,) and the ‘half uncles,’ (the wee pawns,) were all to be gone through, and they were with that dodging assiduity so necessary to the success of our calling. No trace in these places, and as for seeing one of my natural gentlemen in a grand blue beaver top-coat, I could encounter no such figure. I not only could not find where my highland laddie dwelt, but I did not even know my lover. Nor did I succeed any better with those who are fond of rings, for that the jewellery had found its way among the Fancies I had little doubt. How many very soft hands I took hold of in a laughing way, to know whether they were jewelled with my cornelians or torquoises, I can’t tell; but then their confidence as yet wanted the ripening of time, and I must wait upon a power that has no pity for detectives any more than for lovers.

And I did wait, yet not so long as that the tune of “The Blue-Bells of Scotland” had passed away, scared though it was by the hoarse screams and discords of crime and misery. One evening I was on the watch-saunter, still the old dodging way by which I have earned more than ever I did by sudden jerks of enthusiasm. I turned down Blackfriars’ Wynd, and proceeded till I came to the shop of Mr Henry Devlin, who kept in that quarter a tavern, which, without reproach to the landlord, was haunted by those gentlemen who owe so much to nature. Now, I pray you, don’t think I am a miracle-monger. I make the statement deliberately, and defy your suspicions when I say, that just as I came to the door of the tavern, which was open, and by the door of which I could see into a small room off the bar, my attention was arrested by a low and delicate sound. I placed my head by the edge of the open door and listened. The sound was that of a musical box. The tune was so low and indistinct that I held my breath, as if thereby I could increase the watchfulness of my ear. “It is! it is!” I muttered. Yes, it was “The Blue-Bells of Scotland.” The charmed instrument ceased; and so enamoured had I been for the few seconds, that I found myself standing in the attitude of a statue for minutes after the cause of my enchantment had renounced its power.

With a knowledge of what you here anticipate, I claim the liberty of a pause, to enable me to remark, that though utterly unfit to touch questions of so ticklish a nature, I have had reason to think, in my blunt way, that in nine cases out of ten there is something mysterious in the way of Providence towards the discovery of crime. Just run up the history of almost any detective you please, and you will come to the semblance of a trace so very minute that you may view it either as a natural or a mysterious thing, just according to your temperament and your point of view. As a philosopher, and a little hardened against the supernatural, you may treat my credulity as you think proper. I don’t complain, provided you admit that I am entitled to my weakness; but bearing in mind at the same time, that there are always working powers which make a considerable fool of our reasoning. Take it as you may, and going no further than the musical box, explain to me how I should have that night gone down Blackfriars’ Wynd, and come to Henry Devlin’s door just as “The Blue-Bells of Scotland” was being played by that little bit of machinery. You may go on with your thoughts as I proceed to tell you, that recovering myself from my surprise I entered the house. I did not stop at the bar where Mrs Devlin was, but proceeded direct into the room into which I could see from the door, and there, amidst empty tankards, I found the little instrument which had so entranced me, mute and tuneless, just as if it had been conscious that it had done some duty imposed upon it, and left the issue to the Power that watches over the fortunes of that ungrateful creature, man.

Taking up the monitor, which on the instant became dead to me,

“How came this here?” I said to the landlady, who seemed to be watching my movements.

“Indeed, I can hardly tell, Mr M‘Levy,” replied she, “unless it was left by the twa callants wha were in drinking, and gaed out just before you cam in. Did you no meet them?”

“No.”

“Then they maun hae gaen towards the Cowgate as you cam by the High Street.”

I paused an instant as an inconsistency occurred to me.

“But they couldn’t have forgotten a thing that was making sounds at the very moment they left?”

“Aye, but they did though,” replied the woman. “The thing had been kept playin’ a’ the time they were drinking, and was playin’ when they paid their score, and the sound being drowned in the clatter o’ the payment, they had just forgotten it even as I did. It plays twa or three tunes,” she added, “and among the lave ‘The Blue-Bells of Scotland,’ a tune I aye liked, for ye ken I’m Scotch.”

“And I like it too,” replied I, “though I’m Irish; but do you know the lads?”

“Weel—I do, and I dinna. Ane o’ them has been here afore, and if you were to mention his name, I think I could tell you if it was the right ane.”

“Shields,” said I.

“The very name,” said she, “and if I kenned whaur he lived I would send the box to him.”

“I will save you that trouble, Mrs Devlin,” said I, as I put it in my pocket.

“I never took you for a thief, Mr M‘Levy,” said she, in a half humorous way. “I aye took ye for a thief catcher.”

“And it’s just to catch the thief I take the box,” said I. “You can speak to the men if I bring them here?”

“Brawly.”

