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 ,ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 BY 
 
 DOUGLAS JERROLD, ESQ. 
 // 
 
 LONDON . 
 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET. 
 
 1851.
 
 LOPiUos: 
 
 BAADBUUY AND EVANS, TBIKTEKS, WHIXEKKIABS.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 J)UEING the progress of the origmal publication of" St. Giles 
 and St. James " — ^which it is hoped is rendered somewhat less 
 faulty in the present revised edition — certain critics would charge 
 the writer with a cleaving desu*e to despoil the high for the profit 
 of the low ; with a besetting tendency to mum as a sort of moral 
 Robin Hood, stripping the rich of their virtues that only the 
 veriest poor might sti'ut in the plimder. In reply to this, I will 
 content myself with saying that I somewhat confidently await the 
 verdict of a different opinion from the reader who may honour 
 these pages with a dispassionate perusal. 
 
 It has been my endeavour to show in the person of St. Giles 
 the victim of an ignorant disregard of the social claims of the 
 poor upon the rich ; of the governed million upon the governing 
 few ; to pi'esent — I am well aware how imperfectly ; but with 
 no wilful exaggeration of the portraiture — the picture of the 
 infant pauper reared in brutish ignorance ; a human waif of dirt 
 and darkness. Since the original appearance of this story, the 
 reahty of this picture, in all its vital and appalling horror, 
 has forced itself ui^on the legislature ; has engaged its anxious 
 thoughts ; and wUl ultimately triumph in its humanising sympa- 
 thies. I will only add that upon an after revision of this story, 
 I cannot think myself open to the charge of bedizening St. Giles
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 at the cost of St. James ; or of making Hog Lane the treasury of 
 all the vii'tues to the moral sackmg of May Fail*. 
 
 The completion of the first volume of a collected edition of his 
 wTitings — scattered over the space of years — is an opportunity 
 tempting to the vanity of a writer to indulge in a retrospect of 
 the circumstances that first made authorship his hope, as well as 
 of the general tenor of his after vocation. I wiU not, at least, in 
 these pages, yield to the inducement ; further than to say that, self- 
 helped and self-guided, I began the world at an age when, as a 
 general rule, boys have not laid down their primers ; that the 
 cockpit of a man-of-war was at thirteen exchanged for the 
 struggle of London ; that appearing in print ere j)erhaps the 
 meaning of words was duly mastered — no one can be more aUve 
 than myself to the worthlessness of such early mutterings. 
 
 In conclusion, I submit this volume to the generous interpre- 
 tation of the reader. Some of it has been called " bitter : " indeed, 
 " bitter " has, I think, a little too often been the ready word when 
 certain critics have condescended to bend their eyes upon my 
 page : so ready, that were my ink redolent of myi-rh and frank- 
 incense, I well know the sort of ready-made criticism that would 
 cry, with a denouncing shiver, " aloes ; aloes." 
 
 D. J. 
 
 West Lodge, Pctney Lower Common. 
 July 9, 1851.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER I, 
 
 The streets were empty. Pitiless cold had driven all wlio had 
 the shelter of a roof to their homes : and the north-east blast 
 seemed to howl in triumph above the untrodden snow. Winter 
 was at the heart of all things. The wretched, dumb vnth. exces- 
 sive misery, suffered, in stupid resignation, the t}Tanny of the 
 season. Human blood stagnated in the breast of want ; and 
 death in that despairing hour losing its terrors, looked, in the 
 eyes of many a wretch, a sweet deUverer. It was a time when 
 the very poor, barred from the commonest things of earth, take 
 strange counsel with themselves, and, in the deep humiUty of 
 destitution, beUeve they are the burden and the oflfal of the world. 
 
 It was a time when the easy, comfortable man, touched with 
 finest sense of human suffering, gives from his abvmdance ; and, 
 whilst bestowing, feels almost ashamed that, with such wide- 
 spi-ead misery circled round him, he has all things fitting ; all 
 things grateful. The smitten spirit asks wherefore he is not of 
 the multitude of wretchedness ; demands to know for what espe- 
 cial excellence he is promoted above the thousand, thousand 
 starving creatui'es : in his very tenderness for misery, tests his 
 privilege of exemption from a woe that withers manhood in man, 
 bowing him downward to the brute. And so questioned, this 
 man gives in modesty of spu'it — in very thankfulness of soul. 
 His alms are not cold, formal charities ; but reverent sacrifices to 
 his suffering brother. 
 
 It was a time when selfishness hugs itself in its own warmth ; 
 with no other thoughts than of its pleasant possessions ; all made 
 pleasanter, sweeter, by the desolation ai'ound. When the mere 
 worldling rejoices the more in his warm chamber, because it is so 
 bitter cold without ; when he eats and drinks with whetted 
 appetite, because he hears of destitution, prowling like a wolf 
 ai'ound his well-barred house ; when, in fine, he bears his every 
 
 B
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 comfort about liira with the pride of a conqueror. A time when 
 such a man sees in the misery of his fellow-beings nothing save 
 his own ^'ictory of fortune — liis own successes in a suffering world. 
 To such a man the poor are but the tattered slaves that grace 
 his triumph. 
 
 It was a time, too, when human nature often shows its true 
 divinity, and with misery like a garment clinging to it, forgets its 
 wretchedness in sympathy witli suffering. A time, when in the 
 cellai-s and garrets of the poor are acted scenes which make the 
 noblest heroism of life ; which prove the immortal texture of the 
 human heart, not wholly seared by the branding-iron of the tor- 
 turing houi-s. A time when in want, in anguish, in throes of 
 mortal agony, some seed is sown that bears a flower in heaven. 
 
 Such was the time, the hour approaching miduight, when a 
 woman sat on a door-step in a London street. Was she sleeping, 
 or was she another victim of the icy season 1 Her head had 
 fallen backward agabist the door, and her face shone like a white 
 stone in the moonlight. There was a terrible histoiy in that 
 face ; cut and lined as it was by tlie twin-workers, vice and 
 misery. Her temples were sunken ; her brow wrinkled and 
 pmched ; and her thin, jagged mouth, in its stony silence, breathed 
 a frightful eloquence. It was a h;u-d mystery to work out, to 
 look upon that face, and try to see it in its babyhood. Could it 
 be thought that that woman was once a child ? 
 
 Still she was motionless — breathless. And now, a quick, trip- 
 ping footstep sounds in the deserted street ; and a woman, thinly, 
 poorly clatl, but clean and neat withal, approaches the door. She 
 is humming a tune, a blithe defiance to the season, and her 
 manner is of one hastening homeward. " Good God ! if it isn't 
 a corpse ! " she cried, standing suddenly fixed before what seemed, 
 in truth, the effigy of death. In a moment, recovering herself, 
 she stooped towards the sitter, and gently shook her. " Stone- 
 cold — frozen ! Lord in heaven ! that his creatures should perish 
 in the street ! " And then the woman, with a piercing shriek, 
 called the watch ; but the watch, true to its reputation for sound 
 substantial sleep, answered not. " Watch — watch ! " screamed 
 the woman with increasing shrillness ; but the howling of the 
 midnight wind was the only response. A moment she paused ; 
 then looked at what she deemed the dead ; and flinging her aims 
 about her. flew back along the path she had trod. With scai'cely 
 breath to do common credit to her powers of scolding, she drew 
 up at a watch-box, and addressed herself to the peaceful man 
 within. " Why, watch — here ! a pretty fellow ! — people pay 
 rates, and — watch, watch J — there 's a dead woman — dead, I tell
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES, 
 
 you — watch — pay rates, and are let to die, and — watch — watch — 
 watch ! " And still she screamed, and at length, clawed at and 
 shook the modest wooden tenement which, in those happy but 
 not distant days of England, sheltered many of England's civil 
 guardians. 
 
 The watchman was coiled up for unbroken repose. He had 
 evidently settled the matter with himself to slee^j until called to 
 breakfast by the tradesman who, at the corner post, spread his 
 hospitable table for the early wayfarers who loved saloop. 
 Besides, the watchman was at least sixty -five years old ; twenty 
 years he had been guardian of the public peace, and he knew — 
 no one better — that on such a night even robbery would take a 
 holiday, forgetting the cares and profits of business in comfort- 
 able blankets. At length, but slowly, did the watchman answer 
 the summons. He gradually uncoiled himself; and whilst the 
 woman's tongue rang — rang like a bell — he calmly pushed up 
 his hat, and opening his two small, swinish eyes, looked at the 
 intruder. 
 
 "Well! after that I hope you are awake — and after that " 
 
 " What 's the matter ? " asked the watchman, feeling that the 
 hour of saloop was not arrived, and surlily shaking himself at the 
 disappointment, " What 's the matter 1 " 
 
 " The matter ! Poppy-head ! " 
 
 " Any of your bad language, and I shall lock you up." And 
 this the watchman said with quite the air of a man who keeps 
 his word. 
 
 " There 's a woman froze to death," cried the disturber of the 
 watchman's peace. 
 
 " That was last night," said the watchman. 
 
 " I tell you, to-night, man — to-night. She 's on a door-step ; 
 there" — and the woman pointed down the street. "I should 
 like to know what we pay you watchmen for, if poor creatures 
 are to drop down dead with cold on the highway." 
 
 The watchman Ufted his lantern to the face of the speaker — it 
 was a frank, lively, good-humoured face, with about five-and- 
 thirty years lightly laid upon it — and closing one eye, as if the act 
 gave peculiar significance to what he said, slowly obsei-ved, 
 syllable by syllable, "Any more of your imperance, and" — here 
 he took an oath, confirming it with a smart blow of his stick 
 upon the pavement, " and I 'U lock you up." The woman 
 made some answer ; but the words were lost, ground by the 
 watchman's rattle, which he whirled about. As cricket answers 
 cricket, the rattle found a response. Along the street the sound 
 was caught up, prolonged, and canied forward ; and small bye- 
 lanes gave forth a wooden voice — a voice that cried to all the 
 
 b2
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 astounded streets, " Justice is awake ! " And then lantern after 
 litntera glimmered in the night : one lantern advancing with a 
 sober, a considerate pace ; another, with a sort of flutter ; another, 
 dancing like a jack-o'-lantern over the snow. And so, lantern 
 after lantern, with watchmen behind, came and clustered about 
 the box of him, who was on the instant greeted as Drizzle. 
 
 " "Wliat 's the row 1 " cried an Irishman — a young fellow of 
 about sixty, who flourished his stick, and stamped upon the pave- 
 ment, like indignant virtue, impatient of a WTong. "What 's the 
 row ? Is it her ? " and he was about to lay his civil hand upon 
 the woman. 
 
 Every watchman asked his separate question ; it seemed to be 
 his separate right : and Drizzle, as though respecting the privi- 
 lege of his brethren, heard them all — ^}-es, every one — before he 
 answered. He then replied, very measiu*edly — "A woman is 
 froze to death." 
 
 " What ! agin ? " cried two or three. 
 
 "Agin," answered Drizzle. Then turning himself round, he 
 headed the watch ; and motioning to the woman to show the way, 
 he slowly led his fellows down the street. In due time, they 
 arrived at the spot. 
 
 " Froze to death 1 " cried Drizzle doubtingly, holding his lantern 
 to the bloodless, rigid features of the miserable outcast. 
 
 " Froze to death 1 " asked every other watchman, on taking a 
 like survey. 
 
 "No, — no ; not dead ! Thank God ! not dead," exclaimed the 
 woman, stooping towards her wretched sister. " Her heart beats 
 — I t/imk it beats." 
 
 " Werry di'unk ; but not a bit dead," said Drizzle : and his 
 brethren — one and all — ^murmured. 
 
 " Well ! what are you going to do with her ? " asked the woman, 
 vehemently. 
 
 " What should we do with her ? " cried Drizzle. " She isn't 
 dead, and she isn't a breaking the peace." 
 
 " But she will be dead, if she 's left here, and so I desire " 
 
 " You desii'e ! " said Drizzle, " and after all, what 's your name, 
 and where do you come from 1 " 
 
 " My name 's Mrs. Aniseed, I live in Short's Gardens — and I 
 come fi'om — the Lord ha' mercy ! what 's that 1 " she cried as 
 something stirred beneath the ends of the woman's shawl, that 
 lay upon her lap. With the words, JNIrs. Aniseed jilucked the 
 shawl aside, and discovered a sleeping infant. " Wliat a heavenly 
 babe ! " she cried : and, truly, the child in its marble whiteness 
 looked beautiful ; a lovely hiunan bud, — a sweet, uusuUied 
 sojourner of earth, cradled on the knees of misery and vice.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 For an instant, the watchmen in silence gazed upon the babe. 
 Even their natures, hardened in scenes of crime and destitution, 
 were touched by the appealing innocence of the child. " Poor 
 little heart ! " said one. " God help it ! " cried another. 
 
 Yes ; God help it ! And with such easy adjui-ation do wo 
 leave thousands and tens of thousands of human souls to want 
 and ignorance ; doom them, when yet sleeping the sleep of guilt- 
 lessness, to future devils — their own unguided passions. We 
 make them outcasts, wi'etches ; and then punish, in their wicked- 
 ness, our own selfishness — our own neglect. We cry "God help 
 the babes," and hang the men. 
 
 Yet a moment. The chUd is still before us. May we not see 
 about it — contending for it — the principles of good and e\'il ? A 
 contest between the angels and the fiends ? Come hither, states- 
 man ; you who Uve withia a party circle ; you who nightly fight 
 some miserable fight ; continually strive in some selfish struggle 
 for power and place, considering men only as tools, the merest 
 instruments of your aggrandisement ; come here, in the wintry 
 street, and look upon God's image in its babyhood ! Consider 
 this little inan. Are not creatures such as these the noblest, 
 grandest things of earth 1 Have they not solemn natures — are 
 they not subtly touched for the highest purposes of human life 1 
 Come they not into this world to grace and dignify it 1 There is 
 no spot, no coarser stufi" in the pauper flesh before you, that indi- 
 cates a lower nature. There is no felon mark upon it — no 
 natural formation indicating the thief in its baby fingers — no 
 inevitable blasphemy upon its lips. It lies before you a fair, 
 unsullied thiag, fi-esh from the hand of God. Will you, without 
 an effort, let the great fiend stamp his fiery brand upon it ? Shall 
 it, even in its sleeping innocence, be made a trading thing by 
 misery and vice ? A creature borne from street to street, a piece 
 of Uving merchandise for mingled beggary and crime 1 Say ; 
 what, with its awakening soul, shall it learn ? What lessons 
 whereby to pass through life, making an item in the social sum ? 
 Why, cuiming will be its wisdom ; hyjjocrisy its truth ; theft its 
 natural law of self-preservation. To this child, so nurtured, so 
 taught, your whole code of morals, nay, your brief right and 
 wrong, are writ ia stranger figures than Egyptian hieroglyphs, 
 and — time passes — and you scourge the creature never taught, 
 for the heinous guilt of knowing nought but ill ! The good 
 has been a sealed book to him, and the dunce is punished with 
 the gaol. 
 
 Doubtless, there are gi'eat statesmen ; wizards in bullion and 
 bank-paper ; thinkers profound iu cotton, and eveiy tiu'u and 
 variation of the markets, abroad and at home. But there are
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 statesmen yet to come ; statesmen of nobler aims — of more heroic 
 action ; teachers of the people ; \dndicators of the univei-sal dignity 
 of man ; apostles of the gi-eat social tinith that knowledge, which 
 is the spu-itual Ught of God, Uke his material Hght, was made to 
 bless and comfort all men. And when these men arise — and it 
 is woi-se than weak, it is sinful, to despair of them — the youngling 
 poor will not be bound U2:)on the very threshold of human life, 
 and made, by want and ignorance, life's shame and curee. There 
 is not a babe l}'ing in the j)ubUc street on its mother's lap — the 
 unconscious mendicant to ripen into the criminal — that is not a 
 reproach to the state ; a scandal and a cr}ing shame upon men 
 who .study all politics, save the pohtics of the human heart. 
 
 To return to the child of our story ; to the baby St. Giles ; for 
 indeed it is he. 
 
 In a moment, Mrs. Aniseed caught the infant to her bosom ; 
 and pressed it to her cheek. As she did so, she turned pale, and 
 teai-s came into her eyes. "It 's dead," she cried, "blessed angel! 
 the cold — the cruel cold has killed it." 
 
 " Nonsense," said Drizzle, " the woman 's for killing everytliing. 
 It's no more dead than its mother here, and" — and here the 
 watchman turned to Ms companions for coimsel — " and what are 
 we to do with her ?" 
 
 " We can't take her to the workhouse," said one, " it 's 2:)ast 
 the hour." 
 
 '•' Past the hour ! " exclaimed Mrs. Aniseed, still hugging and 
 warming the babe at her bosom — " it isn't pa.st the hour to die, 
 is it ? " 
 
 " You 're a foolish, wiolent woman," said Drizzle. " I tell you 
 what we must do ; we '11 take her to the watch-house." 
 
 '' The watch-house ! " cried Mrs. Aniseed. " Poor soul ! what 
 have you got to comfort her with there ? " 
 
 " Comfort ! Well, I 'm sm-e — ^j'ou do talk it strong ! As if 
 women sittuig about in doorways was to be treated with comfort. 
 Howsomever, mates," said the benevolent Drizzle, " for once 
 we '11 try the workhouse." 
 
 With tliis, two of the watchmen raised the woman, and 
 stumbling at almost every step, they bore then- burden on. 
 " MiUce h:i.ste ! " cried Diizzle, doubtless yearning for the hos- 
 pitality of his box, " make hjiste : if the cold doesn't bite a man 
 like nippers ! " And so, shambling along, and \-iolently smiting 
 in their turn both amis against his sides, Drizzle preceded his 
 fellows, and at length halted at the workhouse. "It hasn't a 
 wery kindly look, ha.s it V he cried, as he peered at the mansion 
 of the poor. " All gone to bed, I dare say. And catch any on
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 'em getting up such a night as this." So saying, Drizzle pulled 
 manfully at the bell, as though faii'ly to test his powers of attack 
 with the power of resistance within. " The governor, and matern, 
 the nusses, the porter, and all on 'em snoring in lavender." The 
 bare thought of this Elysium added strength to Drizzle's arm, 
 and again he pulled. "Had hot elder wine, or dog's-nose, or 
 something o' the sort, to pull theii- precious nightcaps on ! " And 
 again Drizzle tugged with renewed purpose. " They think o' the 
 poor just as much as they thiuk o' meat and 'tatos, — as only things 
 to hve ujoon." And stUl the workhouse bell rang a comfortless 
 accompaniment to the watchman's iadignation. " Now, I know 
 it ; I could swear it " — cried Drizzle — " they 're eveiy one on 'em 
 awake ; they can't be otherwise ; wide awake, and thinking how 
 precious nice their blankets is, and how cruel cold it is here. 
 Yes ; they hear the bell — they do ; they can't help it ; and they 
 say to themselves, there 's some poor devil outside that 's frost-bit 
 and going to die, and wants a hot bed, and a dose of brandy, and 
 aU that, to biing the life into him again ; and he won't have it. No 
 — it's past the hours, and he must come agin to-morrow. That 's 
 what the vai'mint say" — cried Drizzle — " that 's what they say to 
 themselves, and then they go off, and sleep all the sweeter for 
 knowing it. It 's as good as another blanket to 'em — it is," 
 exclaimed the watchman, em'aged by the picture his fancy had 
 executed, no less than by his abortive exertions at the workhouse- 
 bell. " And now, what 's to be done 1 Why, nothin, but to go 
 to the watch-house." 
 
 " And I 'U take the baby home with me," said Mrs. Aniseed, 
 " and warm it, and give it something, and — " 
 
 " Can't allow that," said one of the watchmen. 
 
 " Why not, poor lamb 1 " asked Drizzle, suddenly tender. 
 " She '11 take care of it — and what are we to do with it ] You 
 don't think she 's a goin to steal it 1 " 
 
 " Steal it ! " cried the indignant Mrs. Aniseed. 
 
 " I should think not," said Drizzle. " Tolks needn't steal 
 things o' that sort, I 'm sure ; the market 's overloaded with 'em ; 
 they 're to be had for nothin', and thank 'ee too. So you '11 take 
 cai'e of it till the mother comes round 1 " 
 
 " To be sure, I will, poor dear heart ! " answered Mrs. Aniseed, 
 hugging the chUd closex-. 
 
 " And your name 's Aniseed, eh 1 Yes ? And you live in 
 Short's Gardens ? All right : to-moiTOW morning bring the baby 
 to the watch-house. We 've nobody to nurse it there, neither 
 wet nor dry." 
 
 This touch of humour was not lost upon the watchmen, for 
 they acknowledged it with a loud laugh. Then one of them.
 
 8 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 suddenly alive to the humanities of his calling, cried, "Let's 
 bear a hand with the woman, or I 'm blessed if she won't be dead 
 outright." 
 
 And with this, the watchmen bore the mother to the watch 
 house, and Mrs. Aniseed hurried with the child to her home. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 It was past twelve when Mrs. Aniseed reached her abiding- 
 place in Short's Gardens : a place, whose name gave warranty 
 of by-gone rusticity ; of a time when St. Giles really breathed 
 in the Fields ; when blossoming hawthorns offered incense to 
 the saint ; when linnets, building in the furze, sang matin 
 hymns to the protector of the leper. Many changes has St. 
 Giles beheld : other and better changes are, we hope, to come. 
 Here, in the fields, was good St. Giles installed the physician 
 and the comforter of leprosy. Here was he known, and prayed 
 to as intercessor between Heaven and suffering man. Disease, 
 the bom thing of dirt and poverty, knelt at his shrine and begged 
 for health. And years passed on, and the disease abated. The 
 plague of human kind — arrested by human knowledge and energy 
 — ^was smitten down, and the leper became a sufferer unkno^vn. 
 And then St. Giles gathered about him the chikU-en of poverty. 
 He became the titular saint of rags and squalor. Tlie destitute 
 and the ciiminal took refuge under his protecting wings. The 
 daily hypocrite on crutches owned St. Giles for his protector ; 
 cheats and mumpers of every sort — the town brigands, that with 
 well-aimed falsehoods make wayfaring compassion stand and 
 deliver — dwelt about the shrine of St. Giles, and lied and 
 cheated, starved and revelled in Ms name. A St. Giles's bird 
 was a human animal of prey — a raven, a kite, a carrion-crow. 
 And once again, the saint jn-esided over filth, and its bom evil, 
 disease ; again, St. Giles was sought by lepers, most hideous, 
 most incurable — the lepers of crime and poverty. 
 
 And — it cannot be doubted — St. Giles suffei-ed in reputation 
 from the unseemly flocks that gathered about him. In the imagi- 
 nations of men, he became a low, pauper saint ; a saint of vulgar 
 tastes, and vile employments ; a saint that was scarcely spoken 
 of, save in connection with craft, and ill manners, and drunken- 
 nes.s, and lying, and thieving. Even saints suffer in reno^vn by 
 const.iiit a.s.sociation with j overty and wickedness. 
 
 And then they made St. Giles a hanging saint : made him keep
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 a sort of half-way house, where he offered the final bowl to the 
 Tybui'n-bound felon. St. Giles was poor, and was assorted with 
 the gallows. That ignominy is, however, past. Now St. Giles 
 does not offer a comforting draught to thieves : no ; he only 
 breeds them. 
 
 And now is St. Giles to be wholly reformed. He is to be made 
 a cleanly saint. His cellars, where his infant votaries are begotten 
 for crime, and nurtured for the gaol, are to be destroyed — filled ujd 
 again. The demon typhus is to be killed with sweet air and fresh 
 water. The brotherhood of St. Giles are no longer to be of the 
 Blessed Order of Filth ; they are to wear linen, and wash their 
 hands and faces ! 
 
 To our story. 
 
 It was past twelve, when ]\Ii"s. Aniseed ascended the third 
 flight of stairs that led to her home — her one room. A voice 
 was heard proceeding from that room — a voice, droning a street- 
 ballad of the day. " Why, Susan, I 'm blessed if I hadn't given 
 you up," said the voice, the owner of it being a short, broad- 
 chested block of a man, seated before a tolerable fire, which, with 
 half-contemplative look, he continued to scrutinise ; never turning 
 his eye towards the partner of his bosom and his hearth. And 
 thus, complacently whiffing smoke from a ruin of a pipe, he con- 
 tinued to stare at the coals and talk : " If I didn't think some- 
 body had run away with you. I 've been home this half-hour. 
 Not much luck again to-night. Hardly enough to pay for the 
 link. Howsomever," said Jem, as though still talking to the 
 fire, " I 've got something for you." 
 
 " And I 've got sometliing for you, Jem ;" said his wife, seating 
 herself. " Guess what it is." 
 
 " No : I never guess with a woman," said Jem ; " a man has 
 no chance." And then he asked, " "What is it ? " 
 
 " Look here," cried his wife, unfolding her apron, and disco- 
 vering the sleeping babe. 
 
 Bi-ight Jem jumped from his sea,t, and now looking at the child 
 — and now in his wife's face — asked, with solemn voice, and 
 uplifted eyebrows, " Where did you get it ?" 
 
 " I found it, Jem," said the woman. 
 
 " Found it ! Well, next time, when luck 's upon you, I hope 
 you '11 find something better." And then, with his forefijiger he 
 touched the baby's cheek, and said, somewhat tenderly, " Dear 
 little heart ! " 
 
 " Can't you see who it 's like, Jem V asked Mrs. Aniseed, and 
 her eyes softened. 
 
 " Why, it 's like aU babies," answered Jem. " I never see any 
 difference in 'em : all the same, like Dutch cheeses."
 
 10 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Ha ! Jem," said Itfrs. Aniseed, " you 've never been a 
 mother." 
 
 " No," said Jem, 
 
 " Else you 'd Lave seen that it 's as like our dear lost Dick as 
 one angel 's like another " 
 
 " Not a bit — not a bit," said Jem in words ; but his tone and 
 manner said, " And so it is." 
 
 " Oh, I saw it — in a minute, Jem ; and I see it now, dear little 
 fellow. He'd ha' been dead, stone-dead in the morning, if I 
 hadn't come up as I did." 
 
 And Jem, placing his hands upon his knees, and staring in his 
 wife's face, asked, " And where did you find him 1 " Whereupon, 
 Mrs. Aniseed — with commendable bre\dty — narrated the incident 
 of discovery ah'eady chronicled. 
 
 " Well, poor little chap," said Jem, resuming his seat and his 
 pipe, " he 's welcome to board and lodging for one night." 
 
 IkIts. Aniseed made no answer. But as the child began to 
 wake, she bustled about the room, and soon prepared for it a 
 suffichig supper. Few were the minutes, and she had the child 
 upon her lap with its bare legs ahnost roasting at the fire, and 
 with more than infantine energy, trying to swallow the victuals, 
 spoon and all 
 
 " Why, if he doesn't eat like a young sparrow," said Jem, eye- 
 ing the httle feeder askance. " He 's not strange in a strange 
 place, any how." 
 
 " Oh, Jem ! " cried Mra. Aniseed, as though she was unbur- 
 thening her heart of its dearest wish — " Oh, Jem, how I should 
 Uke to keep it ! " Jem said nothing ; but slowly taking the pipe 
 from his mouth, he looked all the amazement he was master of. 
 Of course his wife took no notice of this. She merely continued : 
 " I 'm sure, Jem, the dear little soul would bring a blessing 
 on us." 
 
 " Yes, and another belly to fill ; and another back to cover ; 
 and two more feet to shoe ; and" — and we know not what inven- 
 tory of obligations Jem would have made out ; but his wife — a 
 fine tactician — began to chirrup, and cry to the child, and make 
 all those legendaiy noises of the nursery, handed down to us 
 from the time that Eve nursed Cain. Jem was in a moment 
 silenced. Whereupon, in due time, IMi-s. Aniseed set the child 
 up, and then danced it in the very face of Jem, calling upon him 
 to remark its extraordinary loveliness, and by consequence, its 
 extraordinary resemblance to their lost Dick, 
 
 "He's a sharp Httle shaver," said Jem, gently pinching the 
 baby's cheeks — when the baby laughed. 
 
 " If it doesn't seem to know what you say, Jem," cried Mrs.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 11 
 
 Aniseed ; and then with new vehemence she added. " Something 
 tells me it would be lucky to us." 
 
 " Nonsense, woman ! " cried Jem ; " how can we afford such 
 fancies ? You '11 be thinking of keeping pug-dogs and parrots 
 next. Besides, it 's impossible, with the playhouse going down 
 as it is." 
 
 "I've been quite in the way of babies to-night," said Mrs. 
 Aniseed, a little shifting the subject ; " young master 's come 
 to town." 
 
 " Oh, a boy is it 1 " grambled Jem. " "Well, he 's a better 
 chance of it than that little chap." Mrs. Aniseed drew a very- 
 long, deep sigh, intending it for an emphatic affirmation. " He 's 
 a good big gold spoon in his mouth already. Humph ! a boy is 
 it ? And what, after all, Mrs. Aniseed, what business had you 
 there ? You know I don't hke it — and you icill go." 
 
 Now this remonstrance applied to the visits of Mrs. Aniseed 
 to a certain house in St. James's-square ; at which nouse a 
 younger spinster sister of the hukman's wife flourished as under 
 kitchen-maid. She, however, had a due contempt for St. Giles's, 
 and all its dwellers ; and on certain occasions had not scrupled 
 to express her wonderment that her sister, " who after all was 
 not sich a very plain gal," should have ever taken up with so 
 low a husband as a nasty linkman. She had somehow compared 
 the big bouquets of the footmen with the pitch and hemp with 
 which Bright Jem was wont to earn what she called " his low, 
 dirty bread," and her nice sense of sweetness was grievously 
 offended by the contrast. Sometimes, too, out of purest conde- 
 scension, Kitty Muggs — for Muggs was the vii-gLn name which 
 no odoriferous lacquey had as yet robbed her of — would visit 
 Short's Gardens. At such times it was impossible for her not to 
 make it known to St. Giles the vast debt of gratitude due from 
 it to St. James : — a debt which Bright Jem — as one of the 
 representatives of the meaner locality — never by the smallest 
 instalment ever permitted himself to pay. 
 
 " As for Kitty, he was always very glad to see her if she 'd leave 
 her nonsense behind her; but she always walked into the room as 
 if she walked upon eggs ; always brushed the chaii' afore she 'd 
 sit down ; and always moved with her petticoats lifted up, as if 
 the white honest deal beards of the floor was so much gutter-mud. 
 And then the tea was always so coarse, and not a bit like their 
 gunpowder ; and the bacon was rusty, not a bit like their hams ; 
 and in fact there was nothing, no, not even the flesh and blood of 
 Short's Gardens, at all like the flesh and blood of the "West-End. 
 Why didn't she keep to her own dripping, and not cast her nose 
 up hke a flounder's tail, at the clean, wholesome food of other
 
 12 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 people? He hated all such stuff; and what's more, he wouldn't 
 liave it." Such, again and again, had been the words of Bright 
 Jem ; and he never heard of the sisterly visits of his wife to the 
 ari.*tocratic kitchen-maiil, without protesting against them. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Aniseed, " she's the only relation I have in 
 the world, and I can't help seeing her. Poor girl ! she 's yoiuig 
 and giddy, but she doesn't mean nothing." 
 
 " Young and giddy ! " cried Jem ; " well, I don't know at what 
 time of life geese leave off their giddiness, but she 's old enough 
 to be the mother of a good many goslings. Got a boy, have they ? 
 — ha ! they 've been wanting one long enough. Got a young St. 
 James ? "Well, babies in that quarter may be made of finer sort 
 of stuff than hereabouts ; but he can hardly be a handsomer little 
 thing than young St. Giles here." Sa}ing this, Jem held out his 
 arms, and in an instant Mre. Aniseed had placed the baby in them. 
 " Well, he is a cajjital little fellow," cried Jem. " Has he done 
 sucking, I wonder ? " 
 
 " To be sure he has," averred ^Mrs. Aniseed on her own respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 "A lively little dog, isn't he ?" and Jem danced the child upon 
 his knee, and snapped his fingers at it, and the child leapt up, and 
 laughed, and crowed. And then Jem looking sadly at the infant, 
 said, " And he is like poor little Dick. I see it now, Susan ; he is 
 hke Dick." 
 
 Mrs. Aniseed made no answer ; but with great alacrity bustled 
 about the room, and prepared supper. Such preparation was soon 
 made. " Now I '11 take him — you can't eat with him in your lap," 
 she said. 
 
 " Let him be ; I '11 manage it — I used to do it once. Well, 
 well — what 's gone can't be helped. It 's no use a grie^'in', 
 Su.san, is it ? — no, not a bit. If times wasn't so bad, now — to be 
 sure he won't take much as he is ; but then he '11 gi'ow bigger, 
 and — " 
 
 " And I 'm sure he 'd be a comfort to us," cried Mrs. Aniseed, 
 •' he looks like it." 
 
 " If he isn't fast asleep — Lord ! Lord ! " cried Jem, gazing at 
 tlie child, " who to look upon a sleeping baby, and to know what 
 things are eveiy day done in the world, would ever think that all 
 men was sleeping babes once. Put it to bed. Sue ; stop a 
 minute" — and Jem tenderly kissed the child. Then turning 
 round, and looking in the fire, he said to himseif, " it is like little 
 Dick." 
 
 Though late when she went to bed, Mrs. Aniseed was an early 
 riser. She had p ppared breakfast, and had fed her baby charge 
 before her husband was stirring ; and it was plain had determined
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 13 
 
 within herself to place all things in their very rosiest light before 
 the eyes of her helpmate. She had already conned and got by heart 
 twenty arguments to prove the exceeding comfort — nay, the ulti- 
 mate profit, the child would be to them. And with these ai'gu- 
 ments simmering in her head, she moved actively about, setting 
 her room in order, at the same time expressing the most endearing 
 pantomime to the infant that lay rolhng before the fire. Never 
 since the first quarter of her honeymoon had JMrs. Aniseed shown 
 herself in sweeter temper. Bright Jem was not slow to feel its 
 influence. " Why, Susan, you 're as lively as May-day this morn- 
 ing," said he, commencing his toilette. " Where 's the little 
 chap 1 " 
 
 " There he is, bless him ! " cried Mrs. Aniseed, " and as much 
 at home as if he had been born here. Well, I don't know — I 
 never thought I could love any baby again after Dick." 
 
 " Pooh ! women can love no end o' babies," said Jem. " They 're 
 made a purpose for it." Jem seated himself to breakfest, yet ere 
 he began, recreated himself by tickling the child at his foot with 
 his forefinger, to the mutual delectation of baby and man ; 
 whilst Mrs. Aniseed, pausing in a half-cut slice of bread and 
 butter, looked over the table, quite delighted with the sport. 
 How she laughed, and how frequently she assured Jem that she 
 always said he was the best nurse in the world ! She then re- 
 mained solely attentive to the duties of the table, until Jem 
 having achieved his morning bacon, turned himself round, and 
 with his elbows upon his knees, looked thoughtfully down upon 
 the chUd. 
 
 " Well, that 's a better place than a door-step, any how," said 
 Jem, as the baby kicked before the fire. 
 