And so I left the tavern. I had got my trace, and knew where to go for my men, and I had, moreover, a well-grounded suspicion not only as regarded him whose name I had mentioned, but also his companion. I sent immediately for two constables, and having procured these, and been joined by my assistant, I proceeded to Brodie’s Close in the Cowgate. Arriving at the foot of a stair, I planted there my constables, and mounted till I came to a door familiar to me on prior occasions. I gave my quiet knock,—a signal so regular, that, as I have sometimes heard, it was known as “M‘Levy’s warning.” Whether known as such now, or not, I cannot say, but it was quickly enough responded to by no less a personage than the famous Lucky Shields herself. The moment she saw me she recoiled, but only for an instant, and then tried to detain me—the ordinary sign that I should be in. Without saying a word I pushed her back, and making my way forward, got at once into the middle of one of those scenes of which the quiet normal people of the world have no more idea than they have of what is going on in the molten regions of the middle of the earth, on the surface of which they are plucking roses. A large room, where the grandees of a former time drank their claret to the tune of “Lewie Gordon;” all about the sides a number of beds—one or two rattled up of pine stumps—another with black carved legs, which had supported fair dames long since passed away, alongside another with no more pretensions to decayed grandeur than could be put forth by a sack of chaff and a horsecloth. Close to that a ragged arm-chair, with a bundle of hay rolled up in an old napkin, to serve when there was an additional lodger. A number of chairs, marrowless, broken, and rickety; a white table in the midst of all, covered with glasses and tankards, all replete with the ring of drinking echoes, and shining in the haze of tobacco smoke, illuminated by bright gas.

My ears were more bewildered than my eyes; for the room, with its strange furniture, was familiar enough to me; but I had some difficulty for a minute or two in distinguishing the living articles. Round the fir table sat my hero of the box, Patrick Shields; alongside of him, Henry Preger,—so true an associate of Shields, as to render it impossible for me to doubt his participation in the affair at Coates Crescent; and along with these Daniel O’Hara, a gentleman with a peculiar turn of thought, which induced him to believe that a watch in another man’s pocket was out of its proper place. The two first were still fuming with the effects of Mrs Devlin’s whisky, and O’Hara seemed to be great, as master of the new-brewed potation, whisky-punch, which he had been handing round to the young women. I don’t want to paint vividly, in my slap-dash way, where picturesqueness is only to be effected at the expense of the decencies of life, and you don’t want pictures of vice. Then, what boots it to describe such women. Their variety is only a combination of traces which are as uniform as the features of sensuality. Yes, these young women, who were quite familiar to me—Agnes Marshall, Jessie Ronald, Elizabeth Livingstone, Hannah Martin, Julia Shields—were simply representatives of thousands bearing the same marks,—one, a demure but cunning catcher of hearts and purses; another, a fair and comely living temple, with a Dagon of vice stuck up in it; another, never sober except when in a police cell, and never silent except when asleep, and scarcely then, for I have heard the cry of her wild spirit as it floated in drunken dreams; and another, the best resetter in the city, from whom a century of years in prison would not have extorted a Brummagem ring of the value of a glass of whisky. If I force so much of a picture upon you, it is because, as a part of society, you deserve to know what your laws and usages produce.

It was not for a little time after I entered that the confusion of tongues ceased. Their spirits had received such an impetus from the effects of the spirituous, that the speed could not be stopped; and even when the noise was hushed, it was only after the muttering of oaths. Meanwhile, a glance told me I had got into the very heart of the reset-box of Mr Jackson’s fine jewellery. Finger and ear-rings glittered in the gas-light, and the expensive coats, at the top of the fashion, made Shields and Preger look like gentlemen who had called in from Princes Street to see the jewelled beauties. I have always had my own way of dealing with such gentry. I took out my musical box, and pulling the string, set it agoing. I have heard of music that drew stones—mine drew bricks. Shields and Preger fixed their eyes wildly upon me; and the women, who knew nothing of the meaning of M‘Levy’s music, first shot out into a yell of laughter, and then, rising, began, in the madness of their drunkenness, to dance like so many furies, keeping time, so far as they could, to the tune of the instrument. I could account for this insensibility to danger by no other way than by supposing that they had not previously seen the box, and did not see the consequences that were likely to result from my visit.

After the hubbub ceased, I addressed my man in the first instance.

“Patrick,” said I, “I am come to return your box.”

“It’s not mine,” replied the youth; “I have nothing to do with it.”

“It’s mine anyhow,” cried the unwary mother, who all this time was looking through the smoke like a tigress. “The spaking thing is mine anyhow, for didn’t me own Julia get it from a raal gintleman to learn her to sing, and isn’t what’s hers mine?”

And how much more of this Irish howl I might have heard, I can’t say, if the son had not shot a look into her which brought her to a sense of her imprudence.

“And it’s not my box afther all, ye vagabond,” she cried, in trying to retreat from her error; “for wasn’t mine an ivory one, and didn’t it play raal Irish tunes? Come here, Julia; is that your box?”

“No,” said Julia.