 " Yet that 's what it must come to again, Jem, if we 're hard- 
 hearted enough to turn it out." 
 
 " Humph ! It 's a shame they should be born, Sue ; a down- 
 right shame," said Jem mournfully. 
 
 " La ! how can the man talk such wickedness 1 " 
 
 " I always think so, when I see 'em running about — poor dirty 
 creturs — as if they 'd been spawned in gutter-mud." 
 
 " With nobody to teach 'em nothing ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; they all of 'em go to school, sxich as it is," cried 
 Jem bitterly. 
 
 " I 'm sure, Jem, they don't," said his wife. " There ai^'n't 
 schools enough for 'em ; and then again how many of their 
 parents don't care whether they know no more than headstrong 
 pigs ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; they all listen to a schoolmaster, I 've seen him 
 talking among 'em under gateways, and in corners, and in coui-ts,
 
 14 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 and afore shojvwuidows, and in all sorts o' places in the streets; 
 yes, a schoolmaster teaching little things — and how they do learn, 
 to be sure — no taller than that ; " and here Jem, with impressive 
 action, held up a wire toasting-fork. 
 
 " I never heard of him in the parish," said Mrs. Aniseed ; " what 
 schoolmaster do you mean ] " 
 
 " The devU, Susan, the devil : I 've seen him among the children, 
 horns, tail, and all — ha ! quite as nat'ral as he 's shown in any 
 pantomime — I 've seen him as plain as I see you ; and whilst 
 he 's been teaching 'em, I 've seen beside him Jack Ketch a grin- 
 nin', and a rubbm' his hands, and a smackm' his mouth like a 
 fellow as sees a hearty meal, and wants to fall to. I say it, Susan, 
 and T '11 stand to it — it 's a shame they 'I'e born." 
 
 " Won't it be a blessed thing to snatch this darling cretur — if 
 it doesn't look sensible as though it knew what we was talkin' of 
 — this pretty cretur from all such trouble, all such wickedness ] " 
 asked Mrs. Aniseed, moving closer to her husband. 
 
 " Why, there was little Tom Jumper " — mused Jem — " and 
 pretty Jack Needles — and that sarcy little chap, but no real harm 
 in him at first. Bob Winkin — didn't you and me know 'em all ? 
 And wasn't they all ruined afore they knew what ruin was ? 
 Where are they now ? Why, ask Newgate — ask Newgate," said 
 Jem, moodily. " And that 's what they '11 do -with you, my little 
 codger " — and Jem nodded to the infant, — " that 's what they '11 
 do with you. I can see it — though it 's a good many years off yet 
 — I can see the rope about your little neck as sure — " 
 
 " La, Jem ! " screamed Mrs. Aniseed ; and she instantly seized 
 the baby in her arms, and hugged it to her breast, as thougli to 
 protect it from impending perU. 
 
 " Why, what an old fool you are ! " said Jem, wanly smiling at 
 his wife. 
 
 " Well, you shouldn't talk in that way," answered Mrs. Aniseed, 
 " it 's tempting Providence. If you 're such a fortune-teller, and 
 can see so much, it 's a bound duty upon you, Jem, to prevent it." 
 Jem was silent : therefore his wife — true to her sex — talked on : 
 " You ought to go down upon your knees, and bless youi-self that 
 you can make this darling lamb your own, and save it." 
 
 Jem was silent a minute ; and then spoke somewhat briskly on 
 the in,spiration of a new thought. " It 's all very well about 
 lambs, my dear ; but how do we know they '11 let us have it 1 
 How do we know that its mother — " 
 
 " It hasn't no mother, Jem. I slipt out afore you woke, and 
 I run down to the watch-house, and its mother died in the night, 
 Jem ; I thought she couldn't live. It 's a hard thing to say, but 
 it 'a no loss to the child ; she 's gone, and I won't say nothing
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 15 
 
 about her ; but them as know her give her shocking words. So 
 here 's the child, Jem, a begging of you, with all its little might " 
 — and here the woman put the baby's hands together — " to take 
 it, and to do all you can for it, and to be sure that our little, 
 under such a blessing, will never grow less ; and here it is — isn't 
 it like our dear Dick, Jem ? — here it is, a praying you to take pity 
 on it, and love it, and be a father to it. And you will, Jem ? — 
 you will 1 " cried the woman, the tears commg into her eyes, as 
 she held the infant towards her husband. 
 
 Now Bright Jem was m face and figure as uncomely a lump of 
 humanity as is ordinarily met with in any one day's travel. 
 His flat broad face was the colour of ancient parchment, thinly 
 sprinkled with deep pock-marks. His mouth was capacious as a 
 horse-shoe. Short bi-ush-bristles thatched his head ; and his 
 eye-brows, clubbing together, could not have mustered fifty hairs 
 between them. His small, deep-set black eyes — truly black, for 
 there seemed no white to them — were the lamps that lighted up 
 with quick and various expression tliis most diflficult countenance ; 
 and, in the present instance, did certainly appear as though they 
 twinkled with a fii'e, direct from the heart. Jem was an ugly 
 man. He knew it. This truth had been so frequently, so earnestly, 
 so plainly impressed upon him, that — slow as most men are in 
 such belief — he could not but believe it. More : we believe that 
 he was quite contented with the creed. There are times, however, 
 when ugliness may steal a look — a tint from beauty. We believe 
 that no woman, for instance — if she marry for love — let her be 
 ugly as Sibyl, looks altogether ugly on her wedding-day. How 
 it is done, whence it comes, we have not the philosophy to fathom ; 
 but sure we are that the spirit of beauty does sometimes irradiate 
 the features of deformity, meltmg and moulding them mto mo- 
 mentaiy comeliness, — and most sure we are, that the said spirit did 
 with its best doing, shine in the countenance of Jem, as his wife 
 pressed the oi'phan child upon him. 
 
 " You '11 love it, and be a father to it ? " again cried Mrs. 
 Aniseed. 
 
 " If I don't," cried Jem, " I 'm — " but the wdfe stopped what- 
 ever word was coming, by putting the child's face to Jem's mouth ; 
 and he took the creature in his arms, and hugged it fondly, nay, 
 vigorously. 
 
 And now is young St. Giles snatched from the lowest round of 
 the ladder — (can it be Jacob'? ladder that, resting on the mud of 
 a cellar, is still to lead to heaven ?) — Now is he caught from direst 
 destitution ; from the teaching of li}'i?ocrisy, and craft, and crime, 
 to have about him comforts — though small comforts it is true ; to 
 be no longer shown, the image of poverty — a thing of human flesh
 
 16 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 and blood to extort halfpence upon ? Is he really to be promoted 
 from the foul, dark vault of a loathsome lane — savage beasts have 
 sweeter sleeping-places — to the wholesomeness, the light, the 
 airiness, the respectability of a tlu-ee-pair front, in Short's 
 Gardens ? To that very three-pair front which Kitty Muggs, 
 of St. James's-square, looks down upon from her scullery 
 with all the loftiness of coutemjit ? Yes, it is true : St. Giles 
 wiU be promoted. On the dunghill of poverty, how great the 
 distinction between the layers of straw : what a world of differ- 
 ence between base, half-waj', and summit ! There is an aristocracy 
 of rags, as there is an aristocracy of stars and garters. 
 
 Alas ! for only one minute is young St. Giles housed in his new 
 home — for only one minute is he the adopted babe of James and 
 Susan Aniseed, when he is called back to act his unconscious part 
 of mendicant, when he is reclaimed, carried away in bondage, the 
 born slave of penury and wrong. It is even so. 
 
 Before Jem had ceased caressing the child, he lieard an unusual 
 hubbub on the staircase ; another instant, and his door was flung 
 open, and a wretched, ragged woman — worn, thin, and ghastly- 
 staggered into the room, followed by other women. " My babe — ■ 
 my own babe ! " cried the first woman, and was foiling in a heap 
 upon the floor, when Jem rapidly placing the child in his wife's 
 arms, caught the intrader. Aroused, excited beyond her strength, 
 she pointed to the child, tried to speak, and then fainted. 
 
 The cause of this interruption was soon made known to Jem 
 " The dear soul had come after her child." 
 
 " Her child ! " cried Mrs. Aniseed, " She 's not the child's 
 mother, and she sha'n't have it. I saw the mother last night — 
 saw her froze to death — at least she died soon afterwards." 
 
 " Why, you see," said an old crone, " this is how it is. The 
 dear woman there, that 's the darling's mother, was sick of a fever 
 — the Lord help us, she 's sick now, and so is half the lane. WeU^ 
 you see, being so sick, she couldn't go out herself not by any 
 means. Well, and so she lends the child to Peggy FUt ; and 
 when Peg never came back at all, the poor cretur that 's there, 
 went well nigh mad. And this morning, we found at the watch- 
 house that Peg was dead, and that you had got the babe ; and 
 you see we 've come for it, and that 's all," said the harridan with 
 di])lomatic precision. 
 
 " But if she 's the mother," asked Mrs. Aniseed, " for what 
 should she lend the child ? " 
 
 " For what should she lend the chUd ! " crowed the old woman, 
 looking very contemptuously at her catechist — " for what should 
 she lend, — why in the name of blessed heaven for what else, if 
 not to go a beggmg with it i "
 
 ST. GILES AND Sl\ JAMES. 17 
 
 In fine — for why should we protract the scene 1 — voimg St. Giles, 
 the unconscious baby beggai', was borne back in ti-iumph to Hamp- 
 shire Hog Lane. 
 
 CHAPTEE ni. 
 
 It would be tedious woi-k for the reader, did we chronicle every 
 event of the long life of little St. Giles from the hour that he was 
 snatched from Short's Gardens^ imtil time beheld him in the 
 matm-e manhood of seven years old. A long hfe in sooth, that 
 six yeai-s and a half ; for how much had St. Giles accomplished in 
 it ! "Wliat a stride had he made ia existence, passing over 
 childish days — childish ignorance ; exempt, by fortune of his 
 birth, from all the puerilities, the laughing thoughtlessness of 
 babyhood. He was now a suckling, and now a dwarfed man. 
 There was no dallying pause, no middle space for him, to play 
 with life, knomng not his pla}Tiiate — no bit of green sward, with 
 flowere for toys. Oh, no ! he was made, vn.th sudden "snolence, to 
 know life. He saw not the lovely thing life, through golden 
 shadows, roseate hues ; he looked not at it thi'ough the swimming 
 eyes of childlaood ; a glorious thing to be approached through 
 what seem beauties nmnberless, that gradually fade and fade as 
 we advance upon the green uplands of time, unveiling to us by 
 degi-ees the cold, hard, naked truth — the iron image, life. St. Giles 
 had no such prepai'ation. Suddenly, and with the merciless 
 strength of want, he was made to look on life in its fiercest, foulest 
 aspect. He saw at once the gi-im idol he had to serve, and all 
 unconsciously, he served it. Unconsciously, too, he carried hi his 
 look, his air, his speech, a premature wisdom. He had learned, 
 as at once, his whole task ; but the suddenness of the teaching 
 had wiped out childhood from his face : he had paid at one 
 sum, although he knew it not, the price of Ufe, for life's worst 
 knowledge. 
 
 How very dififerently did young St. James con his lesson, life ! 
 In reality, only six months younger than his squalid brother — for 
 in this story St. Giles and St. James must fraternise — he was still 
 the veriest babe. Why, it was gladness to the heart to look at 
 him — to hear his blithe voice — to see liim, in that happy freedom 
 of infancy, when chikfren play in the vestibule of life — as children 
 sometimes play with flowers picked from graves in a church-porch ; 
 heedless whence they pluck then- pleasures, thoughtless of the 
 mystery of mysteries taught within. And what prophecies — with 
 
 c
 
 IS ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES 
 
 what "sweet breath composed" — were uttered to his glorifica 
 tion ! Wliat a man he would make ! What a blessing he would 
 prove to his begettei-s ! What a treasure to the world at large ! 
 And so, yoimg St. James, fed with the sweetest and the best, 
 clothed with the softest and the richest — fondled, kissed, caressed 
 — was, in truth, a glorious creature. There was happiness, deh- 
 cate beauty, in his soft pink and white cheek — innocence, intelli- 
 gence, in his large, laughing eyes. All he knew of the world was, 
 that it was one large play-place filled with many-sorted toys ; with 
 battledores, humming-tops, and rocking-hoi-ses. Compared with 
 young St. Giles, how very ignorant ! 
 
 In sometliing more than the six years elapsed since our last 
 chapter, St. Giles had made more profitable use of time. But theu 
 he had had the sharpest teachers — and so many opportunities ! 
 Hunger and cold were his tutors, and rapid and many are the 
 degi'ees of hiunan knowledge conferred by them, albeit their 
 scholars are not prone to brag of their learning. Young St. James 
 was bounded by the garden, or the parks ; or when he saw and 
 heard the hurry and roar of London, he took his imperfect lessons 
 fhroiigh a cai'riage-window. Now, St. GUes — the matured, seven 
 yeai's' adult — was a busy merchant on the great mai^t of men. Evei'y 
 day he cai'ricd some new lie to market, played some new part, in 
 obedience to the fiend in his bowels, that once a day at least cried, 
 " Eat, eat." And sometimes, too, the fiend would vary his cry, 
 and after long grumbling, long sufi"ering, too, would mutter, " Steal, 
 steal." And what was there in the word to apjsal St. Giles i 
 Nothing ; he had heard it so eai-ly : it was to him an old famiUar 
 sound — a household syllable. True it is, he had heard that it was 
 wi-ong to steal : he had heard many other things, too, that were 
 wi'ong ; many that were right. But somehow they were jumbled 
 in that little active brain of his. He could not separate them 
 He supposed there were some people whose business in the world 
 it was to steal ; just as there were some people born to fine houses 
 and fine clothes, — wliilst some were only born to cellars and rags. 
 And so, wicked St. GUes would pilfer — such is human iniquity — 
 with no more conscience than a magpie. 
 
 With this preface, touching the advanced yeai's and various 
 accomplishments of our heroes, let us now take up our broken 
 narrative. 
 
 One of the seven aiiiest and finest streets that compose the 
 Seven Dials— for we care not to name the exact spot — ^boasted the 
 advent of a tradesman, who employed the whole vigour of his mind, 
 and he himself thought not meanly of its power, on the manufacture 
 of muffins. At the time of our present chapter, Mr. Capstick
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 19 
 
 had only lived a twelvemonth imder the protection of St. GUes ; 
 paying the Saint due parish rates for such advantage. Where 
 Mr. Capstick came from, nobody knevr. It was plain, he was 
 one of those people who now and then di'op from the sky into a 
 neighbourhood, for no other end than to adorn and dignify it. 
 Any way, it was plain that Mr. Capstick thought as much ; and 
 he was not a man to disguise his thoughts when they at all tended 
 to his self-glorification. True it was, muffins had been known in 
 St. Giles's, ere Mr. Capstick hghted his oven there. But what 
 muffins ! How, too, were they made — where vended 1 Wliy, as 
 IVIr. Capstick would obseiwe, they were made as if they were bad 
 halfpence — and they were quite as hard to chew — ia guilt and 
 dai'kness. Nobody knew what they were eating. Now, all the 
 world might see him make Ms muffins. Indeed, he would feel 
 obliged to the world if it would take that trouble. To be sure, he 
 was throwing his muffims to swine — ^but he coukln't help that. It 
 wasn't his nature to do anything that wasn't first rate : he knew 
 he was a loser by it ; all men who did so were ; nevertheless, a 
 man who was a true man would go on ruiuing himself for the 
 world, though he might hate the world all the time he was doing 
 it. His muffins were open to the universe. There was no mys- 
 tery in him, none at all. And then he would say, glowing at 
 times with a strange eloquence, " What a glorious thing it would 
 be for the world, if every man made his muffin — whatever that 
 muffin might be — in the open light of heaven ; and not in a cup- 
 board, a hole, a corner ! It was making muffins in secret, and in 
 darkness, tliat made three parts of the misery of mankind." 
 When people heard Mr. Capstick discourse after this fashion, 
 they would confidentially declare to one another, that it was plain 
 he was born above his business : he was a broken-down gentleman ; 
 perhaps come of a Jacobite family, and made muffins to hide his 
 disgrace. True it was, there was a pompousness, a swagger, an 
 afiected contempt of the people with whom he turned the penny, 
 that gave some wai-ranty for these opinions. Notwithstanding, 
 ]yir. Capstick, with all his consequence, all his misantliropy, — and 
 he wore his hatred of mankind as he would have worn a diamond 
 ring, a thing at once to be put in the best light and to be very 
 proud of — was a great favourite. The cellars of St. Giles's echoed 
 his praises. He was, in his way, a great benefactor to his poorest 
 neighbours. " You see, Mary Anne," he would say to his wife, 
 " what a blessing there is in com. When muffins are too stale to 
 sell, they 're always good enough to give away." And these re- 
 mainder muffins he would frequently bestow upon the veriest 
 needy, accompanied with phrases that spoke his contempt of 
 human nature, his own particular nature included. 
 
 c2
 
 20 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Such was Mr. Capstick — such wa-s the self-importaut muffin- 
 maker — whom we liave now to uatroduce to the reader. The time 
 was about two o'clock on a gusty ISIaix-h afternoon ; and IMr. Cap- 
 stick stood erect beliind his comiter, e^ddently strung for some 
 important task. There was a weight of meaning in his broad, 
 white face ; and a big black cap, selected it would seem with an 
 eye to the picturesque, impending over his brow, imparted to it a 
 severity not to be lost upon vulgar beholders. Having thrust his 
 hantls and half his arms into his breeches pockets — as though to 
 place himself tirmly on his centre — the muffin-maker proceeded to 
 interrogate a child before him, speakuig very loud, tmd frowming 
 veiy significantly the while. The child, reader, was young St. Giles. 
 You left him when he was a nursling ; and the boy man stands 
 before you. He is puny and dwarfed ; a miserable little chit in 
 Lis anatomy ; but his sharp, fox-like face — ^liis small black eyes, 
 now looking bashfulness, and now brightening with impudence 
 — his voice, now coaxing, and now drawling — prove him to be an 
 almost equal match for his burly questioner, the clever, pompous, 
 world-kno\viug muffin-maker. 
 
 " So ; you are the Uttle dog that came begging of me in Bow- 
 street ? " growled Ca]3stick. 
 
 " I 'm the weny dog, sir," answered St. Giles, in no way 
 daunted by Capstick's thunder. 
 
 " Don't you know that boys oughtn't to beg 1 Don't you know 
 that I could have sent you to gaol for begging 1 Eh ? Don't 
 you know that 1 " asked the magnificent muffin-maker very 
 loudly. 
 
 " Yes, su' ; I knows it, sir," replied the child, with a wondei-ful 
 knowledge of law. 
 
 " And if you know better, why don't you do better 1 " said 
 Capstick. 
 
 " Don't know what better is, sir," returned St. Giles, looking 
 down at the floor, and shuffling his feet. 
 
 " Humph ! " mused Capstick, and then he somewhat gently 
 ariked, "should you like to learn it, my little boy 1 " 
 
 "Isn't it werry hard, sir?" inquii'ed St. Giles. "Don't like 
 hard learning, sir." 
 
 " What, you 've tried, have you 1 You have been to school, 
 eh 1 You can write a little, St. Giles, and read a little ? " said 
 the muffin-maker. 
 
 " No, sir ; never went to school ; never had time, sir. Besides, 
 8U-, father always used to say, school was so weny dummy." 
 
 " Dummy ! WTiat 's dummy 1 " cried the muflin-maker. 
 
 Young St. Giles leered up in Capstick's face, and then gi\'ing 
 himself a twist, as though enjoying the tradesman's ignorance,
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 21 
 
 said — " Not know what dummy is ! Why, sir, if you please, 
 dummy 's Jlash." 
 
 " Oh ! theu you know^as/i .? " asked Capstick. 
 
 " I know a little, sir," replied St. Giles, very modestly : " know- 
 more, when I grows bigger." 
 
 "I dare say you will," cried the muffin-maker, pityingly, 
 " And tell me, what 's your father doing now 1 " 
 
 " He 's a doing nothing now, sir." 
 
 '•' No ! " said Capstick. 
 
 " No, sir, — ^lie 's dead," said St. Giles ; but whether in sim- 
 plicity or jest, the muffin-maker did not discover. 
 
 " And you 've never been taught to do anything i Poor little 
 wretch ! " cried Capstick. 
 
 It was plain that young St. Giles rejected the compassion of 
 the muffin-maker ; for he immediately, with much volubility, 
 asserted : " I knows a good many things, sir ; sometimes, sir, 
 goes singing o' ballads with Tom Blast : was to have gone "wdth 
 him to-day ; only Tom 's so precious hoarse, crying djdng sjieeches 
 yesterday. Then I knows how to sell matches, and hold osses, 
 and do a many things, sir, as I forget now." 
 
 Capstick looked at the urchin for a few moments, then leaning 
 over the counter, and beckoning St. Giles closer, he said to him, 
 in a tone of tenderness, — " You 'd like to be a good boy, wouldn't 
 you 1 " 
 
 " A course, sir," answered St. Giles, with stolid face. 
 
 " And so be a good man ; and so at last get a nice shop, such 
 as this, eh 1 You 'd like it, eh 1 " 
 
 '• Wouldn't I though ! " cried St. Giles, playmg with his hair 
 and griiming. 
 
 " Instead of wandering about the streets — and singing ballads 
 — and going along -wdth boys, that at last may lead you to be 
 hanged ? " 
 
 " I saw Bill Filster hung, yesterday," cried St. Giles sharjily, 
 and his eyes sparkled as with the recollection of the treat. 
 
 " Oh Lord ! oh Lord ! " groaned the muffin-maker. " You 
 little rascal I who took you 1 " 
 
 "Went with some big boys," answered the unabashed St. 
 GUes. "I give Phil Slant a happle to let me set upon his 
 shoulders. Bill Filster used to live in our lane. Poor Bill ! It 
 was so prime." 
 
 The miiffiu-maker si:)asmodically whipped his cap fi-om his 
 head, and di'awiug a long breath, wiped his brows ; the wliUe he 
 looked at young St. Giles with pity, and something like bitter- 
 ness. The next moment he cried to himself. " Poor httle wa-etch ! 
 Poor httle animal ! "
 
 22 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 "I know'd Bill Filster. Ouce he lived in our lane, Oh, 
 couldn't he suig a song ! He teached me one about Dick TiU'pin. 
 Sometimes," said St. Giles, bending his small quick eyes on 
 Capstick, " sometimes people have given me a penny to sing it." 
 
 The muffin-maker made no reply ; but with a lofty waving of 
 the hand — immediately understood by St. Giles — commanded 
 silence. Then did Mr. Capstick walk up and down behind his 
 counter, self-communing. Fix his flying thoughts in words, 
 and they would read somewhat as follow : — " A little scoundi-el ! 
 Poor wretch, how can he help it ? What 's he been taught ? 
 Wrong, •vsTong ; nothing but wi'ong. There 's a manner in the 
 little villain, too, that promises something better. He's but a 
 babe ! Poor miserable thing ! and what a knowing httle rascal ! 
 Well, it won't ruin me — thank God ! — it can't ruin me." And 
 then Mr. Capstick again laid himself across the counter, and said 
 a little sternly to young St. Giles — " Come here, you sir." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said St. Giles, stepping up to the muffin-maker, 
 and looking confidently in the face of his patron. 
 
 " If I was to be your friend, and try to save you from being 
 hanf^ed — there, don't cry" — for St. Giles affecting sensibility had 
 already raised his arm to his eyes — " If I was to save you from 
 being hanged, for else you 're pretty sm-e to come to it, would you 
 be a good boy, eh 1 " 
 
 " Oh, wouldn't I, su- ! " cried St. Giles. " I jest would then." 
 
 " Well — do you think you could sell muffins ? " And this 
 question !Mr. Capstick put in a low, cautious voice, with his eye 
 turned watchfully towards the back parlour, as though he feared 
 some sudden detection. 
 
 " I should like it so ! " cried young St. GUes, rubbing his hands. 
 
 Capstick was evidently taken with the boy's alacrity for the 
 profession, for he quickly said — " Then I '11 make a man of you. 
 Yes ; I '11 set you up in business." With these words Capstick 
 produced a small ba.sket from behind the counter. " Be a good 
 boy, now," he said, " an honest boy, and this basket may some 
 day or the other grow into a big shop. Understand ; you can 
 understand, I know, for you 've a lot of brains of some sort in 
 your eyes, I can see. Understand, that if you 're civil and pains- 
 taking, your fortune 's made. This is the best chance you ever 
 had of being a man. Here 's a basket and a bell," — for in the 
 days we write of, the muffin-bell was not unmusical to legislative 
 ears — " and two dozen muffins. You '11 get two shillings for 'em, 
 for they 're baker's dozens. Then come here to-morrow ; I '11 
 Bct.you up again, and give you a lumping profit for youi'self 
 There 's the goods ;" and Cajjstick, with exceeding gravity, 
 placed the basket in one hand of St. GUes, and a smaU metal bell
 
 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 23 
 
 in the other. " Tell me, my boy, did you ever see Lord Mayor's 
 show 1 " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; many times," said the seven-year-old St. Giles. 
 
 " And the Lord Mayor in his gold coach, and the trumpeters 
 before him, and all that ? Now, attend to me" — and the muffin- 
 maker became still more grave. "Attend to me. There's many 
 a Lord Mayor who never had the start you have — ^who never was 
 so lucky to begin life upon muffins. So, when bad boys come 
 about you, and want you to idle and play with 'em, and do worse 
 than that it may be — just think of the Lord Mayor, and what 
 you may come to." 
 
 " Yes, sir, I will, sir," said young St. Giles, impatient to begin 
 business. 
 
 " Then go along with you," cried Capstick ; " and mind people 
 don 't call me a fool for trusting you. There, go," said the trades- 
 man, a little pompously — " cry muffins, and be happy ! " 
 
 St. Giles jumped from the step into the street, and rang his 
 bell, and chirped " muffins " with the energy of a young enthu- 
 siast. Capstick, with complacency upon his face, looked for a time 
 after the child ; he then muttered — " "Well, if it saves the little 
 wretch, it 's a cheap penu 'orth." 
 
 " At your old doings again ! " cried Mrs. Capstick, who from 
 the dark nook of a back pai'lour had watched, what she often 
 called the weakness of her husband. 
 
 " My dear Mary Anne," chuckled Mr. Capstick, as though 
 laughing at a good joke — " 'tis the little rascal that, I told you, 
 set upon me in Bow-street. I've given him a few of the stale ones 
 — he 's roglie enough to pass 'em off I know. Ha ! ha ! I like to 
 see the villany of life— it does me good. After, as you know, 
 what life 's done for me, it 's meat and drink to me to see crops of 
 little vagabonds coming up about us like mustard-seed — all of 'em 
 growing up to cheat and rob, and serve the world as it should be 
 served ; for it 's a bad world — base and brassy as a bad shilling." 
 And with this ostentatious, counterfeit misanthropy, would the 
 muffin-maker award to his best deeds the worst motives. And 
 Mrs. Capstick was a shrewd woman. She suffered herself to seem 
 convinced of her husband's malice of heart, — knowing as she did 
 its thorough excellence. But then the muffin-maker had been 
 bitterly used by the world. " His wine of life," he would say, 
 " had been turned into vinegar." 
 
 " Well, you '11 be ruined your own way," cried Mrs. Capstick. 
 
 " And that, Llary Anne," said the muffin-maker, " is some com- 
 fort in ruin. "When so many people would ruin us, it 's what 
 I call a triumph over the villany of the world to be ruined after 
 one's own pattern."
 
 24 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Good aftcmoou, ma'aui — why, you 're welcome as the flowers 
 in spring," said Mrs. Cajistick to a woman flauntUy dressed, and 
 bui-niug in red ribands, who suddenly entered the shop ; a woman, 
 whose appearance did scarcely suggest the beauty and tenderness 
 of spring flowci-s. " I haven't seen you these three months." 
 
 " Oh lor no ! " said the woman, " that court will be the death 
 of all of us." 
 
 Let not the reader imagine that Kitty Muggs complained of the 
 tainted air or confined limits of any court in the neighbourhood. 
 Ko, indeed ; she spoke of no other com-t than the Coui-t of St. 
 James. 
 
 " What ! Queen Charlotte will so often make you take tea with 
 her, eh?" said the muflin-man, with his severest sneer. "It's 
 too bad ; she oughtn't to be so hard upon you." 
 
 " Oh, there 's so much dining and dining — cabinet dinners, my 
 dear, they call 'em — for they always eat most when they 've most 
 to do, — that I might as well be in the galleys. However, they 're 
 all going to the play to-night, and — it 's a poor heai-t that never 
 rejoices — I 'm going there myself." 
 
 " "Well, I don't know that you could do a better thing," said 
 Capstick ; "there 's a good deal to be learnt at a play, if fools mil 
 learn an}i;hing." 
 
 " Oh ! a fiddle's end upon learning. I go for a nice deep 
 tragedy ; sometlung cutting, that will do me good. There 's 
 nothing so refreshing as a good ciy, when, my deai", you know 
 after all there 's nothing to cry about. Tears was given us to 
 enjoy oui"selves with — that is, teai's at the play-house." 
 
 "They wash out the mind, like a du-ty tea-cup," said the 
 muffin-maker, " and give a polish to the feelings." 
 
 "Tliey always do with me, Mister Capstick," said the woman. 
 " I never feel so tender and so kind to all the world as when I 've 
 had a good cry ; and, thank Heaven ! a very little makes me ci'y. 
 What we women should do, if we couldn't cry, my dear, nobody 
 knows. We 're treated bad enough as it is, but if we couldu 't 
 ciy when we liked, how we should be put upon — what poor, 
 defenceless cretui's we should be ! " 
 
 " Nature 's been vei-y kind to you," said the muffin-maker. 
 " Next to the rhinoceros, there 's nothing in the world ai-med like 
 a woman. And she knows it." 
 
 " I 'm not talking of brute beasts. Mister Capstick," said the 
 fair one, tossing lier head ; and then approaching the shoiJ-door, 
 sli'j looked uiteutly do^\^l the street. 
 
 ;Mi-s. Capstick, to change the conversation, carelessly observed 
 — " You are not looking for anybodj', Kitty ? " 
 
 " For nobody in particUu'," said Kitty, and she again gazed
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. . 25 
 
 very anxiously. " The truth is, one of oui- geutlemeu is going to 
 the play with me. We dichi 't leave the house together, for you 
 know what foolishness people talk. I told him to meet me here. 
 I 'm going to buy some muffins," she quickly added, as a justifiable 
 tradmg excuse for the liberty she had taken. 
 
 " Never mind the muffins," said Capstiek ; " if I can help you 
 to a husband in any lawful way, Kitty, why I owe the world such 
 a grudge, I '11 do anything to do it." 
 
 Kitty, in her maiden confusion, unconscious of the muffim- 
 maker's satire, merely said, " Lor ! Mr. Capstiek." 
 
 " Wliat EOi-t of a gentleman is he ? " asked Mrs. Capstiek. 
 
 " There, again," said the muffin-maker, " if it is n 't dvoU ! 
 There can 't be a woman ever so old, that, when she thinks she 
 smells a sweet-heart somewhere, does n 't snigger and grin as if 
 her own courting days were come again. Well, you are a strange 
 lot, you women ! " 
 
 " AVhat sort of a gentleman is he, Eatty 1 " repeated the un- 
 moved Mrs. Capstiek. 
 
 Kitty smiled very forcibly, and answered, " Oh, a — a dark 
 gentleman. And now, Mrs. Capstiek, let me have a shilling's- 
 worth of muffins. Dear me ! Why don't you come and live in 
 Pell Mell 1 Muffins is the only things that we haven't tip-top at 
 the West-end. You 're burying yourself here, in St. Giles 's ; 
 you are, indeed. If you 'd only come West-end — only do n 't let 
 it be known where you come from — I could put your muffins, as 
 I may say, into millions of families." 
 
 " It 's woi-th thinking of," said the sly Capstiek. " I might be 
 appointed muffin-maker to the Eoyal Family. Might jiut up the 
 Eoyal Ai-ms, with a gold toasting-fork in the lion's mouth." 
 
 " To be sure you might," said the sanguine Kitty ; " and if 
 you 've a mind to do it, I '11 speak to the cook — he 's the best of 
 friends with the butler — the butler will speak to the valet — ^the 
 valet will speak to master — and master 's only got to catch the 
 king in a good humour to do anything Avith him. I tell you what 
 do," said Kitty, as struck by a brilliant thought : " send in a 
 couple of dozen muffins to-morrow, and I '11 manage to introduce 
 'em." 
 
 " And you think his gracious Majesty 's to be got at in this way, 
 through the kitchen 1 " asked Capstiek. 
 
 " I 'm certain sure of it ; it 's done every day ; or what 's the 
 good of haraig a master in what they call a cabinet ? There 's 
 nothing like working up 'ards, Mr. Capstiek — I know what the 
 court is. I 'd have done a good deal for Jem — they call him 
 Bright Jem, but I could never see his brightness — only he 's 
 as proud as a jieacock with a Sunday tail. I could have got him
 
 26 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 — ah ! I don 't know what I couldn't have got him — ouly he 'd 
 uever let me a-sk for it. Ha ! if my foolish sister hadn't married, 
 as I may say, in the gutter, she might have been quite as well off 
 as me." 
 
 " She seems veiy happy, for all that," said Mrs. Capstick. 
 
 " Poor thing ! shS doesn't know no better," said Kitty ; " she 
 oughtn't to be happy though. I 'm going to tea with her, and to 
 take them muffins ; for though she has married a low tradesman, 
 I can't forget she 's my sister ; and yet you should hear how I 
 do get laughed at about it, sometunes in our house. But feelings 
 is feelings, Mr. Capstick. Oh ! " added Kitty with much vivacity, 
 and an affected flutter — " here comes the gentleman. Now, think 
 of what I 've said, Mr. Capstick ; there 's the shilling." And 
 Kitty, taking the muffins, turned out of the shop, meetmg a black 
 footman — black as guilt — as he was about to enter. " Here I am, 
 Cesar," said Kitty ; and taking an ebony arm, she walked with 
 him away. 
 
 " Why, bless me ! She 's never going to many a nigger ! " 
 cried the muffin-maker's wife. " She '11 never do such a thing ! 
 Eh, Mr. Capstick ? " 
 
 " Why, Mary Anne," said the misanthrope, " Miss Kitty is a 
 long way the other side of a chicken. And when women of her 
 time of life can't snow white, they '11 snow black." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 We must again solicit the company of the reader to the lodging 
 of Bright Jem, Short's Gardens. It is the same clean, dull room, 
 as sho^vn m our second chapter : one of the many nooks in which 
 the care and industry of woman do somehow make poverty and 
 •suugness half friends ; in which penury has at least the cheerful 
 hue of cleanhness. Bright Jem again smoked at the fire-place. 
 Though more than six years had passed, they had run off his face 
 like oil. Here and there his stubbly hair was dredged with grey ; 
 his Ijroad back was bent a little, notliiug more. Indeed, Jem's 
 was one of those faces, in which time seems at once to do its best 
 and worst. It grew a little bro%vner with years Uke walnut-wood ; 
 but tliat was all. 
 
 We camiot say — and in truth it is a tickhsh question to ask of 
 those who are best qualified to give an answer — if there really be 
 not a comfort in substantial ugliness : in ugliness that, unchanged, 
 will last a man his Ufe ; a good granite face in which there shall
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 27 
 
 be no wear and tear, A man so appointed, is saved many 
 alanns, many spasms of jDvide. Time cannot wound his vanity 
 through his features ; he eats, di'inks, and is merry, in despite of 
 mirrors. No acquaintance starts at sudden alteration, hinting in 
 such surprise, decay and the final tomb. He grows older with no 
 former intimates — churchyard voices ! — crying, " How you 're 
 altered ! " How many a man might have been a truer hvisband, 
 a better father, firmer friend, more valuable citizen, had he, when 
 arrived at legal matui'ity, cut off — say, an inch of his nose. This 
 inch — only an inch ! — would have destroyed the vanity of the 
 very handsomest face ; and so, driven the thoughts of a man from 
 a vulgar looking-glass, a piece of shop crystal,— and more, from 
 the fatal mirrors carried in the heads of women to reflect, heaven 
 knows how many coxcombs who choose to stare into them, — 
 driven the man to the glass of his own mind. With such small 
 sacrifice, he might have been a philosopher. Thus considered, how 
 many a coxcomb may be withna an inch of a sage ! True, there 
 was an age when -wise men — at least a few of them — glorified in 
 self-mutilation, casting sanguinary offei-ings to the bird of wisdom. 
 But this was in the freshness and youth of the world ; in the 
 sweet imiocence of early time. But the world grows old ; and 
 Uke a faded, fashionable beauty, the older it grows the more it 
 lays on the paint. 
 
 And the sum and end of this swelling paragraph is this. I^ 
 Oreader ! you are young and believe yourself handsome, avoid 
 the peril of beauty. Think of Narcissus, and — cut off your nose. 
 Only an inch ! And now let us descend to the hearth and home 
 of Bright Jem. 
 
 Mrs. Aniseed still shone, in comfortable looks, at the fire-side. 
 Her face was a httle thinner, a little longer ; but time had 
 touched her as though, for the good heart that was in her bosom, 
 he loved her. 
 
 A third person — a visitor — ^was present : a woman of any age. 
 Her face seemed bloodless — white as chalk — formed in sharp out- 
 line. She was poorly ch-est, — and yet it was plain she aimed at 
 a certain flow and ami^litude of costume that should redeem her 
 from among the •vnilgar. Her head was armed with a white stiif 
 muslin cap, frUled and pointed : it seemed a part of her ; a thing 
 growing upon her, like the crest of some strange bird. She sat 
 motionless, with her anns crossed, Uke an old figaire in faded 
 tapestry. Poor soul ! she seemed one of the remnants of another 
 age, that Time, as he clears away generations, forgets now and 
 then to gather up : or it may be, purposely leaves them foi- a while 
 as century posts of a past age. Miss Canary — such was her name 
 — was very poor ; nevertheless, she had one sustainiiig comfort,
 
 28 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 •which — a.s though it -were a cordial — she took to her heart twenty 
 times a day. It was this : " She was born a lady ; nobody could 
 deprive her of that." And it was this proud thought that, like 
 an armed knight, attended her in the gallery of Coveut Garden 
 Theatre, where, condescending to poverty, she every evening 
 ottered for sale apples and oranges, cider, and a bill of the play. 
 It was this thought of her bora gentility that kept her taciturn 
 and stately amiclst the free comments of apprentices, the wit of 
 footmen, and the giggling of holiday maids. The dignity of her 
 uttenuico, her stately bearing, had some yeai-s past obtained for 
 her the name of Lady Canaiy And she deserved it. For she 
 offered apples, oranges, cider, and a bill of the play, as though she 
 l-eally invited the gods to the fruit of the Hesperides, to the veiy 
 choices: sort of nectar, and a new poem by Apollo. There was 
 no solicitation in her tone, — but a sort of discii^lined condescen- 
 sion ; and she took the money for her commodities Avith nothing 
 of the air of a trader, but of a tax-gatherer ; or rather of a queen 
 receiving homage in the tangible form of halfpence. And all this 
 she owed to the constant thought that glorified her far beyond 
 the herouies upon the stage — (empresses for a niglit), — to the 
 possessing idea that " she was bom a lady ; and nobody could 
 deprive her of that." It was this family pride — from what 
 family she rose and declined she never told — that now engaged 
 her in, we fear, an unequal controversy with Bright Jem ; his 
 wife, oddly enough, taking no part in the debate, but sitting at 
 the fire, now smiUug and now nodding commendation of either 
 deserving party. 
 
 " No, ^Ir. James, no, 1 tell you, I was born a lady, and I 
 couldn't do it," said Miss Canary. " You are a very good man, 
 a very kind creature, Mr. Aniseed ; but excuse me, you don't 
 know what high life 's made of" 
 
 " Not all made o' sugar, I dare say," said Jem, "no more than 
 our life 's all made o' mud." 
 
 " But I ought to know ; for I tell you again, I was born a lady," 
 cried the playhouse Pomona 
 
 " Nonsense," said Jem. " I tell you, Miss Canary, there isn't 
 sich a thing as a born lady in the world." 
 
 " "Why ! you never, Mr. James ! " and Miss Canary was scan- 
 dalised at the heresy 
 
 " Born lady ! " repeated Jem, laughingly ; and then mo^ang his 
 chair towaids his disputant, he touched her mittened ami wiih 
 his i)ipe, saying—" Look here, now. There 's Mrs. Grimbles, at 
 number five, she had a little gal last week, — you know that? 
 "Well ; Mr.s. Grnuliies is a clear-starcher. That you allow ? And 
 for that reason — now tell me this. — for that reason is her little
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 29 
 
 baby bom a clear-starcher ] Eh ] I should like to know as 
 much as that now 1 " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. James ! you 're a good person, — but you know you 're 
 a low man ; no, no ; you can't iniderstand these thmgs." And 
 Miss Canary smiled a pitying smile. 
 
 " I tell you," said Jem, " there 's no such thing as born ladies 
 and gentlemen. There 's little bits of red girls and boys born if 
 you -wall, — and you may turn 'em into — now, look here," said 
 Jem, " if there was to be some folks bom gentlemen and some 
 not, — ^why wasn't there two Adams and two Eves, for the high 
 people and the low ones 1 " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. James ! " cried Miss Canary, half rising from her 
 seat — " For your precious soul's sake, I hope not ; but I do think 
 you're an athist." 
 
 " I can't tell, 1 'm sure," said Jem, not comprehending the con- 
 veyed rejDroach. " I don't know ; but as for my soul, IMiss 
 Canary, — why, I try to keep it as clean and take as good care of 
 it as a soldier takes care of his gun, so that it may be always in 
 fighting order against the enemy." 
 
 " You think so, Mr. James ; but with your notions, it 's impos- 
 sible. Oh, Mrs. Aniseed, I do wonder at you ! How you can 
 hear your good man talk as he does, and still sit laughing in that 
 way ! Ha, I bless my stars, I 've not a husband to be miserable 
 about." 
 
 " Well, I 'm sure. Miss Canary, I wish you had," said Mrs. 
 Aniseed, laughing the more, " If you was only as miserable as I 
 am, what a deal happier you 'd be ! People who live alone with 
 nobody but' a cat, — I don't know how it is, but they do get a 
 httle like their company." 
 
 " Susan," said Jem ; and taking the pipe from his moiith, he 
 looked fidl at his wife, and shook his head reprovingly. " I won't 
 have it, Susan." 
 
 " La, Jem ! Mayn't I speak in my own house ? " cried the 
 wife. 
 
 " It 's the very last place you ought to speak in, Susan, if you 
 can't speak nothing that 's comfortable. If you and Miss Canary 
 want a good bout together, why, I hope I know women too weU 
 to be nm-easonable. 'Point a place and take an early hour that 
 you may get it over in one day, and not at your own fireside, where 
 you ask a body to come and sit down cosily with you. It 's a mean 
 advantage. A wild Injun wouldn't do it." 
 
 " I 'm sure, Jem, I meant nothmg," said Mi's. Aniseed. 
 
 " That 's it, Susan ; that 's the shame and nonsense o' the thing. 
 A man might bear a good deal of noise fi'om you women — I don't 
 mean you, Miss Canary — if there was half-an-ounce of meaning
 
 30 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 in it. But when you get upon an argimeut one with another, you 
 go at it like a monkey on a drum. It 's all a row -nathout a bit 
 of tune in it. And then, nine times out o' ten, after you Ve been 
 spitting and clawing at one another, you make it up you don't 
 Imow why, and all of a sudden you 're sociable together as two 
 kittens at the same sarcer of milk. And now, Susan, my old 
 woman, get the tea." 
 
 Mrs. Aniseed, with a sudden smile on her face, called there by 
 the kindly tone of the conjugal mandate, said, " You 're a queer 
 cretur, Jem," and was about to quit the room. She paused a 
 moment at the door, and nodding significantly to Jem, said, 
 " Muffins," and then vanished. 
 
 We know not whether the word reached ]Miss Canary, but she 
 observed, with new cordiality, — " She 's a dear woman, Mr. James ; 
 and now she can't hear me, I don't mind saving it — I love her like 
 any sister." 
 
 Bright Jem said nothing, but sucked his pipe with a loud smack. 
 
 " Nothing 's a trouble to her. She 's done many things for me, 
 that I couldn't have done myself; but then, as I say, Mr. James, 
 I was bom a lady, and though I do sell fruit in the playhouse, 
 thank heaven ! I never forget myself" 
 
 " Not when your cat 's a starving ? " said Jem, drUy. 
 
 " Now, we won't talk of that agaui, Mr. James. We 've talked 
 enough about that. You may say it 's weakness — I call it a 
 proper jjride. I don't mind going with a pie to the bakehouse — 
 don't much mind answering the milk — but I can't quite forget 
 what I came of — no, nothing on earth should compel me to take 
 in the cat's-meat. Pride must stop somewhere ; and till my djdng 
 day, I stop at cat's-meat." 
 
 " Well, I 'm very glad. Miss Canary, I 'm not your mouser, — 
 that 's all," said Jem ; who was interi'upted in further sjieech by 
 the sudden appearance of his wife, who, somewhat flustered, yet 
 with laughter plajdng about her mouth, bounced into the room. 
 
 " Jem," she cried, " who do you think 's coming 1 And who 
 do you think " — and here she approached her husband, and was 
 about to whisper in his ear, when Jem drew himself majestically 
 back. 
 
 " Ish-H. Aniseed," he said, somewhat sternly, " you 've no more 
 manners than a poll parrot." 
 
 " Don't miud me," said Miss Canary rising. " I 'U go upon the 
 Landing fcir a minute." 
 
 " Don't stir a foot, ma'am," cried Jem, jumping up and handing 
 hei the chair ; then turning to his wife — " And this is your 
 breeding, — to whisper company out o' your room ! What have 
 you got to say ? "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 31 
 
 " Well, then, nothing but this — Eatty 's down stairs, come 
 to tea. And she 's brought somebody with her," said Mrs. 
 Aniseed. 
 
 " Well, poor soul ! I hope it 's a sweetheart : she 's been a 
 long while looked over, and I hope her time 's come at last. 
 Does he look like a sweetheart 1 You women can tell that." 
 said Jem. 
 
 " I don't know, I 'm sure," answered Mrs. Aniseed, and she 
 burst into a loud laugh. At the same moment, Kitty Muggs 
 entered the room all smiles and good-humour, shaking hands 
 with Bright Jem, and her esteemed acquaintance. Miss Canary ; 
 who, more than once, had sunk the recollection of her ladylike 
 origin, and visited the kitchen of St. James's as an especial guest 
 of Kitty's. 
 
 "I never saw you look so charming, Kitty — well, that bonnet does 
 become you," said Miss Canary. " And what a sweet riband ! " 
 
 " Why, Kitty, there is mischief in the wind, I 'm certain," said 
 Jem. " You 've got somebody tight at last, I can see that. Don't 
 pucker your moiith up as small as a weddin' ring, but tell us who 
 it is. I '11 give you away with all my heart and soul." 
 
 " Lor, Jem ! you are such a man. It 's only one of our gentlo- 
 men come with me ; we 're going to the play." And then a foot- 
 step was heard on the stairs, and Kitty running to the door, cried 
 encouragingly, " Come up, Cesar." Cesar obeyed the invitation, 
 and m an instant stood bowing about him on the floor. Jem was 
 twitched by a momentary surj^rise, but directly recovered him- 
 self. Laying down his pipe, he advanced with outstretched hand 
 to the negro. 
 
 " You 're welcome, my friend. Anybody as Kitty Muggs 
 biings here is welcome as she is." Jem, turning his eye, detected 
 his wife painfully endeavouring to kill a laugh by thrusting her 
 apron coi-ner into her mouth. Whereupon he repeated in a tone 
 not to be mistaken by his helpmate — " Quite welcome ; as wel- 
 come as she is." Mrs. Aniseed, thus rebuked, with a great eflbrt 
 swallowed her mirth, and immediately busied herself at the cup- 
 board. Cesar silently seated himself, and looked about him — 
 keenly relishing the cordiaUty of his reception — with a face lus- 
 trous as blackest satin. In his great contentment, he saw not 
 Miss Canaiy, who had risen from her chair, and stood still with 
 unclosed lips and wandering eyes, evidently feeling that all her 
 treasured gentility was quitting her for ever, drawn magnetically 
 from her by the presence of a negi'o. She could not stay in the 
 same room with a blackamoor — that was impossible. No ; she 
 was born a lady; and she would die rather than forfeit that 
 consolation. Bewildered, yet endeavouring to make a graceful
 
 32 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 retreat, she still remained motionless, drawn taller, as pride and 
 death will draw people. 
 
 " There 's no need of ceremony, Miss Canary," said Jem, mo^'^nw 
 the chair to her, with an emphasis — " Come, sit down, and make 
 your life happy." Without knowing what she did, ]\Iiss Canary 
 dropt in the chair ; and then vehemently hated herself for the 
 docility. Nevertheless, she would not remain in the room with a 
 negro footman. A livery was bad enough ; but a livery with a 
 black man inside it ! There was no lie she would not teU to 
 escape the degradation. 
 
 " You 're very good, Mr. James ; very kind, but I Ve such a 
 headache," said Miss Canary, " I do think my head will sijlit 
 in two." 
 
 " "Well, two heads, they say, is better than one," cried Jem, who 
 saw at once the cause of the sudden illness. 
 
 " Got a head-ache ! " exclaimed Kitty. " Where 'a my salts, 
 Cesar ? " Immediately, Cesar taking a small bottle, warm fi'om 
 his pocket, advanced towards Miss Canary, who tried to shrink 
 through the back of the chair, as the black approached her. 
 " Ta}i;e a good smell at 'em," said Kitty, " they 're fresh to-day ; 
 I had 'em for the play to-night. I never go without 'em, since I 
 was taken out a feinting." 
 
 " Never mind the salts," said Mrs. Aniseed ; " a cup of nice tea 
 will do you good." And she set the tea-things on the table. 
 
 " Yes," cried Kitty, " and I 've bi-ought you some real gun- 
 powder, some I got fi'om our own canister." 
 
 Kitty was about to consign the treasiu-e to the tea-pot, when 
 Bright Jem snatched up the vessel. " Much obliged to you 
 Kitty, all the same, but you '11 keep your gunpowder. I don't 
 make my bowels a jjlace for stolen goods, I can tell you." 
 
 " Stolen goods, Mr. Aniseed," cried Kitty , " stolen, why, it 
 was only taken." Jem, inexorable, shook his head. " Well, you 
 are such a strange man. and have such strange words for 
 tilings ! " 
 
 ■' No. Kitty, " answered Jem ; " it 's having the right words for 
 things, that makes 'em seem strange to you. I 've told you this 
 afore ; now, don't you try it again." 
 
 ilrs. Aniseed, to divert this little contest, bustled about witli 
 unwonted energy ! ringing the cups and saucers, and then calling 
 out loudly for a volunteer to toast the muffins. " Permit me, 
 marm," said Cesar, with exuberant politeness ; the whUe INIi-s. 
 Aniseed drew back the toasting-fork, declaring she could by no 
 manner of means " allow of such a thing." 
 
 " Let him do it ; he toasts beautiful," cried Katty ; and Cesar 
 gained hia wish.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 33 
 
 " 'Sense my back, marm," said Cesar, as, stooping to the fire, 
 he tux'ned his shoulders towards Miss Canary. 
 
 "Always as he is now," said Kitty in a whisper to Miss 
 Canary, "good-tempered as any dog." And then she furtively 
 pressed the forbidden gunpowder tea upon the spinster, assuring 
 her that the queen didn't drink such. Eeader, your indulgence 
 for human frailty. Miss Canary, forgetful of her ladyhood, 
 pocketed the stolen goods with the serenity of innocence. 
 
 " And so you 're a going to the play, Kitty, you and Mr. Cesar ? 
 Well, I think we shall have a good house. Of course, you go to 
 our shojj ? " said Jem. " A deep tragedy to-night. All the better 
 for you, Miss Canary, isn't it ? Well, I never could make it out ; 
 that folks should suck more oranges, and drink more beer at a 
 tragedy, than any other thing." 
 
 " It 's their feelings, Jem," said Mrs. Aniseed. 
 
 "Well, I suppose it is. Just as folks eat and drink as they 
 do at a funeral. When the feelings are stii'red up they must 
 have something to struggle with, and so they go to eating and 
 drinking." 
 
 " Romeo and Juliet 's always worth three shillings more to me 
 than any other play," said Miss Canary, gradually reconciled to 
 the black by the gunpowder. " Oranges relieve the heart." 
 
 "No doubt on it," said Jem. "Though I don't often look 
 inside the house, stUl I have seen 'em in the front row of the gallery 
 — a whole lot of full-grown women — sucking and crying, like 
 broken-hearted babbies." 
 
 " We 're all a going to-night, Jem," said Kitty, " that is, all our 
 people. My lord and my lady, and, for the first time in his Hfe, 
 the dear child. Oh, what a love of loves that babby is. But 
 you remember him, Susan ? you recollect the night he was born, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 " I should think I did," said Mrs. Aniseed. " That 's the night, 
 you know, Jem, I brought home that blessed infant." 
 
 " Blessed infant ! " gi'oaned Jem. " Ha ! he was a blessed 
 infant. And what is he now ? Why, he looks as if he had been 
 brought up by a witch, and played with nothing but devils. A 
 little varmint ! when he sometimes comes sudden upon me, he 
 makes me gasp again ; there does seem such a deal of knowing in 
 his looks. You might thread a needle with his head, it looks so 
 sharp. Poor little bit of muck ! Ha ! " and again Jem groaned. 
 
 " Ha ! the Lord knows what will become of him," cried Mrs. 
 Aniseed. 
 
 " I know what -nil] become of him," said Jem ; " the gallows 
 will become of him — ^that 's as plain as rope." 
 
 " Well, Mr. James," said Miss Canaiy — " and if they will — a 
 
 D
 
 M ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 little more siigai-, please — if they will, these little wretches, rush 
 to ilestinictiou, what 's to be done -nath 'em ? " 
 
 " Rush to destruction ! " cried Jem indignantly — " pushed, 
 driven to destruction, you mean. Now, look at that little chap — 
 see what he 's gone through. I wonder he isn't as full of wrinkles 
 as a monkey. He wasn't above six months old when we had 
 him. Well, they took him from us ; to be sure we 'd no right to 
 him ; there was his own mother, and — no matter for that. They 
 took him from us ; and for a twelvemonth after that — I 've seen 
 him now in one woman's lap, now in another's, with his pretty 
 plump face every week getting thinner and thinner — poor little 
 wi-etch ! — as though, babby as it was, it knew something of the 
 wickedness that was going on about it, and days counted double 
 days upon it. There looked a something horrible sensible in the 
 child — a knowingness that was shocking, crowded as it was into 
 its bit of a farthing face. Well, so it went on for about two years. 
 And then, I 've seen it barefoot in the mud, and heard it scream- 
 ing its little pipe like a whistle, a singing ballads. And then, 
 when it wasn't four years old, I 've seen the child with matches 
 in liis hand ; and I 've heai'd him lie and beg, and change his 
 voice up and down, and down and ujd — lord ! it has made my 
 blood turn like water to hear such cimiiing in a little cretur that 
 natur meant to be as innocent as heaven. Well, and now what 
 is he 1 At seven yeai's old, what is he 1 Why, that little head 
 of his is full of wasps as July. Now and then, a sort of look 
 comes back upon his face, as if it was a good angel looking in it, 
 — and then, away it goes, and there 'a a imp of wickedness, 
 gi-iuniug and winking at you." 
 
 " I hope we shall be in time to get a good place," said Kitty, to 
 whom the history of young St. GUes seemed a very low and 
 wicked business. " I want to get in the front row, because I do 
 want to see how that precious cretur, that dear angel, young 
 master, hkes it. Sweet fellow ! They say he 's so sensible — 
 shouldn't wonder if he knows every bit about it to-morrow. 
 There never was such a child as that in the world." 
 
 " What ! young St. James, eh 1 Well, he ought to be a nice 
 little chap," said Jem. " He 's lived the life of a flower ; with 
 nothing to do, but to let himself be nursed and coddled. He 
 hasn't had nothing to ii-on the dimples out of him yet. How- 
 somever, I shall have a look at him to-night, when I call the 
 carriage." 
 
 A few minutes more elapsed, and then there was a general move 
 •towards the theatre. Miss Canary, having suffered a promise to 
 be tortured from her that she would visit Kitty at the West-end, 
 l(;ft Short's Gardens to prepare her basket in the gallery. Bright
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 35 
 
 Jem, having heartily shaken Cesar's hand — Cesar had remained 
 silent as night during his visit, though he looked and smiled 
 all kind of grateful eloquence — departed on his customary duty ; 
 and Kitty had then nothing to do, but to persuade her sister 
 to accompany her and Cesar to the house. " I '11 pay for you, 
 Susan, so you needn't mind the expense," said Kitty. 
 
 " Oh, it isn't that." said Mrs. Aniseed, " not at all that, but — " 
 
 " Well, then, what can it be ? Jem says you may go if you 
 like, and I can see nothing to pervent you." 
 
 No, Elitty ; you cannot see. Your eyes are lost in your heart, 
 and you cannot see a footman of most objectionable blackness — a 
 human blot — an ignominious stain that the prejudices of yovxr 
 sister, kind, cordial soul as she is, shrink from as from something 
 dangerous to respectability. You, Kitty, cannot see this. You 
 merely look ujjon Cesar Gum — the only creature of all the ten 
 thousand thousand men, who in your pilgrunage through life, 
 has ever proflered to you the helping of his arm, who has evei 
 stammered, trembled, smiled at your look, and run like a hound 
 at your voice — you merely see in him a goodness, a sympathy 
 that you have yearned for ; and, for the tint of the virtue, you see 
 not that : to you it may be either black, red, or white. Certainly 
 so much has the fire of your heart absorbed the colour of youx 
 slave, that to you black Cesar Gum is fair as Ganymede. Sweet 
 magician Love ! Mighty benevolence, Cupid, that takes away 
 stains and blots — that gives the liue of beauty to zig-zag, upturned 
 noses — that smiles, a god of enchantment, in all eyes however 
 green, blinking, or stone-Hke — that gives a pouting prettiness even 
 to a hare-lip, bending it like Love's own bow! Great juggler, 
 Cupid, that fi'om his wings shakes precious dust in mortal eyes ; 
 and lo ! they see nor blight, nor deformity, nor staiu ; or see 
 them turned to ornament ; even, as it is said, the pearl of an 
 oyster is only so much oyster disease. Plutus has been called a 
 grand decorator. He can but gild ugliness ; passing off the thing 
 for its brightness. But Love — Love can give to it the shape, and 
 paint it with tints of his own mother. Plutus may, after all, be 
 only a maker of human pocket-pieces. He washes deformity 
 with bright metal, and so puts it off upon the near-sighted ; now 
 Love is an alchemist, and will, at least to the eyes and ears of 
 some one, turn the coarsest lump of clay to one piece of human 
 gold. And it was Love that, passing his rose-tipped, baby fingers 
 along the lids of Kitty Muggs, made her see white in black : it 
 was Love that, to her vision, turned ebony to ivory. 
 
 " Didn't you hear Jem say you might go ? " again cried the 
 unconscious Kitty. 
 
 " Shall be most happy, assure you marm," said Cesar, clasping 
 
 D 2
 
 3G ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES 
 
 his h.'uids, and raising tlieni entreatiugly. " Take great care of 
 you, iiebber fear." 
 
 " Well, I wall go," said Mi's. Aniseed, her repugnance conquered 
 by Cesar's good temper ; and in a few minutes — for Mrs. Aniseed 
 possessed, perhaps, that highest and most valuable of all the 
 female virtues, a vu-tue that Eve herself was certamly not born 
 with, she was a quick dresser — in a few minutes the three wei-e 
 on theii- i-oad to Covent Garden Theatre. A few minutes more, 
 and they entered the gallery. All things portended a happy 
 evening, for they were early enough for the front I'ow ; Mr. Cesar 
 Gum taking his joyful seat between the ladies. 
 
 "Mind the bottle, dear," said Kitty in a low voice to Cesar, 
 who nodded ; his eyes sparkling up at the tender syllable. " Such 
 a sweet drop of JNIadeary from oui' house, Susan ; ha ! ha ! never 
 mind Jem." 
 
 The gallery filled wath holiday-makers and gallery wits. Miss 
 Canary was soon hailed as an old acquaintance ; eveiy possible 
 dignity being tlu•o^^^l, hke roses, upon her. One apprentice begged 
 to iuquu'e of her, " When the Emperor of Chaney was coming over 
 to mai'ry her ? " Another asked her, " What she 'd take for her 
 diamond ear-rings 1 " But beautiful was it to behold the nun-like 
 serenity of Miss Canary. She moved among her scoffers, silent 
 and stately, as the ghost of a departed countess. " I mind 'em no 
 more," she observed, as in the coui-se of her vocation she approached 
 Mrs. Aniseed, " no more than the heads of so many door-knockers." 
 Cesar mutely acquiesced in tliis wisdom ; and in an evil hour 
 for him, turnuig a wrathful face upon the revilers, he diverted 
 all their sport from Miss Canary to himself " BiU," cried one, 
 " isn't it going to thunder ? It looks so very black." " I wish I 
 was a nigger," roared another, " then I 'd be a black rose atween 
 a couple of lilies, too." And then other pretty terms, such as 
 " snowball," " powder-puff," were hurled at Cesar, who sat and 
 gi-inned in helpless anger at the green curtain. And then poor 
 Mrs. Aniseed ! she shifted on her seat, and felt as if that terrible 
 liui-ning-glass which brings into a focus the rays of " the eyes of 
 all the world " was upon her, and she was being gradually scorched 
 to tinder. At length the tragedy, "George Barnwell," begtin, 
 Kitty was now melted by George, and now put in fever-heat by 
 Millwood, of whom, leaning back to speak to Mrs. Aniseed, she 
 confidently observed, " I 'd have such creturs tore by wild osses." 
 To this jNIrs. Aniseed, reciprocating the humanity, curtly repUed, 
 " And so would I, dear." 
 
 Tlie second act passed, when Kitty exclaimed, in a spasm of 
 deliglit, " There he is ; there 's little master. Look at him, Susan 
 —a sweet cretur," and Kitty pointed out a beautiful child, who,
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 37 
 
 with its mother and father, had just entered the boxes. The 
 child was superbly di'essed, and when he entered wore a white 
 beaver hat, with a large plume of jjink and white feathers. 
 " There he is," again cried Kitty ; " we must di'ink his health." 
 Whereupon Cesar produced the bottle, and the health of young 
 St. James — he all the while unconscious of the honour — was drunk 
 in Madeira from his paternal dwelling. 
 
 The play proceeded, and Kitty wept and sucked oranges — and 
 wept, and snifted salts, and fifty times declared it was too deep ; 
 she 'd never come again — and then sucked another orange — and 
 then, when the play was over, said she was glad it was done, 
 though she had never enjoyed herself half so miich. And then 
 she said, " After all, I think a good cry sometimes does tis good ; 
 it makes us remember we are human creturs. But oh, that 
 Millwood, Susan. When women are bad — to be sure it 's so very 
 seldom! — I'm afraid they beat the men." Every tear, however, 
 shed by Kitty at the play, was recompensed by a roaiing laugh 
 at the farce. And, at length, bnmful of haj^piness — all being 
 over — the party rose to go home. " Let 's see 'em get into the 
 carriage — ^they needn't see us," said Kitty ; and hurriedly they 
 quitted the gallery, and ran round to the box-door. 
 
 Bright Jem was in the very heat of action ; his mouth musical 
 with noblest names. Dukes, Marquesses, and Earls fell from his 
 lips, as he called carriage after carriage. 
 
 " Mai'quess of St. James's carriage," at length he cried with 
 peculiar emphasis ; and a superb equipage rolled to the door. 
 The Marquess and Marchioness entered the vehicle, and a foot- 
 man, Hfting in the child, in his awkwardness knocked oif the boy's 
 superb hat : it rolled along the stones, and — was gone. 
 
 There was a sudden astonishment, and then a sudden cry of 
 " Stop thief ! " Constables, and Cesar, who with Mrs. Aniseed 
 and Kitty, had been looking on, gave chase ; and in a few minutes 
 retm-ned with, the hat and the culj^rit, who, as it appeared, 
 darting from under the horses' legs to the pavement, had caught 
 up the j^roperty. 
 
 " Here 's the hat, my lord," cried a constable, " and here 's the 
 little thief" 
 
 " Lord have mercy on us ! " cried Mrs. Aniseed, " if it isn't 
 that wretched child ! " 
 
 " I know'd it ! I always said it," cried Jem, almost broken- 
 hearted. " I know'd he 'd come to it — I know'd it ! " 
 
 It was even so. Young St. Giles was the robber of young 
 St. James.
 
 38 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 Short was the distance fi-om Covent Garden Theatre to Covent 
 Garden watch-house ; and, therefore, in a few minutes was yoimg 
 St. Giles arraigned before the night-constable. Cesar Gum had 
 followed the offender as an important witness against him ; whilst 
 Bright Jem and his wife attended as sorrowing friends of the 
 prisoner. Kitty Muggs was of the party ; and her indignation 
 at the wrong committed "on so blessed a baby" — we mean, oi 
 course, St. James — would have burst forth in loudest \itterance 
 had she not been controlled by the moral influence of Bright Jem. 
 Hence, she had only the small satisfaction of declaring, in a low 
 voice, to her sister, " that the little wretch would be sure to be 
 hanged — for he had the gibbet, every bit of it, in his countenance." 
 With this consolation, she suffered herself to be somewhat 
 painful. " The Lord help him ! " cried Mi"s. Aniseed. " Well, 
 you ought to be ashamed of yourself to say such a thing ! " 
 whispered Kitty Muggs. 
 
 Bright Jem was sad and silent. As Cesar, with unusual glib- 
 ness, naiTated the capture of the prisoner with the stolen property 
 upon lum, poor Jem, shading his eyes "with his hand, looked 
 mournfully at the pigmy cvilprit. Not a word did Jem utter • but 
 the heart-ache spoke in his face. 
 
 " And what have you got to say to this 1 " asked the night- 
 constable of St. Giles. "You 're a young gallows-bird, you are ; 
 hardly out of the shell, yet. What have you got to say ? " 
 
 " Why, I didn't take the at," answered yoimg St. Giles, fixing 
 liis sharp black eyes full on the face of his interrogator, and 
 speaking as though he repeated an old familiar lesson, " I didn't 
 take it : the at rolled to me ; and I thought as it had tumbled out 
 of a coach as was going on, and I iim arter it, and calling out, if 
 nolx)dy had lost a at, when that black gentleman there laid hold 
 on me, and said as how I stole it. How could I help it, if the at 
 would roll to me ? I didn't want the at." 
 
 " Ha ! " said the constable, " there 's a good deal of wickedness 
 crammed into that little skin of yours — I shall lock you up. 
 There — ^go in with you," and the constable pointed to a cell, 
 the door of which was already opened for the reception of the 
 prisoner. 
 
 And did young St. Giles quail or whimper at his prison
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 39 
 
 threshold ? Did his yoiing heart sink at the gloomy dungeon ? 
 Oh no. Child as he was, it was plain he felt that he was acting 
 a part : he had become in some way imj^ortant, and he seemed 
 resolved to rise with the occasion. He had listened to tales of 
 felon fortitude, of gallows heroism ; and ambition stirred within 
 him. He had heard of the Tyburn humourist, who, with his 
 miserable jest in the jaws of death, cast his shoes from the cart, 
 to thwart an oft-told prophecy that he would die shod. All 
 these stories St. Giles had listened to, and took to his heart as 
 precious recollections. While other childi-en had conned their 
 books — and wiitten maxim copies — and learned their catechism, 
 — St. Giles had learned this one thing — to be "game." His 
 world — the world of Hog Lane had taught him that ; he had 
 listened to the counsel from lips with the bloom of Newgate on 
 them. The foot-pad, the pickpocket, the burglar, had been his 
 teachers : they had set him copies, and he had wiitten them in 
 his brain for life-long wisdom. Other little boys had been taught 
 to " love their neighbour as themselves." Now, the prime ruling 
 lesson set to yoimg St. Giles was " honour among thieves." Other 
 boys might show rewarding medals — precious testimony of their 
 schooltime work ; young St. Giles knew nothing of these ; had 
 never heard of them ; and yet unconsciously he showed what to 
 him was best evidence of his worth : for at the door of his cell, he 
 showed that he was "game." Scarcely was he bidden to enter 
 the dungeon, than he turned his face up to the constable, and his 
 eyes t^^-inkling and leering, and his little mouth quivering with 
 scom, he said — " You don't mean it, Mister ; I know you don't 
 mean it 1" 
 
 " Come, in with you, ragged and sarcy ! " cned the constable. 
 
 " Well, then," said the urchin, " here goes — good night to you," 
 and so sajong, he flung a summerset into the cell : the lock was 
 tiUTied, and Bright Jem — fetching a deep groan — qiiitted the 
 watch-house, his wife, sobbing aloud, and following him. 
 
 " What can they do to the poor child 1 " asked Mrs. Aniseed of 
 Jem, as the next morning he sat silent and sorrowful, with his 
 pipe in his mouth, looking at the fire. 
 
 " Why, Susan, that 's what I was thinking of Wliat can they 
 do with him 1 He isn't old enough to hang ; but he 's quite big 
 enough to be whipped. Bridewell and whipping ; yes that 's it, 
 that 's how they '11 teach him. They '11 make Jack Ketch his 
 schoolmaster ; and nicely he '11 learn liim his lesson towards 
 Tyburn. Tlie old stoiy, Susan — the old story," and Jem drew 
 a long sigh. 
 
 "Don't you tliink, Jem, something might be done to send 
 him to sea ? He 'd get taken away from the bad people about
 
 40 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES 
 
 him, and who knows, might after all turn out a bright man." 
 Such was the hopeful faith of Mrs. Aniseed. 
 