“And wasn’t yours raal ivory?”

“Yes,” replied the girl.

“Now, didn’t I tell you, you murtherin’ thief, it wasn’t my box. Away wid you, and never shew your ugly face here again among dacent people.”

The ordinary gabble of all such interviews. I gave a nod to my assistant, and in a few minutes the constables were at my back.

“Well,” said I, addressing the men, “you can carry the top-coats on your backs to the office; but as for you, ladies, there are certain finger and ear ornaments about you which, for fear you lose them, I must take.”

These few simple words quieted the turmoil in an instant. I have often produced the same effect by a quiet exercise of authority. The boisterousness of vice, with no confidence to support it, runs back and oppresses the heart, which has no channel for it in the right direction; the channel has been long dried and seared.

“Search them,” said I.

A process which, as regards women, we generally leave to our female searchers, but which I was obliged to have recourse to here in a superficial way to guard valuables, so easily secreted or cast away, and a process which requires promptness even to the instant; for on such an occasion, the cunning of women is developed with a subtlety transcending all belief. The hair, the hollow of the cheek, under the tongue, in the ear, up the nostrils, even the stomach being often resorted to as the receptacles of small but valuable articles. We contrived all four to dart upon the creatures at once, each seizing his prey. The suddenness of the onset took them by surprise, and in the course of a few minutes, we had collected into a shining heap nearly the whole of Mr Jackson’s most valuable jewels.

We then marched the whole nine up to the Police-Office, I carrying the magic box, which, if I had been vainglorious, I would have set agoing as an appropriate accompaniment to our march up the High Street.

They were all tried on the 25th July 1843; Preger got fourteen years, and Shields ten. The women got off on the admission that they got the jewellery from Shields and Preger. I remember that, after the trial, Mr Jackson addressed me something in these terms:—

“Mr M‘Levy, I owe the recovery of my property to you. I will retain my jewels, but as for the articles of apparel, I am afraid that were I to wear them I might myself become a thief; so you may dispose of them, and take the proceeds, with my thanks. The musical box I will keep as a useful secret informer; so that in the event of my house being robbed again, it may have a chance, through its melody, of recovering my property.”

The Whiskers.

IT may be naturally supposed that we detectives are not much given to sadness. It is, I suspect, a weakness connected with me, a tendency to meditate on the vanity of human wishes; and I should be free from the frailty, insomuch as there has been less vanity in my wishes to apprehend rogues than in the case of most other of the artistes of my order. Yet am I not altogether free from the weakness. We have a natural wish to see our friends happy around us, and this desire is the source of my little frailty; for when I find my ingenious friends off my beat, and away elsewhere, I immediately conclude they are being happy at the expense of others, and I am not there to sympathise; nor does it affect this tendency much that I am perfectly aware that my sympathy rather destroys their happiness.

I had, about April 1854, lost sight for a time of the well-known Dan Gillies. He had had my sympathies more than once, and immediately took to melancholy; but somehow or another he recovered his gaiety,—a sure enough sign that he again stood in need of my condolence. I had been told that in kindness he and his true-hearted Bess M‘Diarmid had gone to the grazing on turnips, (watches,) and that I had small chance of seeing him for a time. Well, here was an occasion for a return of my fit, for wasn’t Dan happy somewhere, and I not there to see. I don’t say I was thinking in that particular direction on that 5th day of April when I was walking along Princes Street, for indeed I was looking for another natural-born gentleman among those who, considering they have better claims to promenade that famous street, pretend to despise those who, I have said, are nearer to natural rights than they are; but indulging in that habit of side-looking, which I fear I have borrowed from my friends, who persist in an effort to avoid a straight, honest look at me, I descried a well-known face under a fine glossy silk hat, and above a black and white dappled cravat. A glance satisfied me that the rest of the dress was in such excellent harmony that he might, two minutes before, have come out of the Club, where plush and hair-powder stands at the door. It was Dan. The grazing must have been rich to give him so smooth and velvety a coat; and to shew that he had not despised his fare, he had a yellow “shaw” stretching between the middle of his fine vest to the pocket. When a grand personage, who despises the toil which makes us all brethren, meets one of my humble, laborious order, he makes a swerve to a side, even though the wind is in another direction, to avoid the blasting infection of common humanity, and Dan was here true to his class; but as I do not discard the duties any more than the rights of nature, I overlooked the insult, and swerved in the same direction, not being confident enough, nevertheless, to infect with my touch the hand of a Blue-Vein, if not a Honeycomb.

“Why, Dan,” said I, as I faced him, and somewhat interrupted his passage, “what a fine pair of whiskers you’ve got since I saw you. The turnips must have been reared on the real Peruvian.”

“What the d——l have you to do with my whiskers?”

“One who has been the means of shaving your head,” replied I, “may surely make amends by rejoicing in the growth of your fine hair elsewhere.”