 " Why, there's sometbuig in that to be sure. For my part, 
 I think that 's a good deal what the sea was made for — to take 
 away the offiil of the hxnd. He might get cured at sea ; if we 
 could get anybody as Avould take him. I 'm told the sea does 
 wondei*s, sometimes, with the morals of folks. I 've heard of 
 thieves and rogues of all sorts, that once aboard ship, have come 
 round 'straordinary. Now, whether it 's in the salt water or the 
 bo'swains, who shall say 1 He wouldn't make a bad drummer 
 neither, with them little quick fists of his, if we could get him in 
 the army." 
 
 " Oh, I 'd rather he was sent to sea, Jem," cried Mrs. Aniseed, 
 " then he 'd be out of harm's way." 
 
 " Oh, the array reforms all sorts of rogues, too," averred Jem. 
 "Sometimes they get their morals pipeclayed, as well as their 
 clothes. Wonderful what heroes are made of, sometimes. You 
 see, I suppose, there 's something in some parts of the trade that 
 agi*ees with some folks. When they storm a tovra now, and take 
 all they can lay their hands on, why there 's all the pleasure of 
 the robbery without any fear of the gallows. It 's stealing made 
 glorious with flags and drums. Nobody knows how that little 
 varmint might get on." 
 
 Here Jem was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a 
 woman hung with rags and looking prematurely old. ]\Iisery 
 and \4ce were in her fixce, though the traces of CAdl were for the 
 time softened by sorrow. She was weeping bitterly, and with 
 clasped, trembling hands, ran into the room. It was the -svi-etched 
 mother of young St. Giles ; the miserable woman who more 
 tlian six years before had claimed her child in that room ; wlio 
 had borne her victim babe away to play its early part in 
 wretchedness and deceit. She had since frequently met Jem, 
 but always hurried from him. His reproofs, though brief, were 
 too significant, too searching, for even her shame to encounter. 
 " Oh, Jem ! Jem ! " she cried, " save my dear child — save my 
 innocent lamb." 
 
 " Ha ! and if he isn't innocent," ci-ied Jem, " whose fault 's 
 that ? " 
 
 " But lie is — he is," screamed the woman. " You won't turn 
 agin him, too ? He steal anj-thiug ! A precious cretm- ! he might 
 be trusted with untold gold ! " 
 
 " Woman," said Jem, " I wouldn't like to hurt you in your 
 trouble ; but havn't you no shame at all 1 Don't you know what 
 a bit of ti-uth is, that even now you should look in my face, and 
 tell me sucli a wicked lie ? "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 41 
 
 " I don't, Jem — I don't," vociferated the woman. " He 's as 
 mnocent as the babe unborn." 
 
 " Why, so he is, as far as he knows what 's right and what 's 
 WTong. He has innocence : that is, the innocence you 've taught 
 him. Teach a child the way he should go," cried Jem, in a tone 
 of some bitterness, " and you 've taught him tlie way to Newgate. 
 The Lord have mercy on you ! "What a sweet babby he was, 
 when six year and a half ago you took him from this room, — and 
 what is he now 1 Well, well, I won't pour water on a ch-owned 
 mouse," said Jem, the woman crying more vehemently at liis 
 rebuke, " but how you can look in that cliild's face, and arterwards 
 lock up at heaven, I don't know." 
 
 " There 's no good, not a ha'porth in all this preaching. All we 
 want to know is this. Can you help us to get the young 'un out 
 o' trouble." This reproof and inteiTogation were put in a hoarse, 
 sawing voice by a man of about five-and-thirty, who had made 
 his appearance shortly after St. Giles's mother. He was di'essed 
 in a coat of Newgate cut. His hat was knowingly slanted 
 over one eyebrow, his hands were in his pockets, and at short 
 inteiwals he sucked the stalk of a prinrrose that shone forth 
 in strong relief fi'om the black whiskers and week's beared sur- 
 rounding it. 
 
 "And who are you ?" asked Jem, in a tone not very encou- 
 raging of a gentle answer. 
 
 " That 's a good un, not to know me. My name 's Blast — Tom 
 Blast ; not ashamed of my name," said the owner, still champing 
 the i^rimrose. 
 
 " No, T dare say not," answered Bright Jem. " Oh, I know 
 you now. I 've seen you with the boy a singing ballads." 
 
 " I should think so. And what on it 1 No disgrace in that, 
 eh ? I look upon myself as respectable as any of your folks 
 as sing at yom- fine play-house. What do we all pipe for but 
 money ? Only there 's this diiference ; they gets pounds — and 
 I gets half-pence. A singer for money 's a singer for money, — ■ 
 whether he stands upon mud or a carpet. But all 's one for that. 
 What 's to be done for the boy '? I tell his mother here not to 
 worry about it — 'twont be more than a month or two at Bride- 
 well, for he 's never been nabbed afore : but it 's no use a talking 
 to women, you know ; she won't make her life happy, no how 
 So we 've come to you." 
 
 " And what can I do ? " asked Jem — " I 'm not judge and jury, 
 am I ] " 
 
 " Why, you know Capstick, the muffin-man. Well, he 's a 
 householder, and can put in a good word for the boy ^v•ith the 
 beak. I suppose you know what a beak is ] " said Thomas Blast,
 
 42 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 ■with a satirical twist of the lip. " Not too fine a gentleman to 
 know that ? " 
 
 " Why, what does Capstick know of little St. Giles ? " asked 
 Jem. 
 
 " Oh, Jem," said the woman, " yesterday he stood his friend. 
 He 's a strange cretur, that Capstick ; and often does a poor soul 
 a good turn, as if he 'd eat hira up all the while. Well, yesterday 
 arternoon, what does he do but give my precious child — my 
 innocent babe — two dozen muffins, a basket and a beU." 
 
 " I see," cried Jem, with glistening eyes, " set hun up in trade. 
 God bless that muffin-man ! " 
 
 " That 's what he meant, Jem ; but it wasn't to be — it wasn't 
 to be," cried the woman with a sigh. 
 
 "No — it warn't," coiToborated Mr. Blast. "You see the 
 yoimg un — all agog as he was — brought the muffins to the lane. 
 Well, we hadn't had two dinners, I can tell you, yesterday ; so 
 we sells the basket and the bell for sixpenn'orth of butter, and 
 did'nt we go to work at the muffins." And Mr. Blast seemingly 
 spoke with a most satisfactory recollection of the banquet. 
 
 " And if they 'd have pisoned all of you, served you right," 
 cried Jem, with a look of cHsgust. " You will kill that child — 
 you won't give him a chance — you will kill him body and soul." 
 
 " La, Jem ! how can you go on in that way 1 " cried the 
 mother, and began to weep anew. " He 's the ajjple of my eye, 
 is that dear child." 
 
 " None the better for that by the look of 'em," said Jem. 
 " Howsomever, I 'U go to Mr. Capstick. Mind, I don't want 
 neither of you at my heels ; what I 'II do — I '11 do by myself," 
 and without another word, Bright Jem took his cap, and uncere- 
 moniously passing his ^^sitors, quitted the room. His wife, 
 looking coldly at the new comers, intimated a silent wish that 
 they would follow him. The look was lost upon Mr. Blast, for 
 he immediately seated himself; and seizing the poker, with easiest 
 familiarity beat about the embers. Mrs. Aniseed was a heroic 
 woman. Nobody who looked at her, whilst her ^isitor rudely 
 disturbed her coals, could fall to perceive the struggle that went 
 on within her. There are housewives whose very heartstrhigs 
 seem connected with their pokers ; and Mi"s. Aniseed was of 
 them. Hence, whilst her visitor beat about the grate, it was at 
 once a hard and delicate task for her not to spring upon him, 
 and wrest the poker from his hand. She knew it not, but at that 
 moment the gentle spirit of Bright Jem was working in her ; 
 subduing her aroused passion with a sense of hospitality. 
 
 "A shar]! spring this, for poor people, isn't it, Mrs. Aniseed ? " 
 ohsei-ved Mr. Bliust. " It seems quite the tail of a hard winter
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 43 
 
 doesn't it ? " IVIi-s. Aniseed tried to smUe a smile — siie only 
 shivered it. " Well, I must tur-n out, I 'spose ; though I havn't 
 nothing to do tUl night — then I think I shall try another murder : 
 it 's a long while since we Ve had one." 
 
 " A matter of two months," said the mother of St. Giles, " and 
 that turned out no great things." 
 
 "Try a murder," said Mrs. Aniseed, with some apprehension, 
 " what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Oh, there '11 be no blood spilt," answered Mr. Blast, " only a 
 bit of Grub-street, that 's all. But I don't know what 's come to 
 the people. They don't snap as they used to do. Why, there 's 
 that Horrible and Particular- Account of a Bear that was fed 
 upon Young Children in Westminster : I 've known the time 
 when I 've sold fifty of 'em afore I 'd blown my horn a dozen 
 times. Then there was that story of the Lady of Fortin that 
 had left Twins in the Cradle, and run off with her Husband's 
 Coachman — that was a sure crown for a night's work. Only a 
 week ago it didn't bring me a groat. I don't know how it is ; 
 people get sharper and sharper, as they get wickeder and 
 wickedei*." 
 
 " And you don't think it no hann, then," said Mrs. Aniseed, 
 " to make bread of such lies ? " 
 
 " What does it signify, Mrs. Aniseed, what your bread 's made 
 on, so as it 's a good colour, and plenty of it 1 Lord bless you ! 
 if you was to take away all the hes that go to make bread in this 
 town, you 'd bring a good many peck loaves down to crumbs, 
 you would. What 's the difference atween me and some folks in 
 some newspapers 1 Why this : I sells my lies myself, and they 
 sell 'em by other people. But I say, Mrs. Aniseed, it is cold, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 Mrs. Aniseed immediately jumped at the subtle purjiose of the 
 question ; and only replied — " It is." 
 
 " A drop o' something would'nt be bad such a mornin as this, 
 would it ? " asked the unabashed guest. 
 
 " La ! Tom," cried St. Giles's mother, in a half-tone ot 
 astonishment antl deprecation. 
 
 " I can't say," said Mrs. Aniseed : " but it might be for them 
 as like it. I should suppose, though, that this woman — if she 's 
 got anj'thiug of a mother's heart in her — is thinking of some- 
 thing else, a good deal more precious than drink." 
 
 " Yon may say that," said the woman, lifting her apron to her 
 unwet eye. 
 
 " And, there 's a good soul, do — do when you get the dear chUd 
 home again — do keep him out of the streets ; and don't let him 
 go about singing of ballads, and — "
 
 44 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Tliat 's all mighty fine, Mrs. Aniseed," said Mr. Blast, who 
 foiled in his drink, became suddenly independent in liis language, 
 — " aU mighty fine : but, after all, I should think singing ballads 
 a little more genteel than bawling for coaches, and making dirty 
 money out of fogs, and pitch and oakum. A ballad-singer may 
 hold his head up with a linkman any day — and so you may tell 
 Jem, when you see hitu. Come along," and Mr. Blast twitched 
 the woman by the arm — " come along : there 's nothing to be got 
 here but preaching — and that will come in time to aU of us." 
 
 " Don't miud what he says," whispered St. Giles's mother to 
 Mrs. Aniseed, " he 's a good cretur, and means nothing. And 
 oh, Mrs. Aniseed, do all you can with ]Mr. Capstick for my inno- 
 cent babe, and I sha'n't say my prayers without blessing you." 
 With this the unwelcome visitors departed. 
 
 We must now follow Bright Jem to the house of the muffin- 
 man. Jem had already told his errand to Mr. Capstick ; who, 
 with evident sorrow and disappointment at his heart, is endea- 
 vouring to look like a man not at all sui'prised by the story related 
 to him. Oh dear no ! he had quite expected it. " As for what I 
 did, Ml'. Aniseed " — said Cajjstick — " I did it with my eyes open. 
 I knew the httle vagabond was a lost wretch — I could read that 
 in his face ; and then the muffins were somewhat stale muffins — 
 so don't think I was tricked. No : I looked upon it as some- 
 thing less than a forlorn hope, and I won't flatter myself ; but 
 you see I was not mistaken. Nevertheless, Mr. Aniseed, say 
 nothing of the matter to my wife. She said — not knowing my 
 thoughts on the business — she said I was a fool for what I did : 
 so don't let her know what 's happened. When women find out 
 they 're right, it makes 'em conceited. The little ruffian ! " cried 
 Capstick with bitterness — " to go stealing when the muffins might 
 have made a man of him." 
 
 " Still, ]Mi". Capstick," urged Jem, " there 's something to be 
 said for the poor child. His mother and the bad uns in Hog Lane 
 wouldn't let him have a chance. JTor when St. Giles ran home — ■ 
 what a place to call home ! — they seized upon the muffins, and 
 tui-niug the bell and basket iuto butter, swallowed 'em without 
 so much as winking." 
 
 "Miserable little boy ! " exclaimed the softened Capstick, — and 
 then he gi-oaned, " Wicked wretches ! " 
 
 "That's true again," said Jem: "and yet hunger hardly 
 knows right from -rn-ong, Mr. Capstick." 
 
 Capstick made no answer to this, but looking in Jem's face, 
 drew a long breath. 
 
 " And about the boy 1 " said Jem, " he 's but a chick, is he, to 
 go to gaol 1 "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 45 
 
 " It 's no use — it 's all no use, Mr. Aniseed ; we 're only throw- 
 ing away heaven's time upon the matter ; for if the little rascal 
 was hanged at once — to be sure, he is a little young for that — 
 nevertheless I was about to say," — and here the muffin-man, 
 losing the thread of his thoughts, twitched his cap from his head, 
 and passed it from right hand to left, and from left to right, as 
 though he thought in such exercise to come plump again upon the 
 escaped idea — " I have it," at length he cried. " I was about to 
 say, as I 've an idle hour on hand, I '11 walk ■wdth you to Lord 
 St. James, and we '11 talk to him about the matter." 
 
 Now Bright Jem believed this of himself; that ia a good cause 
 he would not hesitate — at least not much — to speak to his 
 Majesty, though in his royal robes and with his royal crown upon 
 his head. Nevertheless, the ease, the perfect self-possession, with 
 which Capstick suggested a call upon the Marquess of St. James 
 obtained for him a sudden respect from the linkman. To be 
 sure, as we have before indicated, there was something strange 
 about Capstick. His neighbours had clothed him with a sort 
 of mystery ; hence, on second thoughts. Bright Jem believed it 
 possible that in happier days the muffin-man might have talked 
 to marquesses, 
 
 '• Yes," said Capstick, taking off his apron, " we '11 see what 
 can be done with his lordship. I '11 just whip on my coat of 
 audience, and — hush ! — ^my wife," and Mrs. Capstick stirred in 
 the back parlour. " Not a word where we 're going. Not that I 
 care a straw ; only she 'd say I was neglecting the shop for a pack 
 of vagabonds : and perhaps she 's right, though I wouldn 't own it. 
 Never own a woman 's right ; do it once, and on the veiy conceit 
 of it, she '11 be always wrong for the rest of her life." With this 
 apophthegm, the muffin-maker quitted the shop, and immediately 
 his wife entered it. 
 
 " Glad to see your sister looking so well, Mr. Aniseed," said 
 Mrs. Capstick, somewhat slily. 
 
 " Oh ! what, you mean Kitty ? ^Tiy, she looks as well as she 
 can, and that isn't much, poor soul," said Jem. 
 
 " She was here yesterday, and bought some muffins. A dark 
 gentleman was with her," said Mrs. Capstick. 
 
 " You mean the black footman," observed Jem, drojaping at 
 once to the cold, hard truth. 
 
 " WeU," and Mrs. Capstick giggled, as though communicating 
 a great moral discovery, " well, there 's no accounting for taste, is 
 there, Mr. Aniseed 1 " 
 
 " No," said Jem, " it was never meant to be accounted for, I 
 suppose ; else there 's a lot of us would have a good deal to answer 
 about. Taste, in some things, I suppose, was given us to do what
 
 46 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 we like with ; but, IMrs. Capstick, now and then we do sartainly 
 ill-use the privilege." 
 
 '• Lor, Mr. Capstick ! where ai-e you going so fine ?" asked his 
 spouse of the muffin-maker, as he presented himself in his best 
 coat, and swathed in a very voluminous neckcloth. " Going to 
 court ? " 
 
 " You see," said Capstick, " a man — a wretch, a perjm-er, is to- 
 day put in the pillory." 
 
 " And wliat 's that to you, Mr. Capstick 1 " asked his wife. 
 
 " Wliy, Mary Anne, as a moral man — and, therefore, as a man 
 who respects his oath, I feel it my duty to go and enjoy my egg." 
 With this excuse — worthy of a Timon — did the muffin-maker take 
 his way towards the mansion of Lord St. James. " It 's a hai'd 
 thing," said Capstick on the road, " a hard thing, that you can't 
 always tell a wife the truth." 
 
 " I always tell it to my old woman," observed bright Jem. 
 
 " You 're a fortunate man, sii'," said Capstick. " All women 
 can't bear it : it 's too strong for 'em. Now, !Mrs. Capstick is an 
 admii'able person — a treasure of a wife — never know what it is to 
 want a button to my shirt, never — stiU, I am now and then 
 obliged to sacrifice truth on the altar of conjugal peace. It makes 
 my heart bleed to do it, ]Mr. Aniseed : but sometimes it is done." 
 
 Bright Jem nodded as a man will nod who thinks he catches a 
 meaning, but is not too sure of it. " And what will you say 1 " 
 asked Jem, after a moment's pause — " what wUl you say to his 
 lordship, if he '11 see you ? " 
 
 Mr. Capstick cast a cold, self-complacent eye upon the link- 
 man, and rejilied — " I shall trust to my inspiration." Jem softly 
 whistled — unconscious of the act. [Mr. Capstick heard, what he 
 deemed a severe comment, and majestically continued : " Mr. 
 Aniseed, you may not imagine it — but I have a gi'eat eye for gin- 
 gerbread." 
 
 " No doubt on it, Mr. Capstick," said Jem, " it 's a part of your 
 business." 
 
 " You don't understand me," replied the muffin-maker with a 
 compassionate smile. " I mean, my good man, the gingerbread 
 that makes up so much of this world. Bless your heart ; I pride 
 myself, upon my eye, that looks at once through all the gilding — 
 all the tawdry, glittering Dutch metal — that covers the cake, and 
 goes at once to the flour and water." 
 
 " I don't see what you mean, by no means," said Jem ; " that 
 is, not quite." 
 
 ^' Look here, sir," said Capstick, with the air of a man who had 
 made himself up for an oration. " What is that pile of brick 
 before us ? "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 47 
 
 " Why that you know as well as me," answered Jem ; " it '3 
 St. James's Palace." 
 
 "And there lives his gi'acious Majesty, George the Third. 
 Now, I dare say, Mi-. Aniseed, it 's very difficult for you to look 
 upon his Majesty in what I shall beg leave to call a state of 
 nature 1 " 
 
 " What ! like an injun ? " asked Jem. " Well, I must say, I 
 can hardly fancy it." 
 
 " Of course not. When you hear of a king, he comes upon 
 you in velvet and fiir, and with a crown ujDon his head — and 
 diamonds blazing upon him — and God knows how many rows of 
 lords about him — and then all the household guards — ^and the 
 state coach — and the state trumpets, and the thundering guns, 
 and the ringing bells — all come upon your mind as a piece and 
 pai'cel of him, making a king something tremendous to consider — 
 something that yovi can only think of with a kind of fright. Is 
 it not so ? " asked the muffin-maker. 
 
 Jem merely answered — " Go on, Mr. Capstick." 
 
 " Now I feel nothing of the sort, I know the world, and despise 
 it," said the muffin-maker. 
 
 " I '11 take your word for anythhig but that," cried Jem. " But 
 go on." 
 
 " I teU you, sir, I hate the world," repeated Capstick, proud of 
 what he thought his misanthropy : " and of sweet use has such 
 hatx'ed been to me." 
 
 Bright Jem cast an incredulous leer at the muffin-man. " I 
 never heard of the sweetness of hatred afore. I should as soon 
 looked for honey in a wasp's nest." 
 
 " Ha ! Jem, you know nothing ; else you 'd know how a con- 
 tempt for the world sharpens a man's wits, and improves his eye- 
 sight. Bless you ! there are a thousand cracks and flaws and 
 fly-spots upon everything about us, that we should never see 
 without it," said Capstick. 
 
 " Well, thank God ! I 'm in no need of such spectacles," said 
 Bi'ight Jem. 
 
 " And for that very reason, Jem," said the muffin-maker, " you 
 are made an every-day victim of — for that reason your very soul 
 goes doA\'n upon its knees to things that it 's my especial comfort 
 to despise. You haven't the wit, the judgment, to separate a man 
 fi'om all his worldly advantages, and look at him, as I may say, 
 in his very nakedness — a mere man. Now Jem, that is the power 
 I especially pride myself upon. Hence," continued the muffin- 
 maker, and he brought himself up fronting the palace, and 
 extended his right arm towards it — " hence I can take an emperor 
 ft'om his crowd of nobles — his troops —his palace walls — ^his royal
 
 48 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 robes, — ^and set him before me just as God made liim. As I 'd 
 take a cocoa-nut, and tear away the husk, and crack the shell, 
 and ])are the inner i-ind, and come at ouce upon the naked kernel, 
 — so, Mr. Aniseed, can I take, — aye the Great Mogul, — and set 
 him in his shivering flesh before me." 
 
 "And you think the knack to do this does you good?" modestly 
 inquired Bright Jem. 
 
 "It 's my solace, my comfort, my strength," answered the 
 muffin-maker. " And this knack, as you have it, is what I caU 
 seeing through the gold upon the gingerbread. Now, isn't it 
 dreadful to think of the thousands upon thousands who everyday 
 go down upon tlieir knees to it, beUe\"ing the gilded paste so much 
 solid metal 1 Ha, Mr. Aniseed ! we talk a good deal aboiit the 
 miserable heathen ; the poor wretches who make idols of croco- 
 diles and monkies, — but Lord bless us ! only to think in this 
 famous city of London of the thousands of Christians, as they 
 call themselves, who after all are idolaters of gilt gingerbread ! " 
 
 " Poor souls ! " said Jem, in the fulness of his charity, " they 
 don't know any better. But you haven't answered what I asked ; 
 and that 's tliis. What wiU you say to his lordship if he '11 see 
 you ? " 
 
 " Say to him ? I shall talk reason to him. Bless you ! I shall 
 go straight at the matter. Wlien some folks go to speak to rich 
 and mighty lords, they fluster, and stammer, as if they couldn't 
 make themselves believe that they only look upon a man made 
 like themselves ; no, they somehow mix him up with his lands 
 and liis castles, and his heaps of money, — and the thought 's too 
 big for 'em to bear. But I will conclude as I began, Mr. Aniseed. 
 Therefore I saj^ I have a groat eye for gilt gingerbread." 
 
 Tliis philosophical discourse brought the talkers to their desti- 
 nation. Jem stooped before the kitchen-windows, prying curiously 
 through them. " What seek you there, Jem ? " asked Capstick. 
 
 " I was thuiking," answered Jem, " if I could only see Kitty, 
 we might go in through the kitchen." 
 
 ]\Ir. Capstick made no answer, — ^but looking a lofty reproof at 
 Jem, he took two strides to the door, and seizing the knocker, 
 struck it with an assertion of awakened dignit3^ " Through the 
 hall, Mr. Aniseed ; through the haU ; no back-stau-s mfluence for 
 me." As he made this proud declaration, the door was opened ; 
 and to the astonishment of tlie porter, the muffin-maker asked 
 the porter, as coolly as though he was cheajiening pi])iiins at an 
 apple-stall — " Can we see the Marquess ? " 
 
 The poiiier had evidently a turn for humour : he was not one 
 of those janitors who, seated in their leathern chairs, resent 
 every knock at the door as a ^^olation of their peace and com-
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 fort. Therefore, curling the corners of his mouth, he asked ia a 
 tone of comic remonstrance, — " Now what do you want with the 
 Marquess 1 " 
 
 " Tliat the Marquess shall be benefited by knowing," answered 
 Capstick. " There is my name ; " and the muffin-maker, with 
 increasing dignity, handed his shop-card to the porter. 
 
 " It 's no use," said the porter, shaking his head at the card, — 
 "not a bit of use. We don't eat muffins here." 
 
 At this moment, Cesar Gum, the African footman, appeared 
 in the hall, and with greatest cordiality welcomed Bright J em. 
 " Come to see Kitty 1 — she dehght to see you — come down 
 tairs." 
 
 " Will you take this to the Marquess ? " and twitching his card 
 from the porter's fingers, Capstick gave it to Cesar. The black 
 felt every disposition to oblige the friend of Kitty's brother, but 
 raised his hands and shook his head with a hopeless shake. 
 " Stop," said Capstick. He took the card, and wrote some words 
 on the back of it. He then returned it to the porter. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried the porter, when he had read the mystic 
 syllables. " Cesar, I 'spose you must take it," and Cesar departed 
 on the errand. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Now, we hope that we have sufficiently interested the reader, 
 to make him wish to know the magic words which, operating 
 on the quickened sense of a nobleman's porter, caused him 
 suddenly to put a marquess and a muffin-maker in communication. 
 What Ojaen Sesame could it be, that written by a St. GUes, 
 should be worthy of the attention of St. James 1 Great is the 
 power of letters ! Whirlwinds have been let loose — fevers 
 quenched, and Death himself made to drop his uplifted dart — by 
 the subtle magic of some brief lex scripta, some abracadabra that 
 held in the fluid some wondi'ous spirits, always to be found like 
 motes in the sunbeams, iu a magician's ink-bottle. Mighty is the 
 power of words ! Wondi-ous their agency — their volatility. 
 Otherwise how could Pythagoras, writing words in bean-juice 
 here upon the earth, have had the self-same syllables printed 
 upon the moon 1 Wiiat a gi'eat human grief it is that this secret 
 should have been lost ! Otherwise what glorious means of pub- 
 lication would the moon have offered ! Let us imagine the news 
 of the day for the whole world written by certain scribes on the 
 
 E
 
 /)0 ST. GILES AND ST JAMES. 
 
 next night's moon — when she shone ! What a blessed boon to 
 the telescope-makei-s ! How we should at once jump at all 
 foreign news ! How would the big-hearted men of America 
 thereon publish their price-current of slaves — the new rate of 
 the pecunia viva, the living pemiy in God's likeness — as the 
 mai-ket varied ! And France, too, would sometimes with bloody 
 pen -wTite glory there, obscuring for a time the light of heaven, 
 with the madness of man. And Poland, pale with agony, yet 
 desperately calm, would wi'ite — " Patience, and wait the hour." 
 And the scribes of St. Petersburgh would placard " God and 
 the Emperor " — blasphemous conjimction ! — And the old Pope 
 would have his scrawl — and Indian princes, and half-plucked 
 nabobs — and Chinamen — and Laplanders — and the Great Turk — 
 and — 
 
 No — no ! Thank heaven ! the secret of Pythagoras — if indeed 
 he ever had it, if he told not a magnificent flam — is lost ; other- 
 wise, what a poor scribbled moon it would be ; its face wiinkled 
 and scarred by thousands of quills — tattooed wath what was once 
 news — printed with playhouse bills and testimonials gracefully 
 vouchsafed to corn-cutters ! No. Thank God ! Pj-thagoras 
 safely dead, there is no man left to scrawl his pot-hooks on the 
 moon. Her light — like too oft the light of truth — is not darkened 
 by quills. 
 
 And after this broomstick flight to the moon, descend we to 
 the card of Capstick, mufiin-maker. The words he wrote were 
 simjily these — " A native of Liquorish, with a vote for the 
 borough." 
 
 Now, it is one of the graceful fictions of the English consti- 
 tution — and many of its fictions no doubt pass for its best 
 beauties, in the like manner that the fiction of false hair, false 
 colour, false teeth, passes sometimes for the best loveliness of a 
 tinkerwi face, — it is one of these fictions that the English peer 
 never meddles with the making of a member of the House of 
 Commons. Not he. Let the country make its lower House of 
 senators as it best may, the English peer will have no hand in 
 the matter. He would as soon, in his daily walks, think of lifting 
 a load upon a porter's back, as of helping to lift a commoner into 
 his seat. We say, this is a fiction of the constitution ; and 
 beautiful in its influence upon the human mind, is fiction. Now, 
 the Marque-ss of St. James had in his father's lifetime repre- 
 sented the borough of Liquorish. He was returned by at least a 
 hundred and fifty voters as independent as their very limited 
 numlii-r permitted them to be. Tlie calumny of politics had said 
 that the houee of St. James carried the borough of Liquorish in 
 its pocket, as easily as a man might in the same place carry a
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 51 
 
 rotten apple or a rotten egg. Let the reader believe only as much 
 of this as his charity will permit. 
 
 Now it oddly enough happened that, at the time when Capstick 
 sought to appi'oach the Marquess, j^arliament was near its disso- 
 lution. The wicked old hag was all bvit breathing her last, yet — 
 case-hardened old sinner ! — she expressed no contrition, showed 
 no touch of conscience for her past life of iniquity ; for her wrono-s 
 she had committed upon the weak and poor ; for the nightly rob- 
 beries upon them who toiled for the especial luxury of those who, 
 like the tenants of a cheese, lived and craAvled upon unearned 
 pensions ; she repented not of the blood she had shed in the 
 wickedness of war ; never called about her soft-hearted, tearful, 
 most orthodox bishops, to assuage the agony of her remorse, 
 and to cause her to make a clean breast of all her hidden 
 iniquity. No. Parliament was about to expire — about to follow 
 her sinful predecessors (what horrid epitaphs has history written 
 upon some of them !) and she heard no voice of conscience ; all 
 she heai'd was the chink of guineas pursed by bribery for her 
 successor. 
 
 Even the Marquess's porter felt the coming of the new election. 
 His fidelity to his master and his patriotism to merry England 
 had been touched by a report that the borough of Liquorish was 
 about to be invaded by some revolutionary spirit, resolved to 
 snatch it from the time-honoured grasp of the house of St. James, 
 and, at any cost, to wash it of the stain of biibery. Somebody 
 had dared to say that he would sit for the independent borough 
 of Liquorish though every voter should have a gold watch, and 
 every voter's wife a silver tea-pot and diamond ear-rings. This 
 intelligence was enough to make all true lovers of their country 
 look about them. Therefore did the porter consider Mr. Capstick, 
 although a muffin-man, a person of some imjiortance to the 
 Marquess. Capstick was a voter for the borough of Liquorish — 
 that was bought and sold like any medlar — and consequently, to 
 the mind of the porter, one of the essential pai-ts of the British 
 constitution : therefore, the porter was by no means astounded 
 when Cesar returned with a message that Mr. Capstick was to 
 follow him. 
 
 The muffin-maker passed along, in no way dazzled or astonished 
 by the magnificence about him. He had made his mind up to 
 be surprised at nothing. Arabian splendours — it was his behef 
 — would have failed to disturb the philosophic serenity of his 
 soul. He had determined, according to his own theory, to extract 
 the man from the Marquess — to come, as he would say, direct at 
 humanity divested of all its worldly furniture. Bright Jem 
 meekly followed the misanthrope, treadmg the floor with gentlest 
 
 E 2
 
 62 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 tread ; and wondering at the freak of fortune tliat even for a 
 moment had enabled him, a tenant of Short's Gardens, to enter 
 such an abode. Bright Jem could not help feeling this, and at 
 the same time feeling a sort of shame at the unexpected weak- 
 ness. He had believed himself proof to the influence of grandeur, 
 — nevertheless, he could not help it ; he was somewhat abashed, 
 a little flurried at the splendour ai'ound him. He was not ashamed 
 of his poverty ; yet he somehow felt that it had no business 
 to intrude itself in such a paradise. 
 
 In a few minutes, the mufhn-maker and Jem found themselves 
 in a magnificent libraiy. Seated at a table was a short, elderly 
 little man, dressed in black. His face was round as an apple. 
 He had small, sharp, grey eyes, which for a few moments he 
 levelled steadily at Caps tick and Jem, and then suddenly shifted 
 them in a way that declared all the innermost and dearest 
 thoughts of the muflin-maker to be, in that glance, read and duly 
 registered. " Pray be seated," said the gentleman ; and Capstick 
 hea'vily dropped himself into a velvet chair. Bright Jem, on the 
 contrary, settled upon the seat lightly as a butterfly upon a damask 
 rose: and like the butterfly, it seemed doubtful with himself, 
 whether every moment he would not flutter ofi" again. Capstick 
 at once concluded that he was in the presence of the Marquess. 
 Jem knew better, having seen the nobleman ; but thought possibly 
 it might be some eai'l or duke, a friend or relation of the family. 
 However, both of them augured well of their mission, from the 
 easy, half-cordial manner of the illustrious gentleman in black. 
 His words, too, were low and soft, as though breathed by a flute. 
 He seemed the personification of gentleness and politeness. 
 Nevertheless, reader, he was not of the peerage ; bemg, indeed, 
 nothing more tlum Mr. Jonathan Folder, hbrai'ian — and at times 
 confidential agent — to the Marquess of St. James. He had just 
 received the orders of his lordship to give audience on his behalf, 
 to what might be an important deputation from the borough of 
 Liquorish ; hence, Mr. Folder, alive to the patriotic interest of his 
 employer and friend — as, occasionally, he would venture to call 
 the INlarquess — was smiling and benignant. 
 
 "Mr. Capstick — I presiune you are Mr. Capstick ?" — and ]Mr. 
 Folder with his usual sagacity, bowed to the muflin-maker — " we 
 are glad to see you. This house is always open to the excellent 
 and patriotic voters of Liquorish. There never was a time, IMr. 
 Capstick, when it more behoved the friends of the Constitution 
 to have their eyes about them. The British Constitution — " 
 
 " There is noconstitutionlikeit,"observedthemuftin-maker drily. 
 
 " That 's an old truth, Mr. Capstick," said ]\li-. Folder, " and, 
 like all old truths, aU the better for its age."
 
 ST. CxILES AND ST. JAMES. 53 
 
 "No constitution like it," repeated the muffin-maker. "I 
 don't know how many times it hasn't been destroyed since I first 
 knew it — and .still it 's all alive. The British Constitution, my 
 lord, sometimes seems to me like an eel ; you may flay it 
 and chop it to bits ; yet for all that, the pieces will twist and 
 wriggle again." 
 
 " It is one of its proud attributes, Mr. Capstick," said Folder, 
 — doubtless he had not heard himself addressed as my lord — 
 " one of the glories of the Constitution, that it is elastic — pecu- 
 liarly elastic." 
 
 " And that 's, I suppose, my lord," — surely Mr. Folder was a 
 little deaf, — " that 's why it gets mauled about so much. Just as 
 boys don't mind what tricks they play upon cats — because, poor 
 devils, somebody, to spite 'em, has said they 've got nine lives. 
 But, I beg your pardon, this is my friend — Mr. James Aniseed, 
 — better known as Bright Jem," and Capstick introduced the 
 linkman. 
 
 Mr. Folder slightly rose from his chair, and graciously bowed 
 to Jem ; who, touched by the courtesy, rose bolt upright ; and 
 then, after a moment's hesitation, he took half-a-dozen strides 
 towards Mr. Folder, and — ere that gentleman was aware of the 
 design — shook him heartily by the hand. Then, Jem, smihng 
 and a little flushed, returned to his chair. Again taking his seat, 
 he looked about him with a brightened, happy face, for Mr. Folder 
 — the probable nobleman — had returned the linkmau's grasp 
 with a most cordial pressure. 
 
 " And, Mr. Aniseed," said Folder, " I presume you have also a 
 voice in the constitution ; you have a vote for — '' 
 
 " Not a morsel, my lord," answered Jem. " I hav'u't a voice 
 in anything ; all I know about the constitution is that it means 
 taxes ; for you see, my lord, I 've only one room and that 's a little 
 un — and so, you see, my lord, I 've no right to nothing." AVbilst 
 Jem pursued this declaration, Mr. Folder, doubtless all uncon- 
 sciously, rubbed his right hand with his handkerchief. The 
 member might, possibly, have caught some taint from the shake 
 of a low man without a vote. 
 
 " Nevertheless, Mr. Capstick, we are happy to see you," said 
 Folder, with a strong emphasis upon the pronoun. " Public 
 morality — I mean the morality of the other party — is getting 
 lower and lower. In fact, I should say, the world — that is, you 
 know what part of the world I mean — is becoming worse and 
 worse, baser and baser." 
 
 " There is no doubt of it, my lord," answered Capstick, — " for 
 if your lordship — " 
 
 Capstick had become too emphatic. It was therefore necessary
 
 »4 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 that Fulder sliuulii correct hiiu. "lam uot his lordsliip. No, I 
 am not," he repeated, uot unobservant of the arched eyebrows of 
 the muffin-maker : " I am dej^uted by liis lordship to receive you, 
 prepared to listen to your wishes, or to the wishes of any of the 
 resjjectable constituents of the borough of Liquorish. We are not 
 unaware, Mr. Capstick, of the movements of the enemy. But we 
 shall be pro\-ided against them. They, doubtless, will be prepared 
 to tamper with the independence of the electors, but as I have 
 said," and Folder let his words fall slowly as though they were so 
 many gems, " as I have said, there we can beat them on their 
 own dii-ty grounds." 
 
 " There is no doubt whatever of it," said Capstick, " none at 
 all. And then in these mattei-s, there 's nothing like competition, 
 — nothmg whatever. For my part, I must say, I like to see it — 
 it does me good : an election, such an election as we have in 
 Liquorish, is a noble sight for a man who, like myself, was born 
 to .sneer at the world. At such a time, I feel myself exalted." 
 
 " No doubt — no doubt," said 'Mr. Folder. 
 
 " Then I feel my worth, every jjenny of it, in what is called the 
 social scale. For instance, now, I open the shop of my conscience, 
 with the pride of a tradesman who knows he 's got something in 
 his window that people mtist buy. I have a handsome piece oi 
 perjury to dispose of " 
 
 " Mr. Capstick ! Perjury ! " cried Folder, a little shocked. 
 
 " "V\Tiy, you see, sir," said Capstick, " for most things, there 's 
 two names — a holiday name, and a working-<lay name." 
 
 " That 's ti-ue," said Jem — and then he added, with a bow to 
 Folder, " saving your presence, sir : quite true." 
 
 " Yes, I 'm a voter with a perjury jewel to sell," said Capstick, 
 "and, therefore, isn't it delightful to me, as a man who hates 
 the woj-ld, to have fine gentlemen, honoural)le gentlemen, — yes, 
 titled gentlemen, coming about me and chaflering with me for 
 that little jewel — that, when they 've bought it of me, they may 
 sell it again at a thumping profit ? The Mai-quess isn't that sort 
 of man " 
 
 " I should hope not, Mr. Capstick," said Folder, with a smile 
 that seemed to add — impossible. 
 
 " Certainly not. But isn't it, I say, jileasant to a man-hater 
 like me, to see this sort of dealing — to know that, however mean, 
 and wicked, and rascally, the voter is who sells his jewel — he is 
 taught the meanness, encouraged in the wickedness, and moi-e 
 than countenanced in the rascality, by the high and lofty fellow 
 with the money-bag ? Oh ! in the school of corruption, ar'n't there 
 some nice high-nob usliers ? " 
 
 " Never mind that, Mr. Capstick," said Bright Jem, who began
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. f).5 
 
 to feai' for the success of their mission, if the muffin-maker thus 
 continued to vindicate his misanthropy. " Never mind that. We 
 can't make a sore any better by putting a plaster of bad words 
 to it : never mind that ; but, Mr. Capstick," said Jem, earnestly, 
 " let 's mind sometliing else." 
 
 "Then I am to understand," said Mr. Folder, who, in his 
 philosophy, had been somewhat entertained by the philippics 
 of the muffin-maker, — " I am to understand, that your present 
 business iu uo way relates to an}i,hing connected with the 
 borough ? " 
 
 " Not at present," said Capstick, " only I hope that his lordship 
 won't forget I have a voice. Because " 
 
 At this moment, the door flew open, and a child — a beautiful 
 creature — gambolled into the room. It was young St. James. 
 The very cherub, as Kitty Muggs would have called him, robbed 
 by the uiiquitous, the hopeless St. Giles. Truly he was a lovely 
 thing. His fair, fresh young fece, informed with the innocence, 
 purity, and happiness of childhood, spoke at once to the heart of 
 the beholder. What guilelessness was in his large blue eyes — ■ 
 what sweetness at his mouth — what a fair, white expanse of brow 
 — adorned with clustering curls of palest gold ! His words and 
 laughter came bubbling from the heart, making the sweetest 
 music of the earth ; the voice of happy childhood ! A sound that 
 sometimes calls us from the hard dealing, the tumult, and the 
 weariness of the world, and touches us with tender thoughts, 
 allied to tender tears. 
 
 " What a beautiful cretur ! " whispered Jem to the muffin- 
 maker. ".He 's been kept out of the mud of the world, hasn't 
 he ? I say ; it would be a hard job to suppose that blooming 
 little fellow — with rags on his back, matches in his hand, and 
 nothin' in his belly, eh 1 Quite as hard as to think young St. GUes 
 was him, eh ? And yet it might ha' been, mightn't it ? " 
 
 "Here is the futtu-e member for Liquorish," said Mr. Folder, 
 the child having run up to him, and jumped upon liis knees. 
 " Here, sir, is your future representative." 
 
 " Well, if he keeps his looks," said Jem, aside to Capstick, 
 " you won't have nothing to complain of" 
 
 " Of course, the borough will be kept warm for the young gen- 
 tleman," said the muffin-man. " He may count upon my vote — 
 yes, I may say, he may depend upon it. In the meantime, sir, 
 I come upon a little business in which that young gentleman is 
 remotely concerned." 
 
 " You don't mean the shameful robbery last night 1 " said Mi-. 
 Folder. ' A frightful case of juvenile deprav-ity ! Another proof 
 that the woi-ld 's getting worse and worse."
 
 56 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 "No doubt of it," said Capstick ; "worse and worse; it's 
 getting so bad, it must soon be time to bum it up." 
 
 " The poor little boy who did it, sir," said Bright Jem, very 
 deferentially, " didn't know any better." 
 
 " Know no better ! Impossible ! "VSTiy, bow old is he ? " 
 asked Mr. Folder. 
 
 " Jist gone seven, sir, not more ;" answered Jem. 
 " And here "s this dear child not yet seven ! And do you mean 
 to tell me that he doesn't know better 1 Do you mean in your 
 ignorance to insinuate that this young gentleman would do such 
 a thing — eh ? " demanded Folder of the abashed linkman. 
 
 " Bless his dear, good eyes, no " — said Jem, with some emotion 
 — " sartinly not. But then he 's been taught better. Ever since 
 he could speak — and I dare say almost afore — every night and 
 day he was taken upon somebody's knees, and teached to say his 
 prayers — and what was good and what was bad — and besides 
 that, to have all that was quiet and happy and comfortable about 
 him — and kind words and kind looks that are almost better than 
 bread and meat to children — for they make 'em kind and gentb 
 too — now, the poor little boy that stole that young gentleman's 
 hat — " 
 
 " I don't want the hat " — cried the child, for he had heard the 
 story of the wicked boy at the playhouse — " I don't want it — he 
 may have it if he likes — I told papa so." 
 
 " Bless you, for a sweet little dear," said Jem, brushing his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Tlie truth is, sir, I came here," said Capstick, " I came as a 
 voter for the independent borough of Liquorish — ^to intercede with 
 the magnanimity of the JSIarquess for the poor little wretch — the 
 unhappy baby, for he 's no more — ^now locked up for felony." 
 
 " What 's the use ? " asked Mr. Folder, dancing the scion of 
 St. James upon his knee, — "what 's the use of doing anything for 
 such creatures 1 It 's only throwing pity away. The boy is sure 
 to be hanged some time — depend upon it, when boys begin to 
 steal, they can't leave it off — it 's impossible — ^it 's against nature 
 to expect it. I always give 'em up from the first — and, depend 
 upon it, it 's the shortest way in the end : it saves a good deal of 
 useless trouble, and I may .say fiilse humanity. As for what 
 children are taught, and what they 're not taught — ^why I think 
 we make more noise about it than the argument 's worth. You 
 see, Mr. Capstick, there is an old proverb : what 's bred in the 
 bone, you know — " 
 
 " Why, sir, saving your presence, if wickedness goes down from 
 father to son, like colour — the only way I see to make the world 
 better is to lay hold of all the bad people, and put 'em out of it
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES 57 
 
 at once ; so that for the future," concluded Jem, " we should 
 breed nothing but goodness." 
 
 " Pray, my good man," asked Mr. Folder, " are you the father 
 of the thief"? " 
 
 " No, sir, I 'm not. I wish I was, with all my heart and soul," 
 cried Jem with animation. 
 
 " Humph, you 've an odd taste for a father," shortly observed 
 Mr. Folder. 
 
 " What I mean, sir, is this," said Jem, " I 've the conceit in me 
 to think that then the boy wouldn't have been a thief at all. He 'd 
 then been better taught, and teaching 's everything. I 'd have 
 sent him to school, and the devil hasn't such an enemy nowhere 
 as a good schoolmaster.* Even now I should like to try my hand 
 upon him, if I could have him all to myself, away from the wick- 
 edness he was hatched in." 
 
 " I dare say you mean very well, my man, no doubt of it," 
 said Mr. Folder. " Still, I think if the boy had a little taste of the 
 jail,-"_ 
 
 " A little taste," groaned Jem, " if he has ever so little, he 's 
 pisoned for life ; I know that, I 've seen it afore." 
 
 "Ajad so, sir," resumed Capstick, "I am come as a petitioner, 
 and as a voter for the borough of Liquorish, to ask his lordship's 
 compassion for this wretched child." 
 
 " Well, I 'm sure, Mr. Capstick, I '11 see what 's to be done, 
 I 'm sure I mil. Now will you," — and Mr. Folder addressed him- 
 self smilingly to the child, — " will you ask papa, for your sake, to 
 forgive the naughty boy that ran away with your hat ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, that I will," answered the child eagerly. "You 
 know I don't care about the hat, I 've plenty of hats. I '11 run to 
 papa now," and the child jumped from Folder's knee, and bounded 
 from the room. 
 
 " There, my man." said Folder, with a smile of triumph to 
 Bright Jem, "there you see the spontaneous work of a good 
 nature." 
 
 " With good teaching," said Jem. " I know'd the little cretur 
 that 's now locked up — I know'd him when he was a babby, and 
 if he 'd only had fair play he 'd ha' done the same thing." 
 
 " Let us hope he '11 improve if he 's forgiven," said Mr. Folder, 
 
 * I will not say a village schoolmaster is a more important person in 
 the state than he who is peculiarly entrusted with the education of the 
 Prince of Wales, though I think he is a fur more important personage 
 than the highest state officer in the King's household. The material he 
 has to deal with is man, and I think it would be rather rash to venture to 
 limit his range or capacities. — Lord Morpeth at the York Diocesan National- 
 Education Society. [All honour to such nobility !]
 
 '5S ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " I will, however, go to his lonlshi]), and know his fate." With 
 this. Folder quitted the apartment on his benevolent mission. 
 
 •' "WTiat a cajtitiU thought it wjis of yon, IVIr. Capatick, to come 
 here ; it had never entered my head," said Jem. 
 
 " Nothing like approaching the fountain source," said Capstick, 
 serenely. " Besides, I know an election is near at hand ; and as 
 an election approaches, you can't think how it takes the stiffness 
 out of some people. There 's no accounting for it, I suppose, but 
 so it is." 
 
 "A great many books here, Mr. Capstick," said Jem, looking 
 reverentially at the loaded shelves ; " I wonder if his lordship 's 
 read 'em all ! " 
 
 " You see," answered the scoffing muffin-maker, " it 's not so 
 necessary to read a library ; the great matter 's to get it. AVith 
 a good many folks heaps of books are nothing more than heaps of 
 acquaintance, that they promise themselves to look in upon 
 some day." 
 
 " Well," said Jem, his eyes glistening, " I never see books all 
 in this fashion, without thinking that the man as has 'em is a kind 
 of happy conjuror, that can talk when he likes with all sorts of 
 good spiiits, and never think a flea-bite of hjjf the rubbish in the 
 world about him." 
 
 Jem had scarcely uttered this hopeful sentence, when 3'oung 
 St. James ran in, quickly followed by Mr. Folder. " Yes, yes," 
 cried the child, all happiness, " papa says I must forgive him, as 
 we ought always to forgive one another ; and you 're to tell him 
 from me that he 's to be a good boy and never do so again." 
 
 " Bless your sweet heart ! " cried Bright Jem, and the tears 
 sprang to his eyes. The muffin-maker said nothing, but coughed 
 and bowed. 
 
 " There, I think, !Mr. Capstick," said Folder in a low voice, 
 " there, I think, is a future treasure for the borough. I tnist 
 you '11 not let this little story be lost on the good folks of Liquorish. 
 Nobody will appear against the culprit, and therefore take him, 
 and if you can, among you, make a bright man of him. Good 
 morning, Mr. Capstick — good moi-ning," and Folder bowed the 
 visitors from the room. Bright Jem paused at the door, and look- 
 ing l)ack at the cliild, cried, "'God bless you every day of your 
 life." 
 
 Jem and the muffin-maker were about to quit the house, when 
 they were accosted by Cesar Gum in the hall. In a confidential 
 whisper he said — " Come and take some turkey and wine for 
 lunch : pi'irne Madeary — den we can go to jail for tief: di'eatlful 
 ting, taking oder people's goods — come and hab some wine." 
 And then in a still lower tone — " Give you bottle for youselfl"
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 59 
 
 To tins invitation, Capstick made no answer ; but having looked 
 np ;ind down at the black, strode to the door. Bright Jem 
 nodded, uttered a brief good morning, and followed his companion 
 into the sti'eet, leaving Cesar Gum, who had wholly forgotten 
 Jem's previous indignation at the peculated gunpowder, in asto- 
 nishment at his rejected hospitality. 
 
 " We '11 now go to Bow-street," said Capstick ; and fast as they 
 could walk, they took their way to that abode of justice. They 
 arrived there only a few minutes before the ari'aignment of young 
 St. Giles at the bar ; where he stood, in his own conceit, a 
 miniature Turpin. 
 
 " Where are the witnesses — who makes the charge 1 " There 
 were no witnesses. Again and again his worship put the ques- 
 tion. And then he said, " No one is here who knows anything 
 of the matter. The prisoner must be discharged. Boy, don't let 
 me see you here again." Yoimg St. Giles put his thumb and 
 finger to his hair, jerked a bow, and in a few moments was free, 
 aye, freer than the air of Hog-lane. 
 
 Jem and Capstick followed him into the street. The muffin- 
 maker seizing him, roared — " You little I'ascal ! What do you 
 say for your lucky escape 1 " 
 
 " Say ! " answered young St. Giles — " Why, I know'd it was all 
 gammon — I know'd they could prove nothin' agin me." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 As it is our hope, in the course of this small history, to chronicle 
 many great achievements of our hero of the gutter, St. Giles, 
 we shall not follow him year by year through the humble yet 
 industrious course, in which, to liis own satisfaction and streng-then- 
 ing conceit, he became profoundly knowing ; subtly learned in 
 every way of petty peculation ; whether he plundered the orange- 
 baskets of Covent Garden mai-ket, or whethei', with finest skill, 
 he twitched the tempting handkerchief from the pocket of the 
 lounger. Nor was this, his lowly cai-eer, undignified by suffering. 
 No : for ere he was twelve years old, he had tasted the hospitality 
 of Bridewell ; where, in truth, he had been inducted into the 
 knowledge of far dearer mysteries than he had ever hoped to 
 learn. In Bridewell, his young and ardent soul had expanded 
 with the thoughts of future fame, won by highway pistol, or 
 bui'glar's jemmy. And there, too, would he listen to fairy tales 
 of coining : would dream of easy, lasting wealth, acquii-ed by
 
 60 ST. GILES AXD ST. JAMES. 
 
 copper piiineas. As for the lasli bestowed upon him, the pain oi 
 that di<l but bum into his mind liis high resolves. He would 
 the more fiercely revenge the suffering upon everybody called 
 honest. He would steal with all his heart and all his soul ; he 
 was l)orn and bre<l to steal; he came into the world to do it, and 
 he wi.uld notably fultil his mission. Such was the strengthened 
 Wlief of young St. Giles, when, at fourteen, and for the second 
 time, he came back to the world across the threshold of Bridewell. 
 Such was his creeii : the only creed his world had taught him. 
 Nevertheless, our hero did not vaunt this belief, save among 
 those of his o\^'n Newgate persuasion. On the contrary, he 
 assumed the character of a tradesman, that under his commercial 
 aisfioct he might the more securely plunder the innocents who 
 dealt with him. True it is, he had not the security of a shop ; 
 he could not, like his patron the dealer in marine stores, despoil 
 acro.>vS a counter ; but he carried a basket ; and whilst, to the 
 unsuspecting eye, he seemed only the Arcadian vendor of chick- 
 wee«l, groinidsel, and turf for singing-birds — for the caged minstrels 
 of the poor — he was, in eveiy thought, a robber. 
 
 It was a fine morning early in spring, and Plumtree-street 
 resounded with the sharp tradesman cry of young St. Giles. 
 Pausing at a door-step, and looking up to the second-floor win- 
 dows, he pitched his commercial note with a peculiar significance, 
 as though giving notice of his whereabout to an expected cus- 
 tomer. " Cliickweed for singing-birds," cried St. Giles, in a shrill, 
 prolonged voice, as though he would send the glad tidings up to 
 the garret casement, where hopped and fluttered some solitary 
 linnet, some lonely goldfinch, that feeling the breath of spring, 
 alWit through prison bars, sang a song of hope and cheerfulness. 
 " duckweed for singing-birds," cried St. Giles, with increasing 
 vohnue anrl impatience. Then again he looked up at the window, 
 aiid then nmttered "The old un can't be dead, can she ? " As he 
 thus 8i)cculated the window was raised, and a woman looked 
 down into the street. " Is it you, my poor boy ? " she cried ; 
 " stop a minute :" and instantly disappeared. " Thought the old 
 un couldn't be dead," said St. Giles, self-communing; and then he 
 began to hum a tune and shuffle a dancing-step upon the pave- 
 ment. The door was opened by a girl, who, with no very cordial 
 looks, muttered,—" :Mrs. Simmer — well, she 's a droll cretur, she 
 is ! — Mrs. Simmer says you 're to come up. You can leave your 
 bafik.'t here, can't you ? " 
 
 " In course, my beauty," said St. Giles, " 'cause, you see, 
 tliere 's only these two bunches left ; and them I can carry in my 
 hand without breaking my back." With this, St. Giles, rapidly 
 placing liis basket against the wall, gave a saucy wink to the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 61 
 
 servant, and bounded like a kid up stairs. In a moment he was 
 with his patroness, Mrs. Simmer. 
 
 " My poor child, I thought you was lost," said the dame in the 
 kindest voice. " What makes you so late 1 " 
 
 " Why, do you know, mum, I can't tell what 's come to the 
 chickweed : it doesn't grow no how, now. If I wasn't at five in 
 the morning in Hampstead fields, a hunting in every edge, and 
 haven't got above three penn'orth. Chickweed, mum, as Tom 
 Blast says, seems a perishin' from the face of the earth, and only 
 to spite poor people as lives by it. I don't know how much I 
 couldn't ha' sold this mornin' ; but I says to myself — no, there 's 
 Mrs. Simmer's blessed little linnet, and her darlin' gooldfinch 
 as draws liis own water, — they sha'n't go without, whosomever 
 does." 
 
 " Poor dear child ! good little boy," said Mrs. Simmer, looking 
 with softened looks upon the wily trader. 
 
 " And to hear how all the birds did seem to call to me from 
 their cages — I 'm blessed if they didn't, mum, as I come along 
 — but no, says I to 'em, it 's no use, my little cockles, no use to be 
 gammonin' me — this here chickweed 's for Mrs. Simmers Bob 
 and Tit, and for nobody else whatsomever." And after this 
 fashion was the simplicity of two-score and ten talked to and 
 duped by precocious fourteen. 
 
 But dear Mrs. Simmer seemed to be one of those good old 
 peojjle who strangely enough carry their hearts in their heads. 
 She had not been above a fortnight in London at the time of this 
 interview with St. Giles, whom she had met in the street, and 
 whose pathetic tale of destitution, delivered with the cunning of 
 an actor, had carried away her sympathies. St. Giles, however, 
 had another claim upon her. He was, she said, such a pretty 
 boy. Dear soul ! she coidd no more read a human face than she 
 could read Sanscrit. She only saw the bright, glittering eyes of 
 St. Giles, and not the fox that looked from them ; she praised 
 his eyes and face, as she might have praised a handsome hieroglyph, 
 wholly unconscious of its subtle meaning. A great master has 
 said, " there is something in true beauty that vulgar souls caimot 
 admire." And sure we are, there is something in the truest 
 rascality, that simple benevolent souls cannot detect. They have 
 no eye for the worst counterfeit countenance ; have no ear for a 
 false voice, let it ring ever so brassily. Now, dear IVIrs. Simmer 
 was one of these : hence was she at fifty but a babe, an innocent, 
 in the hands of young St Giles. 
 
 " Now, my poor child" — she said, "take some tea. I've kept 
 it for you, with some toast ;" and Mi-s. Simmer took a smoking 
 jug and a plate piled with toast from either hob, and placed them
 
 62 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 on tlie table, before her guest. " Take as much as you can, my 
 child, and then you shall tell me all your story as you promised. 
 Poor lamb ! Bless you, eat— it does my heart good to see you ;" 
 and Mrs. Simmer, folding her hands, looked with almost maternal 
 tenderness ujxin St. Giles, who acknowledging the welcome with 
 a knowing noil, proceeded vigorously with his meal. Mrs. 
 Simmer thought she never saw so handsome a creature ; what 
 St. Giles thought of Mrs. Simmer, we will not say. " And so 
 you 've no father nor mother, my dear boy ? " after some time 
 asked Mrs. Simmer. 
 
 "Not one on 'era," answered St. Giles, rapidly moving his 
 buttered chin. " Not one on 'em." 
 
 "The Lord help you!" cried Mrs. Simmer: "and no uncle, 
 no aunt, no" 
 
 " No nothin', mum," said St. Giles ; and he gulped his tea. 
 " All on 'em died, mum, when I was a babby." 
 
 " Poor dear child ! Bless my heai-t ! And how have you been 
 brought up ] " 
 
 " Brought up, mum" — and St. Giles grinned and scratched his 
 heail — " you said brought up, mum ? Don't know, mum." 
 
 " And where do you live, now, my poor boy 1 " and Mrs. 
 Simmer melted with every question. 
 
 " Don't live nowhere, reg'lar, mum. Poor boys, like me, why 
 we live — as Tom Blast says — like the rats, where we can. Then 
 o' nights, mum, I sometimes sleeps in the market among the 
 baskets. Sometimes, though, don't they come with a stick, and 
 cut us out ! I b'lieve you ! " and St. Giles seemed to speak -with 
 a lively recollection of such incidents. " Cuts the wei'ry bx-eath 
 out o' you," he then significantly added. 
 
 " Cruel creatures ! Gracious little lamb ! And I 'm afraid 
 you meet with bad boys there, eh 1 Wicked boys, that may some 
 day tempt you to do something wrong 1 EhV asked simple 
 Mrs. Simmer, 
 
 " Believe you," said St. Giles, with well-acted gravity. " Lots 
 on 'em wanted me to go picking pockets." 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " cried Mrs. Simmer, and the tears came to 
 her eyes. 
 
 " That 's what I said, mum ; no, says I, no, I shall stick to 
 chickweed if I starves for it — I 'm not a-going to be hanged to 
 please nobody : no, mum." 
 
 " That such a precious flower should be thrown away ! " cried 
 Mi-s. Sinimer to hei-self ; and then to St. Giles : " You 're a good 
 boy ; I 'm sure you 're a good boy. And tell me ; I hope you go 
 to church?" » ^ > f J B 
 
 _ • "Oh, I should like it so ! " cried St. Giles : " but you see, mum, 
 it 's not to be done."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. fi:< 
 
 " How so, my boy ? " asked Mrs. Simmer. 
 
 " Look here, mum," and St. Giles, with the coohiess of a phi- 
 losopher, drew his feet up almost level with the table, and, with 
 his forefinger, pointed to his ten muddy toes, that showed them- 
 selves through the parted shoe-leather. " Parson wouldn't have 
 'em, by no means. I did once try to go to church ; I did begin 
 to feel so wicked. "Well, mum, if the beadle didn't come up, mum, 
 and nearly cut me in two, mum." 
 
 " How Avicked — how bai-barous ! " said the ingenuous jMrs. 
 Simmer. 
 
 " And only for my bad shoes, and the oles in my coat ; but 
 that 's how they serves poor boys, mum. I don't think it 's kind, 
 mum ; do you, mum ? " And St. Giles tried to look at once 
 injured and innocent. 
 
 Mrs. Simmer wiped her eyes, making an effort to be calm. She 
 then said, " I 've been thinking, if I could get you a place in a 
 gentleman's house." 
 
 " Wouldn't that be prime ? " cried St. Giles : and as he spoke, 
 there rang through the house a loud and hm-ried knock at the 
 street-door. 'Mrs. Simmer, without a word, jumped to her feet, 
 and ran to the window. 
 
 " Well, I declare ! if it isn't that blessed child ! if it isn't his 
 lordship ! " she cried. 
 
 Young St. Giles, at the word lordship, slid from his chair, and 
 looked slyly about him. Was it possible that a lord could be 
 coming into that room 1 Could he imagine such a thing as to 
 see a real lord in such a place ? Ere St. Giles had done 
 wondenng, the room-door was flung open, and in ran young St. 
 James. St. Giles seemed to shi'ink into himself at the splendid 
 appearance of the new-comer. He wore a bright scarlet coat, 
 thickly ornamented with gold buttons : and a black beaver hat 
 with a large, heavy feather of the same colour, brought out in 
 strong contrast his flushed and happy face. For the moment, 
 young St. Giles felt himself overpowered, abashed by the magni- 
 ficent outside of the little stranger. He sidled into a corner of 
 the room, and looked at that scarlet coat as though it had been 
 something clropt from the heavens. " Well, nurse," cried St. 
 James, -with, a loud, ringing laugh, " I told you I 'd come and 
 see you, and here I am. I went out riding wilh IVIr. Folder. 
 Well, he stopt to talk to somebody, and so I just gave him the 
 sHp, put Jessy into such a gallop, and was here in a minute. 
 I say, can't that boy," and St. James pointed his riding-whip 
 towards St. Giles — " can't that boy hold Jessy, instead of the 
 girl?" 
 
 " To be sure, my lord — to be sure," cried IVIi-s. Simmer.
 
 64 
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Sartijily, my lonl— ilirectly, my lord— I kuows how to liok 
 oeses, my loi-d," Kiui St. Giles, iu a flutter. 
 
 " Just walk her up juul down a little, will you, for she 's hot," 
 saiil St. Jiaiu-s, with an eai-ly knowledge of horse-flesh. 
 
 " Yes, my lortl — to be sure, my lord — walk her up and down, 
 my lord : " and St. Giles flew down the stairs, and reheved the 
 girl of her chaige. Young St. James was then left to have his 
 gossip with Mvs. Simmer ; from which gossip a stranger might 
 have learned that the good woman had, for years, been in the 
 service of the family of St. James ; that she had been the 
 favourite nui-se of his yovmg lordship ; and that for the first time 
 in her life she had come to London from the country, where, 
 made comfortable by a pension granted to her by the marchioness, 
 after a short sojouni in the metropohs, it was her purpose to 
 return. She had been to the house in the square, where young 
 St. James hat! made his chivalrous promise to visit her ; yes, at 
 all hiizanls, to seek Plumtree-street, out of pure love, and a little 
 frolic, to his old nui-se. " Oh, I shall be at home now before Mr. 
 Folder," said young St. James, in answer to the fears of Mrs. 
 Simmer, alarmed at the escape of the young gentleman from his 
 tutor. However, we must leave them and descend to the pave- 
 ment to St. Giles. 
 
 With an air of becoming gravity, the boy led the pony up and 
 down before the door, his eyes riveted upon the beast ; certainly 
 a creature of extreme beauty. She was jet black, of exquisite 
 delicjicy of outline ; and her arched neek, quivering nostril, and 
 fiery eye, told something for the spirit and horsemanship of the 
 boy who rode her. Up and down St. Giles walked ; and now 
 looking at the animal, now thinking of the boy lord, it appeared 
 to him that all the treasures of the world were concentrated in 
 that pony ; that St. James was a sort of earthly angel ; a being 
 of altogether another kind to the boys St. Giles had ordinarily 
 met with. There w;is something so magnificent about the pony 
 and its rider, that only to have had his lordship to speak to him, 
 that only t<j hold the bridle of his steed, seemed in the confused 
 brain of St. Giles to redeem him from somewhat of his misery and 
 lowlintMS. lie could not but think the better of himself for all 
 time t<) c<nne. He had spoken to a lord — had held his horse ! 
 Could any of his gutter comjjanions boast such greatness? These 
 tliduglits were busying the mind of St. Giles, when he heard 
 himself addressed by a familiar voice. "What! my flower?" 
 ■wiui the gri-eting ; and St. Giles, turning, beheld his friend and 
 tutttr, Toui lil:ust. St. Giles, in his hist retirement to Bridewell, 
 luKJ liad tile advant;ige of Tom's tuition; and, to speak truly, the 
 Uwi'lier juid pujnl were worthy of each other. Tom was a
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. Go 
 
 scoundrel of most extensive experience ; and had the happy art 
 of so simplifying his knowledge, that he made it available to the 
 meanest understanding. St. Giles, however, had no need of any 
 such condescension : he could jump at a meaning, good or bad, 
 half-way. Hence, the teacher and the taught respected each 
 other for their mutvial excellence. In fact, Tom Blast looked 
 upon Young St. Giles, as his Newgate son ; and St. Giles — in 
 default of another — considered Tom as the best of fathers. 
 
 " What have you got here 1 " asked Tom, his eye sparkling all 
 over the pony. 
 
 " Got a oss to hold," said St. Giles, with an inquiring look at 
 Tom. Then he added, sinking his voice — " it belongs to a lord ; 
 sich a little chap, and yet a lord." 
 
 " "Well, she 's a beauty," said Blast : '• make her walk a little 
 faster." 
 
 " She is a beauty," cried St. Giles, boldly venturing an opinion, 
 and quickening the animal's pace. 
 
 " What a sweet trot ! " said Blast, " so light and so free ! Why 
 she wouldn't break a egg-shell, would she 1 " 
 
 " I should think not," answered St. Giles, a little flattered that 
 his opinion was solicited. 
 
 " Come up ! " cried Blast, urging the beast into a quicker pace. 
 " Come along, sweet-lips ! " 
 
 " Stop, Tom ; stop ! " said the prudent St. Giles, when he had 
 arrived in Bedford-square. " Blest if we don't turn back, if they 
 won't think we 're a going to steal her ; and that wouldn't do, no 
 how, would it, Tom 1 " asked the boy, and his eye eucountei-ed 
 Tom's thoughtful look. 
 
 " Why, — no," answered Tom with some deliberation. " No ; 
 it wouldn't — turn her round agin ; and walk her gently, Giles ; 
 gently, pretty cretur." And as St. Giles complied, Tom tm-ned 
 too, walking with meditative eye that now glanced at the boy and 
 now at the pony. Ambitious thoughts busied the brain of the 
 poor, timid thief, Tom Blast ; and he pondered on the means 
 whereby he could reap the profits of a stolen horse, still assuring 
 to himself exemption from the tragic penalty. For many years 
 Tom had from time to time eaten stolen bread ; nevertheless, he 
 had lived, as it were, upon the crumbs, the Itroken morsels of 
 crime. He had never had the courage to dare Tyburn that he 
 might dine, but he satisfied himself with the pickings of petty 
 larceny. No : he never promised to earn for himself either bio- 
 graphy or portrait in the Newgate Calendar. Hence, he was a 
 Uttle perplexed at the temptation that would intrude itself 
 upon him as he glanced at Lord St. James's satin-coated pony. 
 Fortune seemed willing to make him a handsome present of 
 
 F
 
 66 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 horse-flesh, if he ha<l only the valour to accept it. No ; he would 
 not l>e teuii)teil : he had resolved to die a natural death, and there- 
 fore he rest)lutely dismissed the demon that would destroy him. 
 Nevertheless, he thought it possible that policy might achieve what 
 counige failed to attem])t. He might accomplish all by a stroke 
 of wit, protiting in security by the danger of another. St. Giles 
 might be made the robber, and Tom Blast, in happiest safety, 
 pocket the proceeds. Thus ruminating, Tom again reached 
 Mrs. Simmer's door. 
 
 " Not waiited yet," said St. Giles, looking from the door to the 
 window. " We '11 give her another trot, eh 1 " And at the word 
 the jKiny was turned towards Bedford-square. 
 
 "Gently," said Blast, "gently. Why don't you have a ride 
 upon her I The young lord wouldn't know nothing of it. And 
 what if lie did ? He couldn't take the ride out of you agam. 
 Only not so big, else she 's the very pictur — yes the very moral of 
 Dick Turpin's Bess," said Blast, looking critically, admiringly, at 
 Jessy. " Get up, and don't be a young fool," he added ; and then 
 St. Giles — he haixUy knew how it was accomplished — found him- 
 self in the saddle. " There, that 's somethmg like life, isn't it ? " 
 said the tempter suddenly, speaking from the whole breadth of 
 the pavement, and eveiy other minute looking cautiously behind 
 him the while he mended his pace, and St. Giles jerked the pony 
 uito a trot. " That 's something like living for, eh ? and I should 
 like to know why you shouldn't have it just as soon as any little 
 lord wliatsomever ? " 
 
 " Ha ! wouldn't that be prime, Tom ?" cried St. Giles, his eyes 
 spai-kling, and face glowing. " Wouldn't it be prime V 
 
 " It 's uotliing more than what you ought to have ; why you 
 ride as well as if you was bom upon her back — give her her head a 
 Uttle more — now down this way," shai-ply added Blast ; and then 
 rapidly turning to the right, he ran on, St. Giles trotting hard 
 after him. Arrived at the east side of Eussell-square, Tom 
 suddenly halted. "Now, St. Giles," said he, "are you man 
 enough to make your fortin 1 " 
 
 " I should think so," said Giles, in high spii'its with his feat of 
 horseman-ship. 
 