“None of your gibes. Be off. I owe no man anything.”

“No, Dan, but every man, you know, owes you, if you can make him pay. Don’t you know what’s up?”

“No, and don’t care.”

“There’s a grand ship-launch at Leith to-day.”

“D——n your ship-launch!” said the Honeycomb; and pushing me aside, Dan strutted away under the indignation of the shame of my presence.

I could not help looking after him, and recollecting the remark of Lord Chesterfield on the South-Sea Islander who sat at table in the company of lords. Looking at his back, you could perceive no difference between him and a high-bred aristocrat. But the aristocrats don’t mind those thin distinctions.

Having some much more important business in hand that day, all recollection of Dan and his whiskers passed out of my mind. I remember I had to meet a French lackey who could point out to me a London brewer’s clerk committed to my care. The offender had run away from his employer, taking with him not only the flesh which had got so lusty upon the stout, but also a couple of thousand pounds which he ought to have deposited in a bank; nor was this even the entire amount of his depredations, for he had also contrived to abstract the brewer’s wife, described by my Frenchman as a “great succulent maman of forty years,” and not far from that number of stones avoirdupois. With such game in prospect, it was not likely I should trouble myself with Dan Gillies, nor did I care more for the Leith launch. The constables there could look to that, though I was not the less aware that if Dan got among the crowd there would be pockets rendered lighter, without more of a “purchase” than might be applied by a thief’s fingers.

Notwithstanding of the brightness of my prospects in the morning—for I had even pictured to myself the English clerk with the “succulent maman” hanging on his arm, and together promenading Princes Street—my hopes died away as the day advanced. I had got, moreover, weary of the clatter of the lackey, and was, in short, knocked up. It might be about four o’clock, I think, when I resolved upon returning by the way of the Office, where I had some report to make before going home to dinner. I proceeded slowly along Waverley Bridge, turned past the corner of Princes Street gardens, and advanced by the back of the Bank of Scotland. I was in reality at the time looking for none of my friends. I had had enough of looking, and felt inclined rather to give my eyes a rest by directing them to the ground, after the manner of melancholy musers. As I was thus listlessly making my way, I was roused by a rapid step, and I had scarcely time to look up when I encountered my young Honeycomb of the morning. I was at first confused, and no great wonder, for there was Dan Gillies without a single hair upon his face. The moment he saw me he wanted to bolt, but the apparition prompted me on the instant to cross him, and hold him for a moment at bay.

“Dan, Dan,” said I, with really as much unfeigned surprise as humour, “what has become of your whiskers, man?”

A fiery eye, and the terrible answer which sends a man to that place where one might suppose that eye had been lighted, so full of fury was it.

“Why, it’s only a fair question,” said I, again keeping my temper. “I might even wish to know the man who could do so clean a thing.”

“What have you to do with my barber?”

“Why, now you are getting reasonable,” said I; “your question is easily answered; I might want him, say on a Sunday morning, to do to me what he has done to you.”

Again dispatched to the place of four letters with an oath which must have been forged there by some writhing soul, I could stay him no longer, for making a rush past me, Dan Gillies was off in the direction of the Flesh-market Close, up which I saw him turn.

His oaths still rung in my ear. I have often thought of the wonderful aptitude of the grown-up Raggediers at swearing; they begin early, if they do not lisp, in defiances of God, and you will hear the oaths ringing amidst the clink of their halfpennies as they play pitch-and-toss. Their little manhood is scarcely clothed in buckram, when they would look upon themselves as simpletons if they do not vindicate their independence by daring both man and Heaven. You may say they don’t understand the terms they use. Perhaps few swearers do; but in these urchins the oaths are the sparks of the steel of their souls, and there is not one of them unprepared to shew by their cruelty that their terrible words are true feelings. It may appear whimsical in me, but I have often thought that if this firmness of character—for it is really a mental constitution—were directed and trained by education and religion in the track of duty, it would develop itself as an energy fitted for great and good things. A man like me has no voice in the Privy Council; but literature, as I have heard said, is a big whispering-gallery, whereby the humblest of minds may communicate with the highest. Let it be that my whisper is laughed at, as everything is grinned at or laughed at which is said for the hopefulness of our wynd reprobates; but I have learned by experience, that while the greatest vices spring from the dregs of society, the Conglomerates, as they are called in that book (which describes them so well,) “The Castes of Edinburgh,” so the greatest virtues sometimes spring from the same source. How much of the vice they are forced to retain, and how much of the virtue they are compelled to lose, is one of the whispers which ought to reach the ears of the great.

At the time Dan left me, I was not in this grand way of thinking. Nay, to be very plain, I was laughing in my sleeve; because, in the first place, a detective is not a Methodist preacher; and in the second place, because I have a right to my fun as well as others; and in the third place, because I came to the conclusion that Dan Gillies had some reason for shaving his whiskers which ought to interest me. In short, I had no doubt that Dan and his “wife” had been at the ship-launch.