 " Now listen to a friend, Giles — a friend as never yet deceived 
 you," said Blast wth sudden gi-avity. " Throw away this bit of 
 luck, and you may never get another. Take the pony and sell 
 it." St. Giles stared. "Why not, you fool ! you may as well" 
 — criwl Blast — "you've stole it you know." 
 
 " Stole it ! " crie<l St. Giles. 
 
 " It 's all the same ; there 's nobody as would believe otherwise 
 I'll stund your friend, and get you the money for the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST JAMES. 
 
 bargain. Ha ! I see — yoii hav'u't no pluck m you — not a bit," 
 said the taunting friend. 
 
 " Ain't I, though ? jist you see," cried young St. Giles, deter- 
 mined to do anything. 
 
 " Well, then, as you 've got yourself into a bit of trouble, I '11 
 stand by you. Now, you listen ; just dash as hard as you can 
 through the fields, and then turn to the right — and so round and 
 round, until — you know the way — until you drop down upon 
 Smith field. Then make for Long Lane ; and then just afore you 
 get to the Blue Posts — get off and lead the pony up and down as 
 if you was holding her for somebody — and then in a crack I 'm 
 ■w'ith you. Now, look sly, and your fortin's made. Young 
 Turpin for ever ! Off Avith you ! " And so saying, the Tyburn 
 monitor slapt the pony smartly with his broad hand, and the 
 mettlesome creature bounded forth, young St. Giles with difficulty 
 keeping the saddle. Away went the pony up the Long Fields 
 and away towards Islington ! The words " young Turpin " still 
 rang in the ears of St. Giles, as he cantered along. He felt that 
 he had already done something worthy the exalted name bestowed 
 upon him ; and as his blood mounted with the exercise, he ima- 
 gined future triumphs that would make him glorious. The 
 robbery of the horse was, for the time, altogether forgotten in 
 the increased importance that had fallen upon him. He dreamt 
 not of the pimishment attending the theft ; he only thought of 
 the hatful of guineas that the stolen property would produce him. 
 And then, as he rode, how petty and contemptible did his former 
 pickings and stealings appear to him ; he almost felt ashamed of 
 himself, comparing his past petty larcenies with this his crowning 
 achievement. From the moment he had taken leave of boyhood. 
 He had suddenly become a man, by the grace of daiing felony. 
 Then, he thought, how should he ever be able to spend the 
 money ? Would he not have a scarlet coat with gold lace to it, — 
 ay, much finer than the little lord's ? And would he not go to 
 the play every night, and have his hot supper afterwards ? And 
 would he not flourish money in a hundred ways that should make 
 all his old companions — the little dirty, paltry thieves of Hog 
 Lane — look up to him with devotion and astonishment ? 
 
 Still young St. Giles ambled along, and still the world seemed 
 changed to him. All things about him bore a brighter hue ; all 
 things sounded with a sweeter music ; his brain seemed on wings, 
 and his lightened heart danced in his bosom. And — ^i^oor wretch 
 —this ecstacy of ignorance arose fi-om evil, firom a crime whose 
 fatal eftects, certain as death, would follow him. Still the very 
 houses, to his fancy, took a new and pleasant aspect ; wherever 
 he looked he saw a new fkce of happiness— whatever he heard 
 
 f2
 
 68 
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 vanie toned with a new note of harmony. He saw not the 
 l.lat-keneil stones of Newgate— heai-d not the freezing accents of 
 the death-dooming judge. JSliserable, foolish wretch ! 
 
 Yet how often do men— in the ripeness of worldly -ndsdom— 
 imitate tlie folly, share the ignorance of young St. Giles ! Elated 
 by the commission of some profitable wrong, seeming secret, too, 
 as protitable— how ofteu to them does Fortune seem to put on a 
 new fuid shining face, when at the very time she grasps the lash, 
 or drugs the bitter bowl that shall revenge the wickedness. For 
 a briet^time does successful evil put a new tint of outside beauty 
 upon all the world ; and happy knavery rejoices in the cunning 
 that miUces the world to him so beautiful. What a plodding, 
 leaden-eyed fool is mere honesty ; what an oaf, an ass, compared 
 to him who squares his code of morals by his seeming interest ! 
 And then full surely time advances, and the world, that looked 
 so fi-esh and smiling, is hollow-cheeked and ghastly — its beauty 
 ■«-iped away, even as a harlot's paint. Successful knavery, dizzied 
 with its luck, sees suddenly delicious scenes — a paradise of 
 worldly joy and life-long rest — then, waking to the truth, beholds 
 around it burning, bai'ren sand. If the mature pilgrims of the 
 world are sometimes so deceived, why not the boy St. Giles ? 
 
 Still the young, yes, and happy, felon trotted on, until he 
 entered Smithtield. He then walked the pony slowly up Long 
 Lane, and soon as he espied the Blue Posts, faithful to his orders, 
 he dismounted, looking anxiously around him for his friend and 
 instnictoi-, Tom Bla.st. A quju'ter of an houi- passed, and still he 
 Ciuae not. And then, and for the first time, he looked at the 
 stolen goods with lowering eyes, and his heart felt leaden. What 
 was he to do with the i^ony ^vithout Tom 1 Nobody woujd buy 
 it of him. And then a deeper and a deeper shadow fell upon all 
 things ; and, biting his lips, young St. Giles, with eyes — quick as 
 rats' — looked about and about him. What an ugly bi'ute the 
 pony seemed to him ! Yes ; he knew what he would do : he 
 wt)ulil jumji upon the pony, gallop back to Plumtree-street, and 
 swL-ar he had only been for a ride. Anything to be well clear of 
 tiu- i)()ny. AVith this thought St. Giles had his foot in the stirrup, 
 whin lie was t;ipj)ed upon the shoulder by a man plainly and com- 
 foilably dressed ui a dark -grey suit, weai-ing alight flaxen wig in 
 tiglit curls, surmounted by a large beaver hat, scrupulously sleek. 
 He had a broad, fat face, with a continual smile, laid like lacker 
 upon it. And, when he spoke, he spoke very gently and very 
 softly, JUS witli lips of butter. 
 
 '• jMy de:u- little boy," said the stranger, pattmg St. Giles affec- 
 tionately on the back, "where have you been so long 1 " 
 
 St. Giles looked — he could not help it — very suspiciously at the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. C9 
 
 stranger ; then scratching his head, he observed, " Don't know 
 you, sir." 
 
 " I dare say not ; how should you, my dear 1 But you will 
 know me, and for a friend. I've waited for you these ten 
 minutes." 
 
 St. Giles said nothing : nevertheless his thoughts were never 
 more active. He by no means liked the appearance of his new 
 friend ; he felt afi'aid of him. He would fling himself into the 
 saddle, and gallop off. As he determined upon this, the stranger, 
 in the gentlest manner, twitched the bridle from his hand, and 
 gently said, " My little dear, it 's all right." 
 
 " All right ! " cried St. Giles ; and somehow he felt that 
 his stolen pony was about to be stolen fi'om him — " what 's all 
 right ? " 
 
 " You came from Plumtree-street." St. Giles winced. " Now 
 you know you did ; don't teU a lie, my little dear ; for don't you 
 know what comes of little boys who tell lies 1 I have seen your 
 friend, and paid him ; it 's all right ; but as you 're such a nice 
 little boy, here 's a guinea for yourself." St. Giles's heart rose 
 somewhat at the guinea. "You're to go into the house, and 
 wait for Mr. Blast." St. Giles's eyes twinkled at the name : 
 of course, as the stranger aven-ed, it must be all right. " Stop, 
 don't change the guinea ; here 's a shilling too, my little dear. 
 Now, go in — I don't want to be thanked — only let me see you go 
 in, that you mayn't come to any harm in the street." St. Giles, 
 taking a last look at the pony, entered the Blue Posts, The 
 stranger and the pony went — who shall say whither ? 
 
 St. Giles meekly seated himself in a corner of the hostehy, 
 ordering for his refection two pennyworth of ale, and bread and 
 cheese. And when he had somewhat solaced his inward boy, 
 he began to wonder when Tom Blast would come. Hour after 
 hour passed, and still St. Giles remained alone. Again and again 
 he looked at the clock — again and again at the guinea. Never 
 before had he possessed such wealth : and the contemplation of 
 his riches in a great measure abated his anxiety for the arrival of 
 Tom ; even though he thought of him as the bearer of other 
 guineas, the purchase-money of the pony. Still, there was the 
 charm, the fascination of ready gold to comfort St. Giles ; and 
 the glitter of the money held him like the eye of a snake. 
 His only perplexity was how he could best spend the guinea. 
 He was deep in these thoughts when, the room having filled, 
 his attention was awakened by a man who, talking very loudly 
 —and with his clenched fist beating the table the while— about 
 what he called the abstract beauty of honesty, gradually hushed 
 all speakers into reverent listeners. The man was about the
 
 70 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 middle-time of life, drest somewhat like a grazier. He seemed 
 jirematurely bald, which questiouable defect gave to his head an 
 outride look of wisdom, i>o.ssibly not warranted by the contents. 
 lie luul one of those lai-ge cleiir faces, often called open, because 
 l)robably there is nothing jjositive in them. He was earnest and 
 voluble in his speech, as though his arguments welled up from 
 his heart, aud would out. 
 
 " You have sjud, sir," he cried, " that honesty is the best 
 fwlioy. You have been pleased to call that a golden maxim ? " 
 
 '' I have," answered a huge, dull-looking man, in a butcher's 
 coat. '• I have," he repeated ; suekuig his pipe, and winking his 
 small eyes. 
 
 " Sir," cried the bald-headed orator, " I call it the maxim of a 
 rogue and a rascal." 
 
 ''Hallo! Hallo!" cried some, and " Pi'ove it — prove it," 
 i<houte<l others. 
 
 " Prove it ! "Wliy it 's as plain as the door of Newgate. Now, 
 listen, gentlemen, if you please. Honesty is the best policy, 
 that 'h what I have to tackle. "Very well. What is honesty ? 
 I ask you that. Why, I suppose, it 's not to pick a man's pocket 
 — it 's not to steal his purse, or his coat, or his sheej:), or his 
 horse ? " Young St. Giles turned his eyes from the speaker. 
 '• It 's not to put off bad money, or to give short measure, or light 
 weight ? " 
 
 " Stick to the pint," cried a man with an apron, apparently a 
 small shopkeeper. 
 
 " I am sticking to it," resumed the orator. " Now, I tell you 
 again that that maxim isn't the maxim of a good man, but of a 
 rascal ; of a fellow that wants to be rewarded for not stealing — 
 for not passbig off bad money — for not giving short measure. 
 He says, no says he, I '11 be honest, not because I love honesty 
 fur itself, but because it 's all to my advantage to be honest. No, 
 gentlemen. Make honesty not the best policy, and then show me 
 I he man that loves it. That's my man— that's the true heart, 
 gentlemen. But to follow honesty because it 's the best policy — 
 'vhy, I repeat it, it 's nothing more than the calculation of asneak- 
 "I^ — of a fellow that hasn't the courage to be a rogue. No : give 
 me honesty naked as truth ; that 's tlie honesty I love best. I 
 <lon't want to be bribctl for being honest ! Eh ? " and he gazed 
 triunijthantly around him. 
 
 " I want you," said a man, putting his head in at the door, and 
 looking with strange significance at the speaker. 
 
 " Danm it ! " cried the orator, and immediately obeyed the 
 BunimonH. 
 
 Oh, abstract honesty! bleed for thy worshipper; for in less
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 tlian three minutes was lie handcuffed at the door on a charge of 
 street robbery. 
 
 To return to young St. Giles, an attentive, though unenlightened 
 listener to the lecturer upon honesty. St. Giles had heard of 
 honesty ; had some dim notion of its meaning. It was a some- 
 thing especially made for people who had all things comfortable 
 about them : so much he knew of honesty : but for honesty in the 
 abstract, — in that he was as ignorant, ay, as even some of his 
 betters. 
 
 The hours j^assed, and still Tom Blast came not. Evening 
 approached — night shut in — midnight came, and St. Giles, with a 
 heavy heart, though lightened somewhat by his gumea, turned 
 into the street. He could not go home — no ; at least, for a time. 
 Hog Lane must be to him a forbidden Paradise. No matter. 
 Had he not a guinea — a whole guinea — to himself ? The thought, 
 even in the midnight street, fell like a sunbeam upon him ; he 
 sprang from the pavement with a shout, reckless with his wealth. 
 He would make a night of it — jes, he would have all things 
 glorious ! And with this hilarious wilfulness, he took to his 
 heels, and was speedily housed for the night within the very 
 shadow of the walls of Newgate. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 For more than a week did St. Giles live upon his guinea. 
 True it is, that for the first day or two he dined and supped in 
 the Apollo of an eastern cook-shop ; besides taking his luncheon 
 of fried fish in the Minories, for the which delicacy, the Hebrews 
 thereabout dwelling enjoy a just renown. But these days of 
 Carnival j^ast, St. Giles economised, with a fine knowledge of the 
 resources of the metropolis. Twopence awarded to him the 
 sweets of sleep beneath a roof; and a shilling saw him safely 
 through the day. However, let not the reader imagine that St. 
 Giles — like many a great genius — was made dull and inactive by 
 the golden reward of his ability ; a circumstance to be so often 
 deplored in the case of great authors, great painters, and espe- 
 cially of great philosophers ; wherefore, it is questionable, if the 
 world would not really gain more by them if it never rewarded 
 them at all St. Giles was not one of these. No : he still kept 
 his ej^es -wide open at the doings of hfe ; still hived, in that odd, 
 world-tAAdsted little brain of his, all sorts of knowledge for the 
 future day. He especially employed part of his time, hanging
 
 T1 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 about the haiint* of Tom Bhist ; but, strange to say, that interest- 
 ing i>cJ-.s«jn never showed liiinself in any of his wonted places of 
 ease and ivcreation. Again and again did St. Giles travel Long- 
 Lane — again slink suid spy into every liaiint, in the fond aiul 
 foolish hoj>e of onee more meeting with the soft-spoken man who, 
 at the ruinous price of one guinea one shilling, had purchased a 
 pony of incomi (arable Arab blood. St. Giles, with all his friend- 
 8hii>, all his gratitude for Tom, could not but feel that he had 
 been tricked, bamV)ouzled by his tutor; and the nearer and nearer 
 he approaclied to his hist shilling, the more intense was his indig- 
 uiition — the more insatiable his ajjpetite of revenge. 
 
 It was the nintli day of St. Giles's absence from his maternal 
 home, and the pilgrim of London stood before a house of humble 
 entertiiinnient in Cow Cross. The time was noon ; and St. Giles, 
 feeling the la^it threepence in his pocket — turning them over, one 
 by one — wjis endeavounng to arbitrate between pudding and bed. 
 If he bought a cut of pudding — and through the veiy window- 
 pane he seemed to nose its odour — he had not wherewithal to buy 
 a lodging. "What of that ? London had many doorways — hos- 
 pitable stone-.steps — for nothing ; and pudding must be paid for. 
 Still he hesitated ; when the cook-shop man removed the pudding 
 from the window. This removal immediately decided St. Giles. 
 He rushed into the shop, and laid down his last Avorklly stake 
 upon the counter. " Threepenn'orth o' jjuddin', and a good three- 
 penn'oith," said St. Giles. AVith a look of half-reproof and half- 
 contemi^t the tradesman silently executed the oi'der ; and in a 
 few moments, St. Giles stood upon the king's high-\vay, devouring 
 witli great relish his last threepence. Whilst thus genially em- 
 ployed, he heard a far-off voice roar thi-ough the muggy air : his 
 heart bejit, and he ate almost to choking, as he listened to these 
 familiar words: — "A most True and Particular Account of the 
 JIorrilAe Circumstance of a Bear that has been Fed itpon Five 
 YouiUf Ckitdren in a Cellar in Westminster ! " It was the voice 
 of Bhust ; and St. Giles swallowed his pudding, hurriedly used 
 the Vmck of liis hand for a napkin, and following the sound of 
 the crit-r, was in a trice in Peter-street, and one of the mob that 
 circknl the marvel-monger of Hog-Lane. Nevertheless, though 
 Tom roared with an energy that very strongly declared his owai 
 fjuth in the horror that he sought to vend for only one half- 
 lK;niiy, Iiis auditors lacked credulity or coppers for the well-woni 
 enormity. Nobody purchased. Not even a timorous, sym- 
 pathising Bcrvant-maid advanced through the crowd to make the 
 myst.-ry her own. Tom felt it. llis standing in the world as a 
 tradfsiii:m w.xs fiust cnunbling from beneath his feet. St. Giles 
 wa« hurrying up to his old and early fi-iend, Avhen, at a short
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 distance, he beheld his former patron, Capstick, the muffin-maker, 
 and Bright Jem. They looked, as he thought, somewliat curiously 
 at his friend Tom, and then seemed to take counsel of one another. 
 Under these circumstances, St. Giles thought that to accost Tom, 
 would be to call unnecessary attention to himself. He, therefore, 
 remained, shrunk down among the mob that every moment be- 
 came less and less. What, too, made it most discouraging to 
 Mr. Blast were the scoffs and loud laughter with which certain 
 new-comers would listen to the description of the horror sought 
 to be cu'culated, and then hurry off. " That cock won't fight 
 now ! " cried one. " A little late in the day for that. Get some- 
 thing new," cried another. " Gammon ! " shouted a thkd. 
 
 Nevertheless, be of good heart, Tom Blast ; take consolation 
 from this. You suffer in great society ; you sink in most worship- 
 ful companionship. Very reverend, grave, authoritative persons 
 — men of the bench, even of the pulpit — who, for centuries, sold 
 to their exceeding profit, " Most True and Particular Accounts " 
 of a horrid bear of some sort — whether of royal or feudal privi- 
 lege — of witchcraft — of popery — of sham rebelhon — ^nay, fifty 
 bears and bugbears, all of horrid, ghastly nature, — they, too, in 
 their turns, have outlived the profitable lie. And even in these 
 latter days, when some Tom Blast in higher places, — nay, in the 
 highest — sounds his tin horn of bigotry, and would trade upon 
 some bear apocryphal, he is assured in the like sense, although 
 in gentler phrase, that such cock will by no means fight — that the 
 day has passed for so fooUsh, vain a story — that, fhially, his bear 
 is no bear at all, but briefly, yet intensely, gammon. Has not 
 history her catch-jiennies, even as the archives of Seven Dials 1 
 
 Mr. Blast was somewhat of a philosopher. He could have 
 borne the laughter and scoffing of the crowd, if any of them 
 had bought his ware ; but his philosophy was not of that tran- 
 scendental kind to endure outrage, unmitigated by any sort of 
 coin, even the smallest, current in the realm. He therefore, with a 
 sotto voce expression of the deepest contempt for his hearers, broke 
 from the crowd, passing on, and then — his legs e\-idently walking 
 in a passion — turning, he strode still onwards until he entered 
 Cow Lane. Here, St. Giles, hanging at his skirts, came iip 
 with him. 
 
 " Well, if it isn't a sight for bad eyes to see you ! " said the 
 unabashed Tom. " But don't let 's talk in the street." And 
 Tom made for an opposite public-house, one of his customary 
 places of call, unknown to St. Giles. Stalking through the pas- 
 sage, followed by his young friend, he made his way into a small, 
 dark, low room. " I thought there 'd be nobody here," said 
 Tom ; and then in a tone of great tenderness and anxiety, looking
 
 74 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 8ti-aight in the eyes of St. Giles, he asked, " Well, and where have 
 you been ? They 're mad about you in the Lane. Where have you 
 been ? " 
 
 " ^^^ly, I 've been looking for you," said St. Giles, moodily 
 nodding his head. "You must have know'd that." 
 
 " And that 's, I suppose, why we didn't happen to meet," re- 
 plied Tom ; possibly recollecting that his chief care had been to 
 keep out of the boy's way. " Why, what 's the matter ? you 
 look l>laguy sarcy ! What are you looking so black at, you 
 yoimg devil ? " cried Tom, with sudden ferocity ; but St. Giles 
 felt his injuries, and was not to be browbeaten. 
 
 " Why, I 'm a looking at you, — and not much to look at 
 neither," shouted St. Giles, with answering vigour. " You 're 
 not a goin' to frighten me, I can tell you. Why didn't you come 
 as you promised you would ? You 're a good un, you are ! " 
 
 " Now, what does ail the boy 1 " said Tom, coaxingly ; though 
 evidently ill at ease : for his fingei's worked ; and he bit his 
 lip as he gazed on the boy, who, with sullen, defying air, returned 
 his stare. 
 
 " Wiiy, this ails me. Didn't you tell me to take that pony to 
 Long Lane — and then didn't you tell me to wait for you 1 " 
 
 " I know it, Giles ; I know it ; but you see, as I went along, I 
 thought agin over the matter. I thought, you see, it might lead 
 you into trouble, if I come ; so I thought I 'd stay away, and 
 you 'd bring the pony home agin, and then, mayhap, after a little 
 breeze, there 'd be an end of the mattei'. That 's it, Giles," said 
 cautious Mr. Blast. 
 
 " Then, why did you send the man as give me a guinea, and 
 took the pony away ? Him as said, too, that he 'd made it all right 
 with you, and " 
 
 Here St. Giles was interrupted in his volubility by JNIr. Blast ; 
 wlio performed — and an admh-able performance it was — a look of 
 immense a-stonishment, at the same time whistling very vehe- 
 mently. At length, mastering his wonder, he cried — " Why, 
 Giles ! you 've never sold the pony ? " 
 
 " No. I never sold it — but you did ; the gemman told me so. 
 You sold it ; and after that " 
 
 IMr. Blast could scarcely contain himself, so big, so swelling 
 wa-s his compa-ssion for the injured boy. " Oh, Giles," he cried — 
 " poor little fellow ! You 're done, Giles ; you 're done." 
 
 "And who's done me? Why, you have," screamed the 
 youngster in a paroxysm of passion. All childhood vanished 
 from his face ; so suddenly was it con\mlsed -with rage. He 
 stood, fr)r a moment, breathless with anger ; and foi'getful in 
 hi« lury of the bulk and strength of his former teacher, he
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 clenched his little fist, and grmding his teeth, advanced towards 
 Blast, who, for a moment, recoiled from the small assailant. 
 Then, recovering himself, he laid his hands upon his knees, and 
 with an effort to be calm, contemptuous, said, " And this, you 
 httle varmint, is your thanks to me ; to me, you scoriiin, as has 
 been better than a father to you ! To me, who 's taught you 
 ballad-chanting, and everything as is decent you know ; to me, as 
 has laid awake in my bed thiukiu' what I could do for you in the 
 mornin' ; to me, who 's always looked on you as a rasher of my 
 own flesh ! And you '11 shake them little mawleys at me ! " The 
 picture of ingi'atitude was almost too much for Mr. Blast. He 
 Avas nearly melted in his own tenderness. 
 
 " None o' that — that won't do for me, no how," cried St. Giles. 
 " You made me steal the pony — you sold it, and now — " 
 
 The charge was too much for the indignant virtue of Mr, Blast. 
 With an exclamation of disgust, he aimed a blow at his accusei', 
 that but for his agility, would have laid him senseless on the 
 floor. Bobbing his head and doubling himself up with wonderful 
 elasticity, St. Giles escaped the meditated punishment, and the 
 next moment saw liim fastened on Tom ; clasping him round the 
 waist, and kickmg with all his might and malice at his bene- 
 factor's shins. Tom, mad with pain and vexation, sought to flmg 
 the urchin off ; but he held to his prey like a stoat. For some 
 moments the boy heroically suffered the worst punishment that 
 his master m iniquity could inflict, returning it with unequal 
 powers. At length. Blast unclasping the urchin's hold, seized 
 him in his arms, and threw him idolently off. The boy fell, 
 stunned, against the wainscot. The infuriate savage, his passion 
 raging, was about to deal a blow — it would have been the last — 
 upon the prostrate boy, when Capstick, Bright Jem, and a couple 
 of officers burst into the room. Blast immediately diwied their 
 busuiess, and with masterly coolness observed, i^ointing to St. Giles 
 IjTng in the corner a senseless heap — " There 's your young oss- 
 stealer for you ; and a nice job I 've had to nibble him. A varmint 
 of a pole-cat as he is ! " 
 
 " The young im and the old un, too," said one of the officers. 
 " Why this is better luck than we bargained for." 
 
 Jem lifted the boy between his knees ; he was stiU pale and 
 senseless. "Mr. Ctipstick," said Jem, "for God's sake, some 
 w^ater ! " Then turning an indignant look upon Bla,st, he added, 
 " Why, what a paving-stone you must have for a heart, to use a 
 l^oor child hke this." 
 
 " A child ! " cried Blast, " a young devil ! " 
 
 " And if he is," said Jem, " who 's made him one ? Murder ! 
 why it 's the worst of murders ; to take and kill all the good in ;i
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 child's fioul, and then to fling him into the world to do his worst, 
 and answer for 't." 
 
 "There, there, never mind, Jem," cried Capstick, who was 
 tuniing himself round, and shuffling about, visMy affected by the 
 miserable condition of the child, yet stiniggliug to maintain his 
 outw!U-d misanthropy. " All wretches ; all alike, worthless 
 animals ! " And then he roared at the waiter as he entered — 
 "Why don't you brmg some water — some brandy — an>i;hing, 
 everjthing for this poor creature — ^this miserable — ^lielpless — 
 forloni — unhappy little boy ? " Again Capstick turned his face 
 in a corner, and \'iolently blew his nose, and coughed, and vowed 
 he never had such a cold in all his life. 
 
 " There, there," said one of the officers, as Jem bathed the 
 boy's face, " he '11 come round again, never feai*." 
 
 Jem groaned, and shook his head. " Yes, he will come round," 
 he said. " If it wasn't that blood would be on somebody's head, 
 it would be a good thing, if he never did. Lord ! Lord! " cried 
 Jem, " to think that this is the babby's face I once knew ! " 
 
 " Pooh — pooh ! — nonsense," said Capstick ; " we 've nothing to 
 do with that ; nothing at all. The ends of justice — ^the ends of 
 justice, ^Ir. Aniseed," — and again the muffin-maker coughed ; he 
 had such a cold. 
 
 However, whilst Jem — with his heart nmning at his eyes — is 
 solacing young St. Giles, we will, as briefly as we may, inform the 
 reader of the cause that has brought the muffin-maker and the 
 link-man to Smithfield. 
 
 E^'er since the conclusion of our sixth chapter — which the 
 urbanit}' of the reader will consider to be no less than six years 
 ago — fortune smiled upon Capstick. True it is, she often smiles 
 ujx)n the strangest lumps of jnen — is oft a very Titauia enamoured 
 with an ass's head — nevertheless, she showed good judgment in 
 the favoui-s she bestowed upon the muffin-maker. So fortune 
 made interest with her good sister fame to play a flourish on her 
 trumpet in praise of Capstick's muffins ; that in time rejoiced 
 many In-arths without the circle of St. Giles's. In a word, Cap.stick 
 soon built an enduring reputation upon muffins ; and therefore 
 ha<l a better chance of his name going buttered down to posterity 
 than has the name of eveiy monarch duly buttered in birth-day 
 o<le. Well, the calls upon Capstick's oven were so increasing, 
 that his wife suggested he should forthwith start, a horse and 
 very g«;ntcel cart. She, good woman ! had no eye to a Sunday 
 drive — tiie vanity never entered her head ; all she thought of 
 vfiis business : which she had no wish whatever to adulterate 
 wiUi cv.-n a drop of pleasure. Mr. Capstick was somewhat 
 twitted with himself that such proposal emanated from his wife:
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 77 
 
 it was so good, so I'easonable, it ought to have beeu his own. 
 However, he would say, the woman had caught something like 
 judgment by living with him. At once, then, Mr. Capstick con- 
 sented to the vehicle ; and that purchased a bargain, he took his 
 way — in pestilent hour for him — to Smithfield, to buy a horse. 
 Now, Mr. Capstick knew no more of the points of a horse than of 
 a imicorn. As, however, he had little faith in human nature, 
 and none whatever when mixed up with horse-flesh, he said to 
 himself that he might as well be cheated at first hand as at 
 second ; therefore, went he alone to buy a steed. Arrived in the 
 market, fiiU soon was he singled out by a benevolent, yet withal 
 discerning dealer, who could see in a twinkling the very sort 
 of thing that would suit him. " A nice little cretur that would eat 
 nothing, and go fifty miles a day upon it." In brief, the worthy 
 man sold to the mufiin-maker, sold to him for an old song — 
 to be sure, he could afford to let it go thus cheap — the black pony 
 which only two days before had been the valued possession of Lord 
 St. James. For four-and-twenty hours only did the mufiin-man 
 rejoice in his purchase ; for on his very first attempt to degrade 
 the high-blooded animal to a cart — it was quite as fit to draw 
 St. Paul's — the creature, although its flowing tale and mane 
 had been ruthlessly docked and cropped — was identified by Cesar 
 Gum, on his way with a sisterly message to Short's Gardens. 
 Never before had Mr. Capstick known the full value of a good 
 character. His story of the transaction was received as truth ; 
 and though he lost the ten pounds — the value of the old song — 
 he had given for the animal, he maintained his untarnished repu- 
 tation. Of course, St. Giles was soon known as the horse-stealer. 
 It also came out, that ]VIr. Thomas Blast had been seen in very 
 earnest conversation with the boy, as he led the pony. Every 
 search was made for Tom ; and as, with a modesty not usual to 
 him, he seemed wholly to have withdrawn himself from his 
 native parish, curiosity to learn his whereabout was the further 
 quickened. Mr. Capstick felt his judgment, his pocket, too, some- 
 what involved in the transaction. He felt that he stood fair and 
 upright in the eye of the world, nevertheless it would be to him 
 a peculiar satisfaction could he detect Mr. Thomas Blast, or the 
 benevolent, simple-spoken tradesman who — for the price of an old 
 song — had sold the pony. With this wish thumping at his heart, 
 Capstick every day visited Smithfield and its neighbourhood ; 
 taking with him Bright Jem, whom he had accustomed himself to 
 think an honest, worthy fellow, and his particular friend ; that is, 
 so far as the misanthropy of the mufiin-maker would acknowledge 
 the possible existence of such a treasiu-e. It was strange, however, 
 that Capstick, in his thoughts of revenge, had no thought of
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 youiif St. Giles. No : mII the vehemence of his wrath was roused 
 against the boy's tutor. 
 
 "We have now, we tiiist, sufficiently explained the course of 
 accidents that brought the muffin-maker and Jem to Porter- 
 street, and so made them hearers of the unprofitable oratory of 
 Tom Blast. Feai-ful that they might be recognised by him, they 
 employed a thli-d party to watch him to his haimt, whUst they 
 secured the attendance of officers. Hence, they saw not St. Giles, 
 who, as we have before observed, kept himself close among the 
 mob. They were the more astonished to find the ill-used boy in 
 the same room with his schoolmaster. 
 
 "There, now — he's all right," cried one of the officers, as 
 St. Giles — restored by the eflbrts of Bright Jem — looked about 
 him. However, no sooner was he conscious of the presence of 
 Capstick and his fast friend Jem, than his face glowed like a 
 cofil. He himg down his head, and burst into tears : there was 
 no sham wlumpering — no taught effort of sorrow — but the boy's 
 heart seemed touched, melted, and he wept and writhed con- 
 ■\-ulsively. A recollection of the goodness — the disregarded kind- 
 ness of the men before him — thrilled through his soul, and 
 though he knew it not, he felt the yeai-nings of a better nature. 
 There was anguish — ^penitence — in the sobs that seemed to tear 
 his vitals. 
 
 " Thank God for that ! " cried Jem ; and the poor fellow wept, 
 too. " I like to hear that, — eh, Mr. Capstick ? " 
 
 Mr. Capstick felt an odd queasiness in his throat, and could 
 say notliing. He therefore again threw himself upon his jjocket- 
 handkerchief. Then, conscious that he had a great duty to per- 
 form for the ends of justice — a fact that, when othei'wise puzzled, 
 he had more than once insisted upon — he turned to the officers, 
 and pointing his thumb towards Blast, observed with peculiar 
 loftiness, " You wUl be good enough to handcuff that man." 
 
 " Handcuff me ! " ciied Mr. Blast. " They 'II do it at theii- 
 pei-il." 
 
 " Ha ! my good man — I beg your pardon — you desperate 
 scoundrel ! " said Capstick with withering ui-banity, " they 're 
 accustomed to do a great deal at theii- peril ; thanks to such 
 rascals as you. Handcuff him ! " 
 
 " They dam't do it — they dam't do it," shouted the struggling 
 Blast ; and in a moment afterwards his wrists were locked in 
 iron. " I '11 make you pay for this — never mind ; it's no matter 
 to me — but I '11 make you pay for this," he said ; and then, like 
 a Tyburn philosopher, Tom became suddenly reconciled to his 
 manacles. 
 
 We will not dwell upon the details of the examination of the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 prisoners. It will be sufficient for the reader to know that, after 
 certain preliminaries, a sitting alderman committed St. Giles ;md 
 his tutor for horse-stealing. Both scholar and master awaited 
 their trial in Newgate. 
 
 It was not until after the culprit's first examination, that 
 Capstick felt the full annoyance of his position. When Jem 
 would shake his head, and look dumpish on the matter, Capstick 
 would talk loud, and beg him to think of the ends of justice ; 
 but when the boy was committed on the capital charge, the 
 muffin-maker's public sjjirit wholly forsook him. Evidence had 
 brought the accusation quite home to the boy ; however legal 
 proof might fail to criminate his tempter. " They '11 never — 
 never think of much hurtmg the boy — a child, you know — a mere 
 child 1 " said Capstick to Jem, as they left Guildhall together. 
 
 " Humph ! I don't know what you call hurting, Mr. Cap- 
 stick," said Jem, moodily. "But I shouldn't think hanging 
 nothin'." 
 
 Capstick turned pale as flour, and he could scarcely articulate 
 the words — " Impossible — ridiculous — they couldn't do it." 
 
 " Ha ! " cried Jem, " when hanging 's the thing, you don't 
 know what they can do. Well, I 'd rather ha' been in bed, with 
 a broken limb, than had a finger in this matter. I shall have 
 that poor child always about me : I know I shall. AVlien he 's 
 killed and gone, I shall never take my pipe without seeing his 
 face in the fire. And then my poor old woman ! She that still 's 
 so fond of him — poor or^ihan thing ! for his mother 's worse than 
 lost to him — she '11 lead me a nice life — that is, though she won't 
 say anything outright, she '11 always be a crying aboxit him. 
 "We 've done a nice thing, ]Mr. Capstick, to make our lives pleasant 
 as long as they last ! " 
 
 " Pooh, pooh — folly, Jem ; all folly. I suppose property must 
 be protected. I suppose you won't deny that, eh 1 " asked 
 Capstick. 
 