With the laugh, I suppose, still hanging about my lips as a comfortable solace after my ineffectual hunt after the brewer’s clerk and the jolly maman, I entered the Office, where the first information I got was, that a lady had been robbed of her purse at Leith, and that a young wench was in hands there as having been an accomplice along with a swell of a pickpocket who had escaped.

“I was thinking as much,” said I, with a revival of my laugh; “I know the man.”

And so I might well say, for I had now got to the secret of the shaved whiskers.

“What mean you?” said the lieutenant.

“Why, just that if you want the man, I will bring him to you. I will give you the reason of my confidence at another time.”

“To be sure we want him,” was the rather sharp reply of my superior.

“Then I will fetch him,” said I.

And so I went direct to Brown’s Close, where I knew the copartnership of Gillies and M‘Diarmid formerly carried on business, both in the domestic and trading way. Domestic! what a strange word as applied to these creatures—charm, as it is, to conjure up almost all the associations which are contained in the whole round of human happiness! Yes, I say domestic; happiness is a thing of accommodation. These beings will go forth in the morning in the spring of hope, and after threading dangers which are nothing less than wonderful, jinking the throw of the loop of the line which grazes their very shoulders, and turning and doubling in a thousand directions to escape justice, they meet at nightfall to enjoy the happiness of a home. The beefsteak, as it fries, gives out the ordinary sound, the plunk of the drawn cork is heard, and they narrate their hairbreadth escapes, their dangers, and their triumphs. They laugh, they sleep, but their enjoyment terminates with my knock at the door. The solitary inmate is wondering at the absence of the female without whom the word “domestic” becomes something like a mockery. It is needless to deny him affections; he has them, and she has them, as the tiger and the tigress have them. They don’t complain like other folk, because they don’t bark or growl at Providence; but the iron screw is in the heart. I have read its pangs in the very repression of its expression.

I had been so quick in my movements that I went right in upon my man just as he had entered, no doubt after the cautious doublings consequent upon our prior interview. The salutation given me was a growl of the wrath which had been seething in the Pappin’s digestor of his heart.

“What right have you to hound me in this way?” he cried, as he closed his fist and then ground his teeth.

“Why, Dan,” said I, calmly, “I’m still curious about the whiskers.”

“Whiskers again,” he roared.

“Aye, just the whiskers,” said I. “I have told you I am curious about them, and I want to know why you parted with what you seemed so proud of?”

“Gibe on; you’ll make nothing of me,” he cried again. “I defy you.”

“Well, but I cannot give up the whiskers in that easy way,” said I, “because I have an impression that if the lady in Leith had not lost her purse, your whiskers would still have clothed your cheeks.”

From which cheeks the colour fled in an instant. Even to the hardest of criminals the pinch of a fact is like the effect of a screw turned upon the heart. It is only we who can observe the changes of their expression. Dan knew, in short, that he was caught; and I have before remarked that the regular thieves can go through the business of a detection in a regular way.

“Well,” he said, as he felt the closing noose, and with even a kind of grim smile, “I might as well have kept my hair.”

“Never mind,” said I, “it will have time to grow in the jail. Come along. The cuffs?”

“Oh no, I think you have no occasion. Them things are only for the irregulars, you know. But do you think you’ll mend Daniel Gillies by the jail?”

“No,” said I, “I don’t expect it.”

“Then why do you intend to send me there?”

“Why,” replied I, in something like sympathy for one who I knew to be of those who are trained to vice before they have the choice of good or evil laid before them, “just because it is my trade.”

And, strange as it may seem, I observed a tear start into his red eye.

“Your trade,” said he, as he rubbed the cuff of his coat over his face, “your trade; and have you a better right to follow it than I have to pursue mine? You didn’t learn yours from your father and mother, did you?”

“No, Dan, but I know you did.”

“Yes, and the more’s the pity,” replied he, as he got even to an hysterical blubber. “I have had thoughts on the subject. Even when last in the Calton I could not sleep. Something inside told me I was wronged, but not by God—by man. I was trained by fiends who made money by what they taught me, and I have been pursued by fiends all my life. When was a good lesson ever given me, or a kindly word ever said to me, except by a preacher in the jail with a Bible in his hand? Suppose I had listened to him, and when I got out had taken that book into my hand, and had gone to the High Street and bawled out, ‘Put me to a trade, employ me, and give me wages.’ Who would have listened to me? A few pence from one, and the word ‘hypocrite’ from another, and then left to my old shifts, or starve. Take me up, but you’ll never mend me by punishment.”

I always knew Dan to be a clever fellow, but I was not prepared for this burst. Yet I knew in my heart it was true. “Well,” said I, “Dan, I pity you. I have often thought that if that old villain David, and that old Jezebel Meg, who were your parents, had not corrupted you, you had heart and sense to be a good boy.”

“Ay, and it has often wrung my heart,” he replied, “when I have seen others who were born near me, though only in Blackfriars’ Wynd, respectable and happy, and I a criminal in misery by the chance of birth; but all this is of no use now. Then where’s Bess, poor wretch?”

“She’s in Leith jail.”

“Right,” cried he, as he blubbered again. “I sent her there. She was a playmate of mine, and I led her on in the path into which I was led. She might have been as good as the best of them.”

And the poor fellow, throwing himself on a chair, cried bitterly.

I have encountered more than one of these scenes. They have only pained me, and seldom been of any service to the victims themselves. Were a thousand such cases sent up to the Privy Council, I doubt if their obduracy in endowing ragged and industrial schools would be in the slightest degree modified.

I believe little more passed. I had my duty to perform, and Dan was not disobedient. That same evening he was sent to Leith. He was afterwards tried. He was identified by the lady and a boy who knew him, and sentenced to twelve months. Bess got off on the plea of not proven. I lost all trace of them, but have no hopes that either the one or the other was mended by the detection through the whiskers. The hair would grow again not more naturally than would spring up the old roots of evil planted by those who should have engrafted better shoots on the stock of nature.

The White Coffin.

IF the Conglomerates of our old town are troubled with many miseries, as the consequences of their privations and vices, it is certain the whole squalid theatre they play their strange parts in, is the scene of more incidents, often humorous, nay romantic—if there can be a romance of low life—than can be found in the quiet saloons of the higher grades in the new town. The observation indeed is almost so trite, that I need not mention that while in the one case you have nature overlaid with the art of concealment, the slave of decorum, in the other you have the old mother, free, fresh, and frisky—her true characters, rapid movements, quick thoughts, intertwined plots, the jerks of passion, the humorous and the serious, the comedy and the melodrama of the tale of life—an idiot’s one, if you please, even in the grave ranks of the highest.

In February 1837, as I was on my saunter with my faithful Mulholland among the haunts of the old town, we observed our old friends Andrew Ireland, John Templeton, and David Toppen, doubling the mouth of one of the closes leading to Paul’s Work. These industrious gentry are never idle; as they carry their tools along with them, they can work anywhere; and, like the authors, a species of vagabonds who live on their wits, and steal one from another, they need no stock in trade. It was clear to me that we were unobserved, and proceeding down another close, I expected to meet them probably about their scene of action. I may mention that I was somewhat quickened in my movements by some recollections that Ireland had cost me a deal of trouble—the more by token that he was called “the Climber,” as being the best hand at a scramble, when cats would shudder, in all the city, for which he had refused for some time to give me even the pledge of his body. We got down the close and round the corner, just in the nick of time to see the tail of Andrew’s coat disappearing from the top of a pretty high dyke. The two others followed the example of the Climber, and when they had disappeared, we placed ourselves at the side of the wall to receive them on their descent. The cackling of fowls soon told us the nature of their work, and the gluggering of choking craigs was a clear indication that the robbers were acting on the old rule that “the dead tell no tales.”

“Sure of the Climber this time,” I said to my assistant. “I will seize Andrew and Templeton, and lay you hold of Toppen.”

And the words were scarcely out of my mouth, when we received gratefully our friends in our arms. The dead hens were flung away, and darting at the throats of my two charges, I secured them on the instant. Mulholland lost his hold, but so pleased was I at my capture, especially of Andrew, that I could not resist a few words in my old way.

“I was afraid you would fall and break your neck, Andrew,” said I.

“Thank you for the warm reception,” replied the cool rogue, as he recovered breath after the short tussle.

“No apology,” said I. “I have told you by a hundred looks that I wanted you.”

“And sold for a hen at last,” he added, with an oath.

“And not allowed to eat it,” said I. “What a glorious supper you and the old woman would have had!”

The taunt was at least due to his oath.

“Pick up the hens, Mulholland,” said I, “and let us march, we will have a laugh in the High Street.”

And proceeding with my man in each hand till I came to the head of the close, I gave one of them in charge of a constable, retaining the other. Mulholland with the hens brought up the rear, and I believe we cut a good figure in our march, if I could judge from the shouts of the urchins—tickled with a kind of walking anecdote, that carried its meaning so clearly in the face of it, for it is seldom that the booty makes its appearance in these processions.

On arriving at the Office, my charges were locked up. Toppen was caught the same evening; and this part of my story of the metamorphosis being so far prelusive, I may just say that my hen-stealers were forthwith tried by the Sheriff and a jury. Each got the price of his hen even at a higher rate than the present price of a fashionable cockerel—Ireland getting nine months, Templeton six, and Toppen four. But the Climber vindicated his great reputation in a manner that entitled him to still greater fame. Whether it was that the jailer was not made aware of his abilities, or that he was placed in a cell which it was held to be impossible for any creature without claws on all the four members to get out of, I cannot say; but true it is that, to the utter amazement of every one connected with the jail, Andrew Ireland got out by the skylight, and finding his way over ridges and down descents that might have defied an Orkney eagle-hunter, descended at the north back of the Canongate, and got clear off.