 " I deny nothing," answered Jem hopelessly ; and then he 
 groaned " God help us ! Why didn't he die in the frost and 
 snow ? Why tUd I warm him, when a babby. at my own fire, 
 only to help to hang him arterwards 1 " 
 
 " Hang him ! Nonsense ! I tell you, Jem, you 're a fool — an 
 old, butter-hearted fool — and you know nothmg. Here have you 
 lived all your life with the worst of people about you — not but 
 what folks at the very best are great rascals, every one of 'em — ■ 
 but here you have been up to your ears in villainy — and yet you 
 look upon everybody about you as innocent as shepherds and 
 shepherdesses in white china. I 'm ashamed of you, Jem ; be a 
 man, and think of the world as its rascality deserves. For, Lord !
 
 80 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 what a lump of roguery it is ! How that the blessed srni should 
 ever eondesceud to smiJe upon such a lot of wretches as we are, 
 I can't tell ! " 
 
 " Xo more can I," answered Jem : " but since the sun, as you 
 say, does demean himself to show a good face to us, I think it 's 
 as little as we can do to try to do the same to one another." 
 
 Capstiek, taken somewhat aback, looked suddenly roimd upon 
 Jem ; and then, feeling himself wholly unable to controvert this 
 opinion, he simply said, " Jem, you 're a fool." 
 
 A week pa-ssed, and the trial of St. Giles approached. It was 
 strange to Mr. Capstick that so many of his customers would 
 ask him about his health. " Wliy, what can ail the people ? " he 
 would say. " I was never better — never in all my life. I eat 
 like a pig, and sleep like a dormouse ; can any man do better 
 than that ? " But Mr. Cap.stick was not well. The biped pig 
 made poor meals ; the human dormouse had restless nights ; and 
 when dreaming, dreamt horrid Aisions of death and Newgate. 
 
 It wanted some ten days of the trial, when Bright Jem pre- 
 sented himself at Capstick's house. "You see," said Jem, 
 " they 're getting some money in the Lane so that they may have 
 a lawj'er for poor St. Giles. Well, they 're a bad lot, I dare say ; 
 but you should only know what some of the poor souls have 
 done." 
 
 " And what have they done ? " asked Capstick, with what he 
 meant for a .sneer. 
 
 " Why, some as had two blankets have sold one on 'em ; some 
 with two gowns have pawned one o' them. It would make you 
 bless j-oiu-self, Mr. Capstick, to see besides what things they 've 
 made twopences and threepences of — ^kettles, sarcepans, anything. 
 It 's wonderful to see how they do stick by one another." 
 
 " Crime, Mr. Aniseed, crime is a brazen cord — and certainly 
 does hold rogues together," said Capstick. 
 
 " You may say what you like," said Jem, " but whenever I 've 
 looked up that horrid Lane, and seen men and women like devils, 
 and children — poor creturs — like devils' little ones, — I never could 
 have thought that in that dismal place there was after all a sort 
 of good, that the very best of us wouldn't be any worse for having 
 more of it." 
 
 " Veiy like ; very like," said Capstick. " And I am to under- 
 stand, that the people want to fee a lawyer ? " 
 
 " That 's it," rei)lied Jem. " There 's a Mr. Tangle, somewhere 
 in Clifford's Inn ; he 's a sharp un. They say he 'd get a chap 
 out o' Newgate ; get him out through a flaw no bigger than a 
 key-hole. Weli, I 've been thinking — not that I can do much — 
 but I 've been thinking, that as we helped to get the boy into
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. SI 
 
 Newgate, if we was to give what money we could to help to get 
 him out." 
 
 "And so defeat the ends of justice 1 " cried Capstiek, and he 
 frowned severely. 
 
 " Oh, I dai'e say it 's wi'ong," said Jem ; " nevertheless, if we 
 could only get the boy safe ofl", he might be a good un after all. 
 Didn't you hear how he cried 1 Oh, there 's heart in him yet, 
 I 'm sure there is. Well, then, you see — " 
 
 " I see perfectly," said Capstiek, " you 've come to ask me to 
 subscribe to the fund for the lawyer 1 " 
 
 " Well, that 's jest it," assented Jem. 
 
 " Forgetful of my serious responsibility as a witness — ^forgetful 
 of the ends of justice — forgetful of what I owe to society — 
 forgetful — " 
 
 " Forgetful," cried Jem, with animation, " of everything except 
 of sa'V'ing a chUd from the gallows." 
 
 " Mr. Aniseed," said Cajjstick very decidedly, " I am soiTy to 
 refuse you anything, but you must not let your feelings bUnd you : 
 you mean well, but you have yet to learn that the best meaning 
 men are those who often do the , most mischief. In a word, sir, 
 I can have nothing to say to this busmess." 
 
 Bright Jem made no answer, but with a moody nod was about 
 to leave the shop, when the muffin-maker called to him. " I 
 think you said this attorney's name was Wrangle 1 " 
 
 '' Tangle," said Jem, shortly. 
 
 " Tangle, Lyon's Inn ? " said Capstiek. 
 
 " Clifford's-Inn," cried Jem, a little sulkily, and then he darted 
 from the shop. 
 
 It is most time that Mr. Tangle deserved the high reputation 
 bestowed upon him by Jem. His office in Clifford's-Inn was 
 considered a piivate outlet from Newgate. Many and many a 
 time, when the fatal halter seemed inevitable, had Tangle, by some 
 deft device, turned the running into a slip-knot, and the hang- 
 man been defrauded by the quibbler. Many a gentleman had 
 Mr. Tangle restored to the road, none at all the worse for durance. 
 Many a highwapnan, on his solitary midnight watch, might think 
 with gratitude of the master-spirit of Clifford's-Inn. 
 
 It was the evening of the day on which Bright Jem solicited 
 Capstiek, and Mr. Tangle sat in the solitude of his chambers. 
 He was sunk in profound study ; possibly, pondering how to find 
 or make a flaw : how to give to the line of right a zig-zag, pro- 
 fitable bend for some consulting client shut in Newgate stones. 
 His clerk was out : therefore, his knocker being struck, he rose 
 himself and opened the door. A tall, bulky man, wi'apped in a 
 great-coat, a hat slouched over his face, tied by a handkerchief
 
 82 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 that almost covered his features, stalked into the room. Mr. 
 Tangle was not at all surprised : not at all. So many odd people 
 — so strangely appointed — every sessions called upon him. 
 
 "You are Mr. Tangle," said a voice that most assuredly 
 belonged to Capstick, the muffiu-maker. Mr. Tangle bowed. 
 " You are interested in the case of a boy, one St. Giles ? " 
 
 " I have been consulted," said Tangle in his dry way. " A 
 bad case ; confesse<lly, a bad case ; still, something may be done. 
 You know 'till a man 's hanged, there 's always hope ; that is, if 
 
 there 's always " 
 
 "Money." ^Ir. Tangle smiled and nodded. Mr. Capstick 
 took a small leathern bag from his pocket, from which he counted 
 out ten guineas. " I am not a rich man, ^Mr. Tangle," said 
 Capstick. 
 
 " I am sorry for it," said Tangle (and evidently with a feeling 
 of sincerity) : " othervsise the ten might have been fifty." 
 
 " But do what you can for that wretched boy — only save him 
 from hanging, and there 's twenty more." 
 
 " Thirty pounds," said Tangle ; " it 's doing it — if indeed it 's 
 to be done at aU — very cheap ; too cheap. Nevertheless, as you're 
 not a rich man, I '11 not refuse money. What name ? " 
 
 " Never mind that," said Capstick. " I think I 've given you 
 enough to show that I 'm in earnest. Now, only save the cliild, 
 and as God 's in heaven you shall have the other twenty." 
 
 " "We '11 see what can be done," said Tangle, showing Capstick 
 to the door — " I have hopes ; great hopes." 
 
 And the trial came on, and St. Giles and Thomas Blast were 
 arraigned for stealing a pony of the value of fifty pounds, the 
 property of the Marquess of St. James. Nothing could be clearer 
 than the evidence against the boy, as delivered by young St. 
 James, Mrs. Simmer, and her servant. But legal proof was 
 wanting against Blast. Ti-ue, he had been seen talking to St. 
 Giles, as tlie boy led the jwny ; but nothing more. There was 
 no doubt that the man who had taken the animal from St. Giles 
 in Ix)ng Lane was an accomplice of Blast's, but he was not to be 
 fjund— there was no proof. Wliereupon, Thomas Blast waa 
 acquitted ; and young St. Giles found " Guilty, — Death."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 83 
 
 CHAPTEE IX 
 
 " Guilty, — Death ! " 
 
 What familiar syllables were these in the good old times — the 
 time of our history ! In those happier days, how many goods and 
 chattels, live stock and dead, were protected, watched by Death ! 
 Death was made by law the guardian of all things. Prime agent, 
 great conservator of social right — grim keeper of the world's 
 moveables. Death, a shepherd, avenged the wi-ongs of stolen 
 mutton ; Death stood behind every counter, protector of chapman's 
 stock; Death was the day and night guai'd of the higliway 
 traveller against the liighway thief ; Death watched ox and ass ; 
 the goose on the common, the hen on the roost. Even at the altar, 
 Death took his cautious stand, that Hymen might not be scofled, 
 defrauded by wicked bigamist. De minimis curabat Mors. Turn 
 where he would, the rogue's path was dug with graves. Never- 
 theless, the world grew no better ; made no visible return to 
 that happy state, ere hemp was made a sovereign remedy for wrong. 
 And so by degrees Death lost somewhat of his reputation with the 
 great ones of the world ; and by degrees many things were taken 
 out of his charge. It was found that sheep were stolen, trades- 
 men's goods lifted, pockets picked, hen-roosts forced — and maids 
 wickedly mamed by men already bound, — it was seen that these 
 abominations continued and increased, aye, in the very face of the 
 great ghastly bugbear Death, and so his watch and ward were 
 made a lighter task ; he was gradually relieved of many of his 
 social duties ; the world, to the astonishment of some folks, still 
 spinning on its axis, though the life of immortal man was not, as in 
 the good old times, offered to stolen colt, to the king's gi-acious face 
 unlawfully stamped in coimterfeit metal, to a himdred other 
 sins all made mortal by the \visdom of untaught humanity. 
 Truly, justice, turning back the leaves of the gaol calendar, 
 might sit awhile in sackcloth and ashes, penitent for past trans- 
 gressions — past wi'ongs committed in her moral bUndness ! The 
 sword of justice ! An awful weapon truly : a weapon, working 
 out the will of highest Providence ; a solemn instrument which 
 man solemnly acknowledges. This has been, and may be. Yet, 
 thinkmg of the world's mistakes ; of the cruel blunders worked 
 by law on man, the sword of justice — of so-called Christian justice 
 robed and ermined — may sometimes seem to the eye of grieved 
 
 g2
 
 84 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 humanity as terrible as the blood-tiripping tomaliawk of the wild 
 revengeful savage. The sword of justice ! May not the time 
 come — it tri/l come, as surely as the sun of far-off" yeai-s — when 
 justice shtill lay down her sword ? when with better wisdom, she 
 shall ^■indicate her awful mission to mankind, yet shed no drop 
 of blood ? 
 
 Let us return to St. Giles ; to the boy in his fifteenth year, 
 spawned upon the world and reared by daily wrong and igno- 
 rance, a morsel for the hangman : now, a condemned thief, pal- 
 sied and aghast with terror, upon the very threshold of the world; 
 to be flung therefrom, an oHering to the majesty of offended law. 
 Grim majesty — ghastly Moloch ! Stately wickedness, with robes 
 dyed in the blood of simiing ignorance ! A majesty, that the 
 principle of all evil may too often smile upon as its working genius 
 here on earth. A majesty as cold and pulseless as the idol whose 
 wooden nostrils know not the sacrifices its darkened worshippers 
 prepare it. But St. Giles will now know there is a government 
 — a knot of the wise and good, whose harmonious souls combined 
 make up the music of the state ; the moral melody that softens 
 and refines the rugged, dull-eared mass. He will now know this; 
 the hangman will teach it him. A sharp, short lesson ; the first 
 and last prepared him by a paternal state. 
 
 " Guilty — death ! " Such was the verdict. Tom Blast 
 breathed hea\aly, and a faint smile flickered at his lips as he felt 
 assured of his escape. Still he durst not turn Ijis eye towards his 
 boy-\ictim in the dock. Conscience was at the felon's heart ; and 
 seared, withered as it was, it felt the sudden horror of remorse. 
 His features grew ])ale, then dark ; were for a moment convulsed ; 
 then instantly — daring no look at St. Giles — he disappeared from 
 the dock. The boy stared about him with a foolish gaze ; and 
 then began to sob. There was no terror — no anguish in his face. 
 It was the grief of a boy doomed to a whipping, not the gibbet : 
 and it was such sorrow — such seeming childish ignorance of the 
 impending horror — that to those who looked upon him made his 
 condition more terrilile. And then again it seemed impossible 
 that the sentence so sonorously uttered, should be carried out. 
 Could it be that such an array of judges, such wisdom, such 
 learning, such gi-ave and reverend experience, should be opposed to 
 a miserable child, of no more self-accountability than a dog? 
 Appalling odds ! Could it be thought that the scene wjis a fi-ight- 
 ful reality of daily, breathing life ? "Was it not a grim farce — 
 a hideous, foolish mockery ? Could the wise hearts of men, fathers 
 of well-taught, well-tended, happy children, doom that child to 
 death ? That miseraljle item of human ignorance, that awful 
 reproach to those who made laws to protect property, but left the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 85 
 
 outcast poor a heedless prey to their ovax unbridled instincts ? 
 Nevertheless, the law would hang St. Giles ; and grave, respect- 
 able church-going men, in the very cosiness of their ignorance, 
 would clasp their hands, and raise their eyes, and pity and wonder 
 at the wickedness of the new generation ! 
 
 A turnkey in the dock took St. GUes by the hand, and in a 
 moment the boy had disappeared. " Good God ! " cried a voice, 
 convulsed with gi'ief "Silence in the court ! " exclaimed the 
 crier ; and immediately another wretch took his place at the bar, 
 and the terrible course of law continued. It M'as Capstick, whose 
 exclamation had called down the official rebuke ; it was really 
 Capstick, although even the wife of his bosom might have paused 
 ere she acknowledged him ; so suddenly and frightfully had the 
 brief business of the trial wrought a change in him. His flesh 
 seemed jaundiced, and his black eyes, Aaolently dilated, rolled 
 restlessly about. His face appeared of a sudden shai'pened like 
 the face of a sick man ; and his arm shook, palsied, as with his 
 nails he grasped the arm of Bright Jem. " Let us go," said Jem, 
 chokingly, " we can do no good here ; " and Capstick, staring 
 stupidly about him, suffered himself to be led from the court. In 
 a few moments they stood in the Old Bailey. It was a lovely 
 spring night. The breath of May, even in the Old Bailey, came 
 sweet and odorous, carrying freshness to the heart and brain. 
 The moon shone with brightest, purest lustre : all the stars of 
 heaven seemed visible ; aU looking down in theii* bright tender- 
 ness, as though they looked upon a kindred sphere of purity and 
 light, and loved it. Capstick gazed at the magnificence, and the 
 tears thick and fast fell from him. Then in a subdued, a com- 
 forting voice, he said, " No, Jem, no ; it 's a wickedness to think 
 it ; there 's a God in heaven, and they can't do it." 
 
 " Hadn't we better see Tangle, the lawyer 1 " asked Jem. 
 " He hasn't done much, to be sure ; still he may yet do some- 
 thing. I didn't see him nowhere in the coiul — saw nobody but 
 his clerk," 
 
 "Yes, we'll see him — we'll see him," said Capstick. "He's 
 a scoundi-el ; but then he 's fitter for the world. For the trath 
 is, Jem, we're all scoundrels." Jem made no answer to this 
 charitable creed. " Ail scoundi-els : and I 'm about the jjoorest, 
 meanest, shabbiest villain of the lot. And yet you 'U see how 
 I shall carry it off. They '11 hang this wi-etched boy — oh, never 
 doubt it, Jem! they're bad enough for anji/hing — they'll hang 
 him. And I shall still go on sleek and smooth in the world ; 
 making muffins and laying by the pennies ; paying rent and 
 taxes ; owing no man a shilling, and so easily and pleasantly 
 earning a good name, and being mightily trumped up for doing it.
 
 86 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 I .shall go on V>eiiig called a respectable man ; and I shall grin 
 and smile at the lie, and show a satin cheek to the world, as if 
 the lie was true as gospel truth. And then I shall die and he 
 buried with feathere: and Mrs. Capstick will put a stone over me 
 — I know her jiride, Jem; I know she '11 doit — a stone with a 
 bouncing flam upon it ; all lies — lies to the last. Oh, Jem," ciied 
 Cap.stick, groaningly, "if the devil ever takes churchyard walks, 
 liow he must chuckle and rub his brimstone hands, -when he reads 
 some of the tombstones ! Eh ? How he must hold his sides at 
 the ' loving husliands,' 'affectionate fathers,' 'faithful friends,' and 
 'pious Christians,' that he sees advertised there ! For he knows 
 better, Jem ; eh ? He knows better," cried the muffin-maker with 
 increasing bitterness. 
 
 " Well." said Jem, "I can't say ; who can ? But I should hope 
 the devil knows nothing at all about the matter. Howsomever, 
 be that as it may, he has nothing to do with the business that 's 
 brought us out to-night." 
 
 " I wish he hadn't, Jem, — I wish he hadn't," cried Capstick, 
 with stifled emotion. " But here, walking as we are, down this 
 blessed Fleet-street — oh, lord ! doesn't it seem strange after what 
 we 've ju.st left, to see the sight about us ? — walking here, do you 
 think the devil isn't pointing his finger at me, and saying with a 
 grin to one of his imps, 'There goes the respectable muffin-maker 
 that 's sold a boy's blood for ten pounds.' " 
 
 " How can you talk in that way ? " said Jem : " the devil 'sthe 
 father of lies, and oidy keeps up his character if he says so." 
 
 " Not a bit ; it 's the tUnnl that speaks truth of our lies ; that 
 turns us inside out, and shames sanctified faces with the black 
 hearts that were under 'em. I say, I have sold the boy — ptit the 
 rope al)out his neck. And for what ? for ten pounds. What a 
 fine fellow I thought my.self when I stirred in the matter ! What 
 a lump of virtvie — what a wonderful bit of public spirit I thought 
 J wxs, when, day afler day, I neglected my muffins and the 
 partner (jf iny heai-thstone, to go thief-catching. And I believed 
 I was doing a fine thing — ami so, you know I did, I crowed and 
 cackled about the ends of justice. All a sham — all a brave 
 fl.-ishy cloak to liide a rascal dirtiness. It was the thoughts of 
 the ten guineas, Jem, the ten guineas, that called all the poison 
 out of my heart., and has maile me hang a \STetched, untaught 
 beggar-boy. Yes, I 'm a pretty respectable scoundrel — a fine 
 public-8])irited miscreant, I am." 
 
 liright Jem, used to the muffin-maker's humour, made no 
 furtlu-r answer to this self-re] )roach ; but again urged the neces- 
 Hity of consulting Tangle. " It can't be done to-night — but we '11 
 at him the (ir.st thing to-morrow." said Capstick.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 87 
 
 " To-morrow 's Sunday," said Jem. 
 
 " What of that 1 " asked Capstiok. " People come into the 
 world on Sundays, so it can't be unlawful to help to save 'em from 
 going out of it — look there, Jem," and Capstick pointed to a 
 carriage rolling rapidly past. 
 
 " That 's the Marquess's — come from the trial. There 's young 
 St. James in it ; well, he 's going to better comfort than a stone 
 cell. Howsomever, he 's a fine fellow — a kind, good heart is in 
 that little chap, I 'm sure of it. How nicely he give his evidence, 
 didn't he ? And how kindly he seemed to look at St. Giles in the 
 dock ; as much as to say, * Poor fellow, I wish I could get you out 
 o' that ! ' He '11 make a true man, that boy will," said Jem ; and 
 then he mournfully added, " and so would poor St. Giles. Ha ! if 
 when Susan brought him home out o' the snow, if he and young 
 St. James had been made to change berths, eh ? There 'd have 
 been a different account of both of 'em, I should think. And yet 
 you see how the poor 's treated ; just as if they come into the 
 world with wickedness upon 'em ; a kind of human natur vermin 
 — things bom to do all sorts of mischief, and then to be hung up 
 for doing it." 
 
 " We '11 go to Tangle to-morrow — early to-morrow," said Cap- 
 stick ; who, buried in his compunctious grief, had given no ear to 
 the reflections of Jem. " Good night ; early to-morrow." And 
 the muffin-maker suddenly broke from his companion, and strided 
 home — a miserable home to him, whose acute sensibility re- 
 proached him as unworthy of the household comforts about him. 
 He looked upon the pai-t he had taken with intense remorse. 
 The would-be misanthrope loathed himself for what he deemed 
 his selfishness of heart — his cruelty towai'ds wretchedness and 
 ignorance. Within a few .steps of his door, he paused to call up 
 — with all the power he had — a look of serenity, of decent com- 
 posure. Somehow, he felt uneasy at the thoughts of meeting his 
 wife. At length he prepared himself, and, with a tolerably suc- 
 cessful face of tranquillity, crossed his threshold. He exchanged 
 but one look with his wife ; it was enough : it was plain she knew 
 the fate of St. Giles. How should it be othei-wise 1 A score of 
 neighbours, customers, had thronged the shop with the mortal 
 intelligence ; and some ventured to hope that Mr. Capstick 
 wouldn't sleep the worse for his day's work — others begged to ask 
 if the muffin-maker thought the hanging of a poor child would 
 bring a blessing on him — and some hinted an opinion that those 
 who were so sharp after evil-doers had commonly not the cleanest 
 consciences themselves. These interrogatives and inuendos had 
 to be severally answered and warded by the muffin-maker's wife, 
 who, to give her due credit, was not slow at any kind of reply.
 
 8S ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 autl was truly a very respectable mistres.s " of fence." Never- 
 theless, the exercise would heat a temper never prone to coldness, 
 and in the present instance raised to boiling heat, by what she 
 deemed the malice of her neighbom-s. And yet, it would have 
 made Cai^stick's conjugal heart glad again, had he heard how 
 elofjueutly, how magnificently his acts were defended by his wife : 
 for Mrs. Ca]»stick most volubly and vehemently begged to assure 
 her neighboui-s, " that there was not a man in the parish fit to 
 wipe her husljaud's shoes," — " that he was only wrong in being 
 too honest," — " that a better soul, or kinder-hearted creature, 
 never walked," — and that, in short, in the depth of her charity, 
 she " only wished that those who spoke a word against liim had 
 half such a husband : the neighbourhood would be all the quieter 
 for it, that 's what she knew, if they had." All this did honour 
 to ^Ii-s. Capstick, and would doubtless have solaced the wounded 
 bosom of her lord, could he only have known it ; but Mrs. Cap- 
 stick had too much humility to vaunt her own %4i'tues, therefore 
 she breathed no word of the matter to her well- defended husband. 
 Not that, the shop being closed, and the wedded coujjle seated at 
 the fireside, Mi-s. Capstick was silent ; certainly not ; for, whilst 
 the muffin-maker tried to solace himself with a pipe, his wife thus 
 declared hereelf : — 
 
 " Well, Mr, Capstick, now I hope you 're satisfied ? I hope 
 you 've made a nice day's work of it ! A pretty name you 've 
 got in the parish ! There '11 be no living here — 1 '11 not live here, 
 I can tell you. All the world will point at you, and say, ' There 
 goes the man that hanged that wretched little child ! ' " 
 
 Capstick suddenly took the pipe from his mouth, and stared at 
 his wife. It w:is strange : he had liimself said something of the 
 kind to Bright Jem. He then renewed liis smoking, speaking 
 no syllabic in answer to his spouse ; and yet eloquently replying 
 to her philippics by pooh-poohing the smoke from him, now in 
 short, ha.'ity, irascible putfs, and now in a heavy volume of 
 vapour. There was a majesty in his manner that seemed to 
 quietly defy the assaults of his better moiety. There seemed, too, 
 to be no getting at him for the clouds in which ho industriously 
 involved himself. 
 
 " And I should like to know what your satisfaction will be for 
 what you 've done ! Wliy, you '11 never have another happy 
 moment ; you can't have ! That poor child will always be before 
 your eyes. And, then, what a beautiful business you '11 lose ; for 
 nobody will deal with you. Ha ! nice airs the Gibbses will give 
 theniselvcs, now." (The Gibbses, be it knowm, were new-come 
 muffin iiiakei-s, struggling in hopeless rivaliy with the muffins of 
 Capstick.) " Everybody will go to them : I 'm sure I don't think
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 89 
 
 'twill be any use our opening the shop on Monday. And all about 
 ten guineas ! Ha, they '11 be a dear ten guineas to you — better 
 have lost 'em ten times over. And so young a child — only four- 
 teen ! To hang him ! Don't you think, Mr. Capstick, his ghost 
 will follow you 1 " 
 
 Capstick made no answer ; but his eye, turned ominously upon 
 his wife, began to glow like a coal, and he puiFed at the smoke 
 like a man labouring with himself. Beautifid philosophy ! Full 
 soon the muffin-maker's eye shone with its old tranquil light, 
 and again he smoked calmly — desperately calmly. Still Mrs. 
 Capstick continued the punishment of her tongue ; but Capstick 
 had conquered himself, and still replied not. At length in the 
 veiy heat and fullest jaitch of her complaint, Capstick rose, and 
 softly lajong down his pipe, said, " Mary Anne, I 'm going to 
 bed." Poor Capstick ! He came home with his heart bleeding ; 
 and a little tenderness, a little conjugal sympathy, would have 
 been a value to him ; but — as people say of greater matters — it 
 was not to be. 
 
 Capstick rose early ; and, sjjeedily joined by Bright Jem, both 
 took their way to Mr. Tangle's private mansion, Ked Lion Square. 
 It was scarcely nine o'clock, when the muffin-maker knocked at 
 the lawyer's door. It was quite impossible that Mr. Tangle should 
 be seen. " But the business," cried Capstick to the man-servant 
 — a hybrid between a groom and a footman — "the business is 
 upon life and death." 
 
 " Bless you," said the man, " that makes no difference what- 
 ever. We deal so much in life and death, that we think nothing 
 of it. It 's like plums to a gi'ocer, you know. Mr. Tangle never 
 can be seen of a Sunday before half-past ten ; a quarter to eleven 
 he goes, of coiu'se, to church. The Sabbath, he always says, 
 should be a day of rest." And Tangle — it was liis only self- 
 indulgence — illustrated this principle by lying late in bed eveiy 
 Sunday mommg to read his papers. Nevertheless, with smoothly 
 shaven face, and with an all-unworldly look, he was, ere the 
 church-bell ceased, enshrined in the family j^ew. There was he, 
 with his wife, decorously garnished with half-a-dozen children, 
 sons and daughters, patterns of Sabbath piety ; of seventh-day 
 Christianity. " After six days' hard work, what a comfort it 
 was," he would say, "to enjoy church of a Sunday!" And 
 Tangle, after his fashion, did enjoy it : he enjoyed the respect- 
 ability which church-going thi-ew about him ; he enjoyed his 
 worldly ease and superiority, as manifested in his own cosily- 
 furnished pew. Looking upon the pauper worshippers on the 
 benches, and then contemplating the comforts of his own nook, 
 he felt very proud of his Christianity. And in this way did Mr.
 
 90 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Tangle attend church. It was a decent form due to society, and 
 especially to himself. He went to church as he went to his office 
 — j»s a matter of business ; though he would have been mightily 
 shocked had such a motive been attributed to him. 
 
 " I '11 come at half-past ten," said Capstick, " for I must gee 
 him." The servant looked stolidly at the muffin-maker, and, 
 without a word, closed the door. " He can then tell us," said 
 Capstick to Jem, " when he can see us in the afternoon. And 
 now, Jem, we can only stroll about till the time comes." And so 
 they walked on silently ; for both felt oppressed with the belief 
 that their errand to the lawyer would be fruitless ; yet both were 
 determined to try every means, however hopeless. Tliey walked 
 and sauntered, and the church-bells rang out, summoning Chris- 
 tian congregations to common worship. " There 's something 
 beautiful in the church-bells, don't you think so, Jem ? " a.sked 
 Capstick, in a subdued tone. " Beautiful and hopeful ; — they 
 talk to high and low, rich and poor in the same voice ; there 's a 
 sound in 'em that should scare pride, and envy, and meanness of 
 all sorts from the heart of man ; that should make him look 
 upon the world wth kind, forgiving eyes ; that should make the 
 earth itself seem to him, at least for a tune, a holy place. Yes, 
 Jem ; there 's a whole sennon in the very sound of the church- 
 bells, if we have only the ears to rightly understand it. There 's 
 a preacher in every belfry, Jem, that cries, ' Poor, weary, strug- 
 gling, fighting creatures — poor human things ! take rest, be quiet. 
 Forget your vanities, your follies ; your week-day craft, your 
 heart-burnings ! And you, ye human vessels, gilt and painted ; 
 believe the iron tongue thai tells ye, that, for all your gilding, all 
 your colours, ye are of the same Adam's earth with the beggar at 
 your gates. Come away, come, cries the church-bell, and learn 
 to be humble ; learning that, however daubed and stained, and 
 stuck about with jewels, you are but gi-ave clay ! Come, Dives, 
 ccjine ; and be taught tliat all youi- glory, as you weai- it, is not 
 half 80 V)eautiful in the eye of Heaven as the sores of uncomplain 
 ing Lixzarus! And ye poor creatures, livid and faint— stinted 
 and crushed by the pride and hardness of the world, — come, 
 come, cries the bell, with the voice of an angel, come and learn 
 what is laid up for ye. And learning, take heart, and walk among 
 tlie wi<kcilnesse.s, the cruelties of the world, calmly as Daniel 
 walked among the lions.' " Here Capstick, flushed and excited, 
 wrought beyond himself, suddenly paused. Jem stared, astonished, 
 but said no word. And then, Capstick, with calmer manner, 
 Siiid, " Jem, is there a finer sight than a stream of human creatures 
 pa.ssing fnjm a Christian church I " 
 
 " Wliy," said Jem, " that 's as a man may consider with him-
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 91 
 
 self. It may be, as you say, a very fine sight — and it may be, 
 what I call a very sad and melancholy show, indeed." 
 
 " Sad and melancholy ! " cried Capstick ; " you '11 have a hard 
 task to prove that." 
 
 " Perhaps so, only let me do it after my own fashion." Cap- 
 stick nodded assent. " Bless you ! I 've thought of it many a time 
 when I've seen a church emptying itself into the street. Look 
 here, now. I '11 suppose there's a crowd of people — a whole mob of 
 'em going down the church-steps. And at the church-door, there 
 is I don't know how many roods of Christian carriages, with 
 griffins painted on the panels, and swords, and daggers, and battle- 
 axes, that, as well as I can remember, Jesus doesn't recommend 
 nowhere: and there's the coachmen, half-asleep, and trying to look 
 religious ; and there 's footmen following some and carrying the 
 Holy Bible after their misusses, just as to-morrow they '11 carry a 
 spanel, — and that 's what they call their humility. Well, that 's 
 a pleasant sight, isn't it ? And then for them who 're not ashamed 
 to carry their own big prayer-books, with the gold leaves twinkling 
 in the sun, as if they took pains to tell the world they 'd been to 
 church, — well, how many of them have been there in earnest ? 
 How many of them go there with no thought whatsoever, only 
 that it 's Sunday, — church-going day ? And so they jjut on what 
 they think religion that day, just as I put on a clean shirt. Bless 
 you ! sometimes I've stood and watched the crowd, and I've said 
 to myself, ' Well, I should like to know how many of you will 
 remember you 're Christians till next week ? How many of you 
 go to-morrow morning to your offices, and counting-houses, and 
 stand behind your counters, and, all in the way of business, — all 
 to scramble up the coin — forget you 're miserable sinners, while 
 every other thing you do may make you more miserable, only 
 you never feel it, so long as it makes you more rich 1 And so 
 there 's a Sunday conscience like a Sunday coat ; and folks who 'd 
 get on in the world, put the coat and the conscience carefully by, 
 and only wear 'em once a week. Well, to think how many such folks 
 go to worship, — why, then I must say it, Master Capstick, to stand 
 inside a church and watch a congregation coming out, however 
 you may stare, may be — I can't help, after my fashion, thinking 
 so— a melancholy sight indeed. Lord love you, when we see what 
 some people do all the week, — people who 're staunch at church, 
 remember— I can't help thmking, there 's a good many poor souls 
 who 're only Christians at morning and artemoon service." 
 
 Capstick looked earnestly at Jem and said, " My dear fellow, 
 it's all very well between you and me to say this ; but don t say 
 it to the world ; don't, Jem, if you wouldn't be hunted, harried, 
 stoned to death, like a mad dog. Folks won't be turned inside
 
 92 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 out after tliis fashion, without revengiug the treatment with all 
 sorts of bad names. Very pure folks won't be held up to the 
 light and shown to be very dirty bottles, -n-ithout papng back 
 hard abuse for the impertinence. Jem, whatever coat a man may 
 wear, never see a hole in it. Though it may be full of holes as a 
 net, never see 'em ; but take your hat off to the coat, as if it was 
 the best bit of broad-cloth in the world, without a flaw or a thread 
 dropt, and with the finest bits of gold lace upon it. In this world, 
 Jem, woe to the man -ft-ith an eye for holes ! He 's a beast, a 
 wi-etoh, an e\-il-speaker, an uuchai-itable thinker, a pest to be put 
 down. And Jem, when the respectable hypocrites make common 
 cause with one another, the Lord help the poor de\il they give 
 chase to ! " 
 
 " I always speak my mind," said Jem. 
 
 " It 's an extravagance that has ruined many a man," said the 
 muffin-maker. " But enough of this, Jem ; it 's just the time to 
 catch Tangle before he goes out." A few moments brought them 
 to the lawyer's door. Ere, however, the muffin-maker could touch 
 the knocker, the door opened, and Mr. Tangle, his wife, his two 
 sons and two daughters presented themselves, all, the females 
 especially, being dressed for church. Yes ; di-essed for church ; 
 carefully, elaborately arrayed and ornamented, to sustain the 
 severest criticism that, during the hours of devotion, might be 
 passed upon them by sister sinners. 
 
 " Mr. Tangle," said Capstick, " I won't keep you a minute : but 
 when can I call on " 
 
 " Nothing secular to-day, sir," said Tangle, and he waved both 
 his hands. 
 
 " But, Mr. Tangle, there 's life and death, sir," — cried Capstick, 
 but Tangle interrupted him. 
 
 " Wliat 's life and death, sir ? What ere they, sir, that we 
 should do anything secuhir to-day ? " 
 
 " But, Mr. Tangle, it 's the fate of that poor wretched boy ; and 
 there isn't a minute to lose," urged the muffin-maker. 
 