Once more “done” by my agile friend, my pride was up, and I must have him by hook or by crook. I knew he was one of those enchanted beings whose love to the old town prevents them from leaving it. It has such a charm for them that they will stick to it at all hazards, even when, day by day, and night by night, they are hounded through closes and alleys like wild beasts, and have, as it were, nowhere to lay their heads. I have known them sleep on the tops of houses, and in crannies of old buildings, half-starved and half-clothed, in all weathers, summer or winter, rather than seek rest by leaving the scenes of their wild infancy. And all this they will do in the almost dead certainty that ultimately they will be seized. I was thus satisfied that Andrew was about the town; and even when, after the lapse of months, I could get no trace of him, I still retained my conviction that he was in hiding.

That conviction was destined to receive a grotesque and grim verification. I was one day at the top of Leith Wynd. A number of people were looking at the slow march of some poor wretch’s funeral, the coffin borne by some ragged Irishmen, a few others going behind. As I stood looking at the solemn affair—more solemn and impressive to right minds than the plumed pageant that leaves the mansion with the inverted shield, and goes to the vault where are conserved, with the care of sacred relics, the remains of proud ancestors—a poor woman, who seemed to have been among the mourners, came up to me.

“And do you see your work, now?” quoth she, in a true Irish accent. “Do you know who is in that white coffin there, wid the bit black cloth over it?”

“No,” said I.

“And you don’t know the darling you murthered for stealing a hen at Paul’s Work?”

“You don’t mean to say,” replied I, “that that’s the funeral of your son, Mrs Ireland?”

“Ay, and, by my soul, I do, and murthered by you. He never lifted up his head agin, but pined and dwined like a heart-broken cratur as he was; and now he’s there going as fast as the boys can carry him to his grave.”

“Well,” said I, “I am sorry for it.”

“The devil a bit of you, you vagabond! It’s all sham and blarney, and a burning shame to you, to boot.”

“Peace, Janet,” said I; “he’s perhaps happier now than he was here stealing and drinking. There are no sky-lights in the Canongate graves, and he’ll not climb out to do any more evil.”

“Sky-lights!” cried Janet; “ay, but there is, and Andrew Ireland will climb out and get to heaven, while you, you varmint, will be breaking firewood in h—to roast their honours the judges who condemned my innocent darling.”

“Quiet, Janet.”

“Well, thin, to roast yourself; will that plaise ye?”

“Yes, yes,” said I.

And fearing that the woman’s passions, inflamed by her grief, might reach the height of a howl, I moved away, while she, muttering words of wrath, proceeded after the white coffin. Nor can I say I was altogether comfortable as I proceeded to the Office, for there is something in the wild moving yet miserable lives of these Arabs of the wynds when wound up by death that is really touching. Nay, it is scarcely possible to avoid the thought that they are not free agents, if they do not claim from our sympathy the character of victims. In truth I was getting muffish, if I did not soliloquise a bit about other climbers whose feet rested on the backs of such poor wretches, and who, by means not very different, get into high places, where they join the fashionable cry about philanthropy—yes, a philanthropy that helps the devil, by allowing him to brain the objects they attempt to benefit.

But a police-office soon takes the softness out of a man. I had scarcely entered when I got notice of a robbery, committed on the prior night at the workshop of Messrs Robb and Whittens, working silversmiths in Thistle Street. On repairing to the spot, I ascertained that the robber had made off with a number of silver articles, sugar-tongs, spoons, and other valuables; among the rest a number of silver screws. I particularly notice these, because they served my purpose in quite another way than that for which they were originally intended. But as to the manner of the robbery, I could get no satisfactory information beyond the fact that a suspicion attached to two chimney-sweeps, who had been passing in the morning, and had been employed to sweep the vents of the workshop; nor was my disappointment lessened by finding that the sweeps were utterly unknown to the parties connected with the shop. They could not even tell whether they came from the new town or the old. Then as to identification, even had I been angel enough to bring so unrecognisable a creature before them, who ever heard of any distinctive features in a chimney-sweep, if he has not a hump on his back or wants a nose on his face! Even I, who have seen through all manner of disguises, am often at fault with them until I almost rub noses with them—a process in which I would catch a “devilish sight” more than I wanted.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, I did not altogether despair, insomuch as I at least became pretty well satisfied that it really was the gentlemen in black who had done the deed. So wherever there was smoke to be cured and vents sweeped, I considered it my duty to call and try if I could find, not the features of my men, but some trace of the tongs and screws; for in many cases where I have had right to search, I have got my pipe lighted at a fire, the light of which has shewn me what I wanted. Yet all wouldn’t do; nor was I a whit more lucky among the brokers and pawn-shops. Nay, although I screwed my ingenuity to the last turn, could I trace anything of the stolen silver screws. It was no go, as the lovers of slang say; and if it had not been that I was born never to know the meaning of “Give it up,” I would have renounced the pursuit of men who are beyond the landmarks of society.

Not altogether without a result, however, these vain searches. I was impressed with a curiosity about chimney-sweeps, and I never eyed one without a wish to know something about him. They had formerly interested me very little; for, to do them justice, though they have means of entering houses seldom in the power of others, and which none but fiery lovers ever think of, they have seldom qualified themselves for my attentions. They have no likings for the whitewashing processes of jails. At the same time, however, as cleanliness is next to godliness, they seldom appear in church; the grace would not pay the soap.

With this affection for the tribe still hanging about me, I was one day, a considerable period after the robbery, going along the Pleasance, in an expedition connected with the house called the Castle of Clouts, where I expected to find some remnants not left by the builder of that famous pile. I was not looking for sweeps, and yet my pipe was not out. I had been blowing some puffs, when, on turning round, I saw two of my black gentlemen standing smoking loungingly, with their backs to the wall. “Ah, some of the bright creatures of my fancy,” thought I; “yea, those aerial beings who for months have been hovering over me in my dreams, yet altogether without wings.” My first act was to put that same pipe out, my next to watch their movements. They were very busy talking to each other; but what interested me most was the curiosity with which they were contemplating some articles which one of them was shewing to the other,—nay, there seemed to be a silvery look about the things, which was the more apparent that they were a contrast to the hands that held them.

So straightway my pipe, which I had extinguished, required a light, and these curers of smoke could even produce that which they professed to banish. In a moment I was standing before them.

“Well, lads,” said I, “can you give me a light?”

One of them recoiled a little as he caught my eye. He seemed to know me, though I am free to confess I did not know him.

“To be sure,” said the other.

And striking a match upon the wall he handed me a light, whereupon I began to puff away; and as smoking is a social act, I found myself irresistibly attracted by my friend, who in my first going up appeared to be so shy.

“Do you know where the Castle of Clouts is?” said I, as I peered and peered into the dark face of him who tried to avoid my gaze.

But I was still at fault. His features were familiar to me, but the soot still came between me and my identification. At length I got my clue.

“Andrew Ireland,” said I, “when did you come out of the Canongate churchyard? Was there a skylight in the top of the coffin?”

“Andrew Stewart is my name,” replied the black ghost.

“And when did you turn sweep, Andrew?”

“When seven years old,” said he; “but I tell you my name is Stewart, and be d——d to you.”

“Well, I don’t apprehend names,” said I, “only bodies. Then I’m not sure if you are not a spirit, for Janet shewed me your coffin on its way to the Canongate.”

“Perhaps it was Andrew Ireland’s coffin you saw,” said he. “It wasn’t mine, anyhow.”

“Oh, I see,” said I, “it would be Andrew Stewart’s, and I have committed a mistake. No matter; I want to know what you have in your right coat-pocket.”

And at the same instant I held up my hand. My assistant was presently at my side. I saw by the fire of his eye—something like a chimney on fire—that he was bent on resistance, and instantly taking him by the neckcloth with my right hand, I was proceeding to plunge my left into his pocket, when he seized me with his wonted ferocity, and for his pains got himself laid on his back.

“Now, Andrew,” said I, as he lay grinning at me so like another black gentleman when angry, “as sure as you are your mother’s darling, I will take you up and throw you again if you are not peaceable, and behave yourself like a gentleman.”

And getting my assistant to hold him, I took from his pocket three silver screws. It was all up with my ghost, who almost instantly became as gentle as these creatures, even the real white kind, generally are. He got up, and we proceeded to the Office. Nor did all the parts of this remarkable case end here, for, as we passed along St Mary’s Wynd, whom should we meet but Janet Ireland. The moment she saw us, she appeared stupified.

“He is risen again, Janet,” said I, in a kind of whisper, “they forgot to fasten the coffin with the silver screws.”

“And the more shame yours, you thaif of a thousand,” she cried, “to steal the darling boy of a poor widow. Dead! isn’t he worse than dead when in the hands of the biggest scoundrel that ever walked the airth?”

And what, in addition to this ingenuous turn which Janet gave to the story of the white coffin, Janet said or roared, I cannot tell, for we hurried away to avoid a gathering crowd.

I will never forget the look of the Superintendent when I told him that the man before him was the dead and buried Andrew Ireland, the stealer of the hens, the climber through the skylight of the jail, and the robber of the silversmiths’ shop. What puzzled him most was, how, with the conviction on my mind that the lad was dead and buried, I could have recognised him through the soot. He looked at him again and again, nor could he say that, with the minutest investigation, he could say that he recognised the well-known thief who had cost us so much trouble.