 " I shall be very glad to see you in the way of business, to- 
 morrow," replied Tangle, labouring to appear very placid ; " but 
 I beg of you, my good man, not to disturb the current of my 
 thoughts — of my Sabbath feelings — with anything secular to-day. 
 To me the world is dead on Sundays." 
 
 " But won't you do good on Sundays ? " cried Capstick. — " Your 
 religion doesn't forbid that, I suppose ] " 
 
 '' My good man, let me have none of your free-thinking ribahlry 
 here. This is my door-step, and don't defile my threshold with 
 your i)rofainty. I have given you my answer. Nothing secular 
 to-day." Saying this with increased vehemence, Mr. Tangle was
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 93 
 
 bustling from the door after his family — who, looking wondering 
 looks at Capstick and Jem, had walked statelily on,— when a 
 carriage rapidly turned the square, and in a moment stoj^ped at 
 Tangle's door. Instantly, Mi'. Tangle brought himself up ; and 
 cast, certainly, a look of secular curiosity towards the carriage- 
 windows. In an instant, young Lord St. James alighted, and was 
 followed by his tutor — worn somewhat since we last met him — • 
 Mr. Folder. Mr. Tangle immediately recognised the young noble- 
 man, and although it was Sunday, advanced towards him with 
 pains-taking respect. " Your wife told us you were come here, 
 Mr. Capstick," said his lordship to the muffin-maker. 
 
 " Pray, sir, can we consult you upon a business that is some- 
 what urgent 1 " said Folder to the attorney. 
 
 " Certainly, sir ; anything for his loi'dship. Excuse me one 
 moment ; " and Tangle, with imwonted agility, skipped after his 
 wife and family. They must go to church without him. A lord, 
 a young lord, had called upon him — that sweet young gentleman 
 in the sky-blue coat and lace-collar — and, the business Avas immi- 
 nent. He, the husband and father, would join them as soon as 
 he could. With many backward, admii-ing looks at the lovely 
 little nobleman, did Mr. Tangle's family proceed on their way to 
 church, whilst Tangle — the groaning victim to secular afiairs — 
 ushered young St. James and Mr. Folder into his mansion. " We 
 can do nothing without you," said St. James to Capstick and 
 Bright Jem ; who thereupon gladly followed, the attorney mar- 
 velling at the familiarity of the boy nobleman. 
 
 " What can I have the honour to do for his lordship ? " asked 
 Ml'. Tangle, with a smile dirt cheap at six and eight-pence. 
 
 " We should not have troubled you to-day," said St. James, 
 " only you see " 
 
 " Don't name it, my dear young lord ! " exclaimed Tangle. 
 
 " Only," chimed in Mr. Folder, " they talk about hanging on 
 Wednesday." 
 
 " Very true," said Tangle ; " I believe the affair comes off on 
 Wednesday. A great pity, sir ! Quite a child, sir ; and with 
 good parts — very good parts. Nevertheless, sir, the crime of 
 horse-stealing increases hourly ; and -wdthout some example is 
 made, some strong example is made " 
 
 " Why, they hanged four for horse-stealing last sessions," said 
 Capstick. 
 
 Tangle looked round with astonishment at the interruption, and 
 then observed — " That only proves they don't hang enough." 
 
 " My opinion, Mr. Tangle ; quite my opinion. We want 
 stronger laws, sir ; much stronger. If we were to hang for 
 everything, there 'd be an end of crime altogether. It 's because
 
 94 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 ■we only punish by lialvcs — now hanging one, and now another — 
 tliat we have such a continual growth of vice. We ought to pull 
 up crime by the roots ; now our present pruning system makes 
 it flourish the stronger. However, Lis young lordship doesn't 
 think so. He has all the generosity of youth, and insists that 
 St. Giles shall not be hanged." 
 "God bless him ! " cried Capstick. 
 
 " Amen ! " said Bright Jem. 
 
 " I must request that we have no inten-uption," said Tangle, 
 looking loftily at the two offenders. " Perhaps, sir," and the 
 la\>-}-er t urned to Folder, " perhaps, you will state your case." 
 
 " Just a word in private," said Folder ; and Tangle immediately 
 led him into a small adjoining room, and closed the door. " You 
 see, Mr. Tangle," said Folder, " I consider this to be a very 
 foolish, weak business ; but the young gentleman is a spoilt 
 child, and spoilt children will have their way. In one word, his 
 loriLship must be humoured, and therefore St. Giles — thougji it 
 would be much better for him to be put at once quietly out of 
 further mischief — must not be hanged. The Marquess has his own 
 notions on the matter ; proper notions, too, they are, Mr. Tangle ; 
 notions that do honour to him as a legislator, and would, I verUy 
 believe, let the law take its course. But, poor man ! what can 
 he do ? " 
 
 " Do what he likes, can't he ? " asked Tangle. 
 
 " By no means. You see, it is with the boy as it was with the 
 boy Themistocles," said Mr. Folder. 
 
 " Really ? " observed Tangle. 
 
 "One of Plutarch's own parallels. The boy rules the Mar- 
 chioness, and the Marchioness rules " 
 
 " I understand," said Tangle : " rules the Marquess. It will 
 happen so." 
 
 " And therefore, the sum an.l end of it all is, the horse-stealer 
 must be saved. Bless you ! his young lordship has thi-eatened to 
 fall sick and die, if St. Giles is hanged ; and has so frightened his 
 poor mother, who again has made the Mai-quess so anxious, that — 
 the fact is, we 've come to you." 
 
 " It 's a great pity that I didn't know all this before. The 
 ca.se, my dear sir, was a nothing— a veiy trumpery case, indeed ; 
 but then, to a man of my extensive practice, it was really not 
 worth attending to. Otherwise, and to have obliged the Mar- 
 quees, I coulil have made sure of an alibi. It 's a gi-eat pity that 
 so noble a family should be so troubled, and by such riff-raff! " 
 said Tangle. 
 
 " It is, sir ; it i.s," said Folder—" you can feel for us. Now, 
 there 'a no doubt that, in so trifling a matter, the Marquess has
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 more than siifficieDt interest to save a tliief or two ; nevertlieless 
 I have suggested that a petition should be got up by the boy's 
 friends — if the wicked creature lias any friends — and that so the 
 Marquess — ^j'ou understand ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," replied Tangle : what would he not understand in 
 such a case ? " There is nothing more easy than a petition. 
 How many signatures would you like to it ? Any numbei- — though 
 fifty will be as good as five hundred." 
 
 " Do you think the jury would sign ? " asked Mr. Folder. " Not 
 that it 's of any consequence ; only for the look of the thing." 
 
 " The foreman, I know, would not," said Tangle, ^ " He lost a 
 colt himself tkree yeai's ago, and isn't yet settled to the injury. 
 Nevertheless, we can get up a very tidy sort of petition ; and with 
 the Marquess's interest — well ! that yoimg St. Giles is a lucky 
 little scoundi'el ! he 'II make his fortune at Botany Bay." 
 
 " And now, Mr. Tangle, that we understand one another, we '11 
 join, if you please, his lordship. — Well, my lord," said Folder 
 returnmg, " I have talked the matter over with Mi*. Tangle, and, 
 though he gives very little hope " 
 
 " There 's all the hope in the world," said Capstick, " for his 
 lordship says he '11 take the petition himself to the Minister, who 's 
 his father's friend, and, if I may ad^ase the Mai^chioness, his 
 mother " 
 
 " My good man," observed Mr. Folder, " we in no way need 
 your advice in the matter. Hold your tongue." 
 
 " Shouldn't mind at all obliging you, sir, in any other way," 
 said the uniiiffled Capstick ; " but, as his young lordshij} here, as 
 he tells me, has been to my shop and all to see me about the 
 matter, I think my tongue 's quite at his service." 
 
 " To be sure it is, Capstick," said young St. James, " go on. 
 Mr. Folder says they 'd better hang St. Giles ; and papa says so 
 too ; but they sha'n't do it for all that. Why, I should nevei 
 have the heart to mount a horse again." 
 
 " A noble little chap ! " whispered Bright Jem to Capstick. 
 
 " And so, as I told you, Capstick, I went to your house, as you 
 know all about the boy, and the boy's friend, to see about a petition ; 
 for that 's the way, they tell me " 
 
 " Give yourself no further trouble," said Tangle, " the petition 
 shall be prepared, my lord. I'll do it myself, this very day, 
 though the affair is secular. Nevertheless, to oblige your lord- 
 ship " 
 
 " Your 're a good fellow," said young St. James, patronising 
 the lawyer ; and, all preliminaries being settled, the conference 
 concluded.
 
 96 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 And young St. Giles lay in Newgate, sinking, withering under 
 sentence of death. After a time, he never cried, or clamoured ; 
 he slied no tear, breathed no syllable of despair ; but, stunned, 
 stupitied, seemed as if idiotcy was growing on him. The ordinary 
 — a good, zealous man — endeavoured, by soothing, hopeful words, 
 to lead the prisoner, as the jail phrase has it, to a sense of his 
 condition. Never had St. Giles received such teaching ! Con- 
 demned to die, he for the first time heai'd of the abounding love 
 of Christianity — of the goodness and affection due from man to 
 man. The story seemed odd to him ; strange, verj' strange ; yet 
 he supposed it was all time. Nevertheless — he could not dismiss 
 the thought, it puzzled him. Why had he never been taught all 
 this before 1 And why should he be punished, hanged for doing 
 wi'ong ; when the good, rich, fine people, who all of them loved 
 their neighbours like themselves, had never taught him what was 
 right ? Was it possible that Cliristianity was such a beautiful 
 thing — and being so, was it possible that good, earnest, kind- 
 hearted Christians would kUl him ? 
 
 St. Giles had scarcely eight-and-foi-ty hours to live. It was 
 almost jMonday noon, when the ordinary — having attended the 
 other prisoners — entered the cell of the boy thief. He had been 
 separated, by the desire of the minister, from his miserable com- 
 panions, that their evil example of hardihood — their reckless 
 bravado — might not wholly destroy the hope of growing truth 
 within liini. A turnkey attended St. Giles, reading to him. And 
 now the boy would raise his sullen eyes upon the man, as he 
 read of promises of grace and happiness eternal : and now his 
 heart would heave as though he was struggling with an agony 
 that seemed to suffocate him — and now a scornful, unbelieving 
 smile would play about his mouth — and he would laugh with 
 defying bitterness. And then he would leer in the face of the 
 reader, as though he read some fairy tale, some pretty story, 
 to amuse and gull him. Poor wretch ! Let the men who guide 
 the world — the large-brained politicians, who tinker the social 
 scheme, making themselves the mastei's and guai'dians of their 
 fellow-men — let them look into this Newgate dungeon ; let them 
 contf-niplate this blighted human bud ; this child felon, never 
 taught tlie path of right, and now to be hanged for his most
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 97 
 
 sinful ignorance. What a wretched, sullen outcast ! What a 
 darkened, loathsome thing ! And now comes the clergjTiian — 
 the state divine, be it remembered — to tell him that he is treasured 
 with an immortal soul ; that — with mercy shed ujjon him — he 
 will in a few hours be a creature of glory before the throne oi 
 God ! Oh, politicians ! Oh, rulers of the world ! Oh, law- 
 making masters and taskers of the common million, may not this 
 cast-off wretch, this human nviisance, be your accuser at the bar 
 of Heaven ? Egregious folly ! Impossible ! What — stars and 
 garters impeached by rags and tatters ! St. James denounced by 
 St. Giles ! Impudent and ridiculous ! Yet here, we say, comes 
 the reverend priest — the Christian preacher, with healing, honied 
 words, whose Book — your Book — with angelic utterance, says no 
 less. Let us hear the clergjonan and his forlorn pupil. 
 
 " Well, my poor boy," said the ordinary, with an affectionate 
 voice and moistening eyes : " well, my child, and how is it wdth 
 you ? Come, you are better ; you look better ; you have been 
 listening to what your good friend Eobert here has been reading 
 to you. And we are all your friends, here. At least, we all want 
 to be. Don't you think so % " 
 
 St. Giles slowly lifted his eyes towards the speaker. He then 
 sullenly answered, — " No, I don't." 
 
 " But you ought to try to think so, my boy ; it 's wicked not to 
 try," said the ordinary, very tenderly. 
 
 " If you 're all my friends, why do you keep me here % " said 
 St. Giles. " Friends I I never had no friends." 
 
 "You must not say that ; indeed, you must not. All our care 
 is to make you quiet and happy in this world, that you may be 
 happier in the world you 're going to. You understand me, 
 St. Giles ? My poor dear boy, you understand me ? The world 
 you 're going to ? " The sjjeaker, inured as he was to scenes of 
 blasphemy, of brute indifference, and remorseful agony, w-as 
 deeply touched by the forlorn condition of the boy ; who could 
 not, would not, understand a tenderness, the end of -which was to 
 surrender him softened to the hangman. " You have thought, 
 my dear — I say, you have thought of the world" — and the minister 
 paused — " the world you are going to ? " 
 
 " What 's the use of thinking about it ? " asked St. Giles. 
 " I knows nothing of it." 
 
 " That, my boy, is because you are obstinate, and I am sorry to 
 say it, wicked, and so won't try to know about it. Otherwise, if 
 you would give all your heart and soul to prayer, " 
 
 "I tel. you, sir, I never was learnt to pray," cried St. Giles, 
 moodily ; and what 's the use of prajang ? " 
 
 " You would find it open your heart, St. Giles ; and though 
 
 H
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 you see nothing now, if you were only to jiray long and truly, you 
 would find the darkness go away from your eyes, and you 'd see 
 such bright mid beautiful things about you, and you'd feel as light 
 and happy as if vuu hiul wings at your back ; you would, indeed. 
 Then you 'd feel that all we ai'e doing for you is for the best ; 
 then, my poor boy," said the ordinary with growing fervoui-, 
 " then you W feel what Christian love is." 
 
 "KoiK?rt "s been reading to me about that," said St. Giles, "but 
 I can't make it out no-how. He says that Christian love means 
 that we shouldn't do to nobody what we wouldn't like nobody to 
 do to oui-selves." 
 
 " A good boy," siud the ordinary, " that is the meaning, though 
 not the woi-ds. I 'm glad you 've so improved." 
 
 " And for all that, you tell me that I must think o' dj-ing — 
 think of another world and all that — think of going to Tyburn, 
 and, and " — here the boy fell hoax'se ; his face tui-ned ash-colour, 
 iuid reeling, he was about to fall, when the ordinary caught him 
 in his anus, and again placed him on a seat. " It 's nothin' — 
 uothin' at all," cried St. Giles, struggling with himself — " I 'm all 
 right ; I 'm game." 
 
 " Don't say that, child ; I can't hear you say that : I would 
 rather see you in tears and pain than tr3ing to be game, as you 
 call it. That, my boy, is only adding crime to wickedness. Come, 
 we were talking of Christian love," said the ordinary. 
 
 " I know nothin' about it," said St. Giles ; " all I know is this, 
 — it isn't true ; it can't be true." 
 
 " Tell me ; why not ? Come, let me hear- all you 'd say," ui-ged 
 the clerg}*man tenderly. 
 
 " 'Cause if it means that nobody should do to nobody what 
 nobody would like to have done to themselves, why does anybody 
 keep me locked up here ? Why did the judge say I was to be — 
 you know, Alister ? " 
 
 " That w:vs for doing wrong, my boy : that was for your first 
 want of Christian love. You were no Christian when you stole 
 the horse," said the ordinary. " Had the horse been yoiu-s, you 
 would have felt wronged and injured had it been stolen from you? 
 You see that, eh, my boy 1 " 
 
 " Didii't think o' that," said St. Giles gloomily— " But I didn't 
 steal it : 'twas all along o' Tom Blast ; and now he 's got off ; 
 and I 'm here in the Jug. You don't call that justice, nohow, do 
 you ? But I don't cai-e ; they may do what they like w^ith me ; 
 I '11 be game." 
 
 " No, my deal- boy, you must know better : you must, indeed— 
 you must give all yuur thoughts to prayer, and " 
 
 " It 's of no use, blister ; I tell you I never was learnt to pray.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 99 
 
 and I don't know Low to go about it. More than that, I feel 
 somehow ashamed to do it. And besides, for ;U1 your talk, 
 Mister, and you talk very kind to me, I must say, I can't feel 
 like a Christian, as you call it ; for I can't see why Christians 
 should want to hang me if Christitms are such good people as you 
 talk aboiit." 
 
 " But then, my poor boy," said the ordinary, " though young, 
 you must remember, you 're an old sinner. You 've done much 
 wdckedness." 
 
 " 1 never done nothing but wliat I was taught ; and if j'ou say 
 — and Bob there 's been reading it to me — that the true Christian 
 forgives every body — well then, in course, the judge and all the 
 nobs are no Christians, else wouldn't they forgive me ] Wouldn't 
 they lilce it so, to teach me better, and not to kill me ? But I 
 don't mind ; I '11 be game ; see if I don't be game — precious ! " 
 
 The ordinary, with a perjjlexed look, sighed deeply. The sad 
 condition of the boy, the horrid death awaiting him, the natural 
 shrewdness with wliich he combated the arguments employed for 
 his conversion, affected the worthy clergyman beyond all past 
 experience. " Miserable little wi-etch ! " he thought, " it will be 
 worst of miu'ders, if he dies thus." And then, again, he essayed 
 to soften the child felon, who seemed determined to stand at issue 
 with his spiritual counsellor ; to recede no step, but to the gallows 
 foot to defy him. It would be his ambition, his glory — if he 
 must die — to die game. He had heard the praises bestowed 
 upon such a death — had known the contemjjtuous jeering flung 
 upon the repentant craven — and he would be the theme of eulogy 
 in Hog Lane — he would not be laughed, sneered at for"d3'ing 
 dunghill." And this temper so grew and strengthened in St. 
 Giles, that, at length, the ordinary, wearied and hopeless, left 
 his forlorn charge, promising soon to return, and hoping, in his 
 own words, to find the prisoner "a kinder, better, and moi-e 
 Christian boy." 
 
 " It 's no use your reading that stuff to me," said St. Giles, as 
 the turnkey was aoout to resume his book ; " I don't underetand 
 nothin' of it ; and it 's too late to leai-n. Bvit I .say, can't you tell 
 us somethin' of Turpin and Jack Sheppard, eh, — something 
 prime, to give us pluck 1 " 
 
 " Come, come," answered the man, " it 's no use going on in this 
 way. You must be quiet and listen to me ; it 's all for your good, 
 I tell you : all for your good." 
 
 " My good ! Well, that 's pretty gammon, that is. I should like 
 to know what can be for my good if I 'm to be hanged ? Ha ! lia ! 
 See if I don't kick my shoes off, that 's all." And St. Giles 
 would not listen ; but sat on the stool, swinging his legs back- 
 
 H 2
 
 100 ST. GILES AND ST. J.OfES. 
 
 wai-tls :uid foi-wanls, lUitl singing one of the melodies known in Hog 
 T^nii. — poor wretch ! it h;ul been a cradle melody to him, — 
 whilst the turnkey vainly endeavoured to soothe imd interest him. 
 At length the man discontinued his hopeless task ; and, in sheer 
 listlessness, leaning his back against the wall, fell asleep. And now 
 St. Giles wiis left alone. And now, relieved of importunity, did 
 he forego the bravado that had supported him, and solemnly think 
 of his ajjproaching end ? Did he, with none other but the eye of 
 God in that stone cell upon him, did he shrink and wither beneath 
 the look ; and, on bended knees, with opened heart, and flowing, 
 repentant te:a-s, did he pray for Heaven's compassion — God's 
 sweet mercy ? No. Yet thoughts, deep, anxious thoughts wex-e 
 brooding in his heart. His face grew older with the meditation 
 that shadowed it. All his being seemed compressed, intensified 
 in one idea. Gloomily, yet with whetted eyes, he looked around 
 liis cell ; and still darker and darker grew liis face. Could he 
 break prison ? Such was the question — the foolish, idle, yet flat- 
 termg question that his soul put to itself. All his recollections of 
 the glory of Turjiiu and Sheppard crowded upon him — and what 
 greater glory would it be for him if he could escape ! He, a boy 
 to do this ! He to be sung in ballads — to be talked of, huzzaed, 
 and held up for high example, long after he should be dead — 
 passed for ever from the world 1 The proud thought glowed within 
 him, made his heart heave, and his eyes sparkle. And then he 
 looked about his cell, and the utter hopelessness of the thought 
 fell upon him, witherhig his heart. Yet again and again, although 
 to be crushed with new despair, he gazed about him, ch-eamiug 
 of liberty without that wall of flint. And thus his waking hours 
 pa.ssed ; and thus, in the ^dsious of the night, liis sj^irit busied 
 itself in hopeful vanity. 
 
 The Tuesday morning came, and again the clergyman visited 
 the prisoner. The boy looked paler, thinner — no more. There 
 -was no softness in his eyes, no appealing glance of hope : but a 
 lixed and stubborn look of inquiry. " He didn't know nothhig of 
 what the parson had to say, and he didn't want to be bothered. 
 It was all gannnon ! " These were the words of the boy felon, 
 then — such wa.s the humanity of the law ; poor law ! what a long 
 nonage of discretion has it passed ! — then within a day's span ol 
 the grave. 
 
 As the hour of death approached, the clergyman became more 
 a.'^siiluous, fervent, nay passionate in his ajipeals to the prisoner ; 
 who still strengthened himself in opposition to his pastor. " My 
 dear boy,— my poor child— miserable, heljjless creature !— the 
 grave i.s open before you— the sky is opening above you ! — Die 
 without repentance, and you will pass into the grave, and never
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 101 
 
 — ^neverknow immortal blessings ! Your soul will perish — iierisli 
 as I have told you — iu tire, in fire eternal ! " 
 
 St. Giles swayed his head to and fro, and with a sneer asked, 
 " What 's the good o' all tliis '? Haven't you told me so, Mister, 
 agin and agin 1 " 
 
 The ordinary groaned almost in desjiair, yet still renewed his 
 task. " The heavens, I tell you, are oj^eumg for you ; repent, my 
 child ; repent, poor boy, and you will be an immortal spirit, wel- 
 comed by millions of angels." 
 
 St. Giles looked -n-ith bitter incredulity at his spiritual teaclier. 
 " Wen, if all that 's true," he said, " it isn't so hard to be hanged, 
 arter all. But I don't think the nobs love me so well, as to send 
 me to sich a place as that." 
 
 " Nay, my poor boy," said the ordmary, " you will not, cannot, 
 understand me, imtil you pray. Now, kneel, my dear child, 
 kneel, and let us pray together." Saying this, the ordinary fell 
 upon his knees ; but St. Giles, folding his arms, so planted him- 
 self as to take firmer root of the ground ; and so he stood with 
 moody, determmed looks, whilst the clergpuan jioured forth a 
 passionate prayer that the heart of the young sinner might 
 be softened ; that it might be turned from stone into flesh, and 
 become a grateful sacrifice to the throne of God. And whilst 
 this prayer, in deep and solemn tones, rose from the prison-cell, 
 he for whom the prayer was formed, seemed to grow harder, 
 more obdurate, with every syllable. Still, he refused to bend his 
 knee at the supphcation of the clergjinan, but stood eyeing him 
 with a mingled look of incredulity, defiance, and contempt. 
 " God help yovi, poor lost lamb ! " cried the ordinary, as he 
 rose. 
 
 " Now, I hope we shall have no more o' that," was the only 
 answer of St. Giles. 
 
 The ordinaiy was about to quit the cell, when the door was 
 opened, and the governor of the jail, attended by the head turn- 
 key, entered. "My dear sir, I am glad to find you here," — 
 said the governor to the ordinary. " I have a pleasing duty to 
 perform ; a duty that I know it will delight j'oa to witness." The 
 ordinary glanced at a paper held by the governor ; his eyes 
 brightened ; and clasping his hands, he fervently uttered — • 
 "Thank God!" 
 
 The governor then turned to St. Giles, who suddenly looked 
 anxious and restless. " Prisoner," he said, "it is my happiness 
 to inform you, that his gracious Majesty has been mercifully 
 pleased to spare your life. You will not suffer with the unfortunate 
 men to-morrow. You understand me, boy " — for St, Giles looked 
 suddenly stupified — "you understand me, that the good king,
 
 102 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 whom you should ever pray for, has, in the hope that you will turn 
 from the wickedness of your ways, detei-miued to spare your life ? 
 You will be sent out of the country ; and time given you that, if 
 you proi>erly use it, will make you a good and honest man." 
 
 St. Giles made no answer, but trembled violently from head to 
 foot. Then his face flushed red as flame, and covering it with his 
 hands, he fell ujjon his knees ; and the teai-s ran streaming 
 throu<,di his tingei-s. " Pray with me; pray for me !" he cried, in 
 broken voice, to the ordin;iry. 
 
 And the onUmuy knelt, and rendered up "humble and hearty 
 thanks " for the mercy of the king. 
 
 We will not linger in the prison — St. Giles was destined for 
 Botany Bay. Mr. Capstick was delighted, in his own way, that 
 the ends of justice would be satisfied ; and whilst he rejoiced with 
 the triumj)!! of justice, he did not forget the evil-doer ; for St. 
 (iiles I'eceived a packet from the muffin-maker, containing sundry 
 little comforts for his voyage. 
 
 " We shall never see him again, Jem," said Mi's. Aniseed, as 
 she left Xewgate weeping; having taken her farewell of the young 
 transport. " He 's gone for ever from lis." 
 
 " Not he," said Bright Jem ; " we shall see him again another 
 feller quite — a true man, yet ; I 'm sure of it." 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SosrE nine yeara had passed since young St. Giles— the fortu- 
 nate object of royal mercy— was sent from England a doomed 
 slave for life. For life ! Hope, so fai- as man cim kill it in the 
 heart of his fellow, was dead to the convict. He had sinned 
 against the law, and its offended majesty— for such was and is 
 the i^hriLsc — elenied to the ofiender the reward of better conduct. 
 Man,^ in the loftiness of his own pure thoughts, in the besetting 
 consciousness of his own immaculate worth, deems his criminal 
 brother incai)able of future good, and therefore considers only the 
 best security of the machine ; how the bones and muscles, the 
 brute strength of the engine may be withheld from further mis- 
 chief It matters little to the guar<lian of the laws, to the maker 
 of statutes for the protection of property, what aggravated demon, 
 what i.hiing, penitent spirit, yearning for better thoughts, may 
 dwell wiiliin the felon, so that the chain at his leg be of sufficient 
 weight and hindnmce. How very recent is it, that many of the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 10.3 
 
 good people of this workl did not consider a part of their veiy 
 goodness to be in their behef of the incorrigibility of the felon ! 
 It was to make too familiar an approach to their respectaljility to 
 suggest the probability of amendment in the doomed thief. It 
 was, in a manner, to hold cheap their honesty, to suppose the 
 vii-tue attainable by the once wicked. Human arrooauce is 
 assuredly, never so jiitiable as when, in the smug belief of its own 
 election, it looks upon its fellow in this world as ii-revocably lost. 
 But then, there is a sort of vii-tue that, not particularly shining 
 in itself, has need of vice to throw it out ; just as the lights of 
 Eembrandt owe their lustre to the shadows about them. Con- 
 sidered after this hard fashion — and full well we know the sort 
 of worthy people who will shake their heads at oui- miserable 
 bitterness — yes, bitterness is the word — there is a kind of respect- 
 able man, who, although he may disallow the obligation, is some- 
 what indebted for his respectability to the proved rascal. The 
 convicted knave is the dark tint to his little speck of yellow white : 
 he is lustrous only by contrast. And after this short, imcharitable 
 essay on black and white, we resume our history ; lea^ang for the 
 present the events of nine years unregistered — nine years from 
 the time that young St. Giles quitted Newgate for the genial 
 clime of Botany Bay. 
 
 It was a beautiful spring evening — "last of the spring, yet 
 fresh with all its green." The peace of heaven seemed upon the 
 earth. An hour and scene when the heart is softened and subdued 
 by the spirit of beauty ; when the whole visible world seems to us 
 an apjiointed abiding-palace for truth and gentleness ; and it is 
 with hard reluctance we believe that t}Tanny, and woe, and 
 wickedness exist within it. One of the happy hours that, sweet 
 in the present, are yet more delicious in the jjast ; treasured as 
 they are, as somewhat akin to the hours of the woi'ld's youth, 
 when the earth was trod by angels. 
 
 The broad, fat fields of Kent lay smiling in the sun ; the tiim 
 hedges, clothed in tender green ; the budding oaks, the guardian 
 giants of the soil ; the wayside cottage, with gai-d en-strip brimming 
 with flowers ; all things wore a look of peace and promise. A 
 young gentleman, soberly habited, and well mounted, rode leisurely 
 along ; but, however beautiful the scene around him, it was plain, 
 from the brooding, melancholy expression of his features, that he 
 had no sympathy M'itli. the quietude and sweetness of extez'nal 
 nature ; but was self-concentrated, buried in deep thought. The 
 loosened rein lay on his horse's neck, and the rider, apparently 
 tmconscious of all around him, was borne listlessly along, until the 
 road opened into a jxatch of moor-land, when a second horseman, 
 at a sharp trot, overtook the idle rider.
 
 104 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 '*' A tine night, sir, for a liizy man," said the stranger, in a loud 
 and soniewliat familiar tone. 
 
 " And why," answered the young gentleman, in a peculiarly 
 soft and gentle voice, " why, sir, for a lazy man ? " 
 
 '• Oh ! I mean there 's a sort of dreaminess in the air — a kind 
 of sleepiness, if I may say it, about the night, that, to folks who 
 love to creep about the world with folded arms and half-shut eyes, 
 is the veiy time for 'em. You know, sir, there ai-e such people," 
 said the man, with a laugh. 
 
 " Possibly," replied the younger hoi-seman ; who then, with a 
 reservetl and dif'uifiefl motion, urged his steed, as though desirous 
 to quit himself of his new companion. The stranger, however, 
 was not a man to be bowed or looked away. A ffecting not to 
 perceive the intention of the youth, he mended his pace, and, 
 quite at his ease, resumed the convei-sation. 
 
 " You ai-e well moimted, sir," he said, casting a learned look 
 at his companion's horse. " Strong, yet lightly built : I doubt 
 not on pressing service, now, she 'd carry double — I mean," 
 added the stranger, with an odd, familiar glance, " I mean with 
 a pilUon." 
 
 " I can't say," was the cahn, cold answer ; but the stranger 
 /leeded not the rebuff. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " he cried ; " I would I might have the richest 
 heiress for the cari-jdng her on such horse-flesh : did she weigh 
 twenty thousand weight, your mare would do it. An heiress, or 
 a fair lady who 'd slip her white A\Tists from a chain that galled 
 her." The young man looked suddenly in the speaker's face, as 
 though to detect some meaning there revealed ; but, careless and 
 unabashed, and as though idly gi\"ing utterance to idle thoughts, 
 the stranger continued. " There are such poor pining things, sir, 
 if a true knight knew where to find 'em : there ai-e distressed 
 ladies, who, I iloubt it not, would tinist themselves to the back of 
 your mai-e, even though, like the flraig horse I 've read of, she 
 took 'em to the moon. To be sure," said the stranger, with a 
 slight chuckle, " the moon, for what I know, would be the fittest 
 l)lace for 'em. That 's a strange nook, sir, isn't it ? " and the 
 man pjinted to a small, oddly-fashioned house, almo.st buried 
 among high and gloomy trees, about a bow-shot from the road. 
 " A queer ])lace, and a queer ma.ster, if all be true of him." At 
 these words, the young man, with a confused look, stooped to pat 
 his horse's neck, siiying the meanwhile, "Indeed ? — and what is 
 known of the master ? " 
 
 " Wliy, there are twenty stories about him ; but of course 
 wjme of em can't be ti-ue. However, what 's known for fact is, 
 he 'b rich as the Indies, and, moreover, he 's got a young wife."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 105 
 
 "Is that all 1 " asked the yount,' man, vnth affected carelessness. 
 " Is it so rare a matter that a rich old man should buy himself a 
 young lielpmate 1 " ■■' 
 
 " Humph ! Helj^mate 's a pretty word, sir ; a mighty pretty 
 word ; but the helj) that three -score gets from three-and-twenty, 
 eh ? No, sir ; money in this marketing world of ours may buy 
 much, but — flighty and fi-ivolous and butterfly-like as the things 
 sometimes are — it can't always buy a woman's heart. However 
 this it ca7i purchase ; it can buy a cage to put the poor thing in ; 
 it can buy eyes to watch her ; hands to guard her ; and so, old 
 Snipeton may keep his pet-lamb safe from London wolves — safe 
 as his parchments in his strong-bos." 
 
 " You seem, sir," said the young man, with animated looks, ' 
 " you seem to know Mr. Snipeton." 
 
 " Why, sir," answered the stranger, " I 'm of London training, 
 London habits ; have, in my day — indeed who has not ? — wanted 
 a few hundreds ; and is not Snipeton a man of benevolence — a 
 man of profound heart and deepest money-chest 1 Is he not ever 
 ready to assist his fellow-creatures at an}i;hing above sixty per 
 cent. ? Oh, you must know Snipeton," said the stranger, with a 
 familiar laugh. " Yes, yes ; you must know him." 
 
 " From what circumstance do you gather such belief ? " asked 
 the young man, a little haughtily. 
 
 " Why, you live a London life — oh, yes, sir, there 's no country, 
 hawthorn-look about you — you have London wants, and such 
 things will happen to the richest, the lordliest of us ; at times 
 the dice icill go wrong — ^the devil tviU shuffle the cards — and then, 
 our honour — yes, that 's the fiend's name — our honour, willy-nilly 
 sends us to some such good man as Ebenezer Snipeton. Why, 
 he 's as well knowai to the bloods of London as Bi'idewell 's known 
 to the 'prentices." 
 
 " And pray, sir," asked the yonng man, with some effort at 
 carelessness, " pray, do you know the victim — I mean, the usurer's 
 wife?" 
 
 "I can't say that," answered the stranger. "And jet, I've 
 seen her before she wore chains ; seen her when she lived with 
 the old man, her father. Ha, sir ! that was a bitter business." 
 
 " Pray, tell me," said the young man. " I know not wherefore 
 I should care about it, and yet there is an interest in what you 
 say that — I ]")ray, tell me, sir." 
 
 " You see, her ftxther was a worn-out, broken merchant. His 
 wife, as I have heard, went wrong, and from that time his head 
 failed him — he grew wild and reckless — losses came thick as hail 
 upon him, and then Snipeton came to his assistance — yes, assist- 
 ance is Avhat he called it — and bound him round and roimd with
 
 106 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 bills and bonds, and I know not wliat, and made him all his own. 
 Well, ill good time, old Snipeton looked upon the girl — it isn't a 
 new* story though a sad and wicked one — and she became the 
 usurer's ■«"ife, to save her father from the usurer's fangs. Pity is 
 it that she did so ; for the old man died only a few weeks after 
 the wedding that made liis child — kind, affectionate thing ! — a 
 slave for life. 'Twould be a jjretty world, sir, wouldn't it, but 
 for tricks like these, — and they, somehow, take the bloom off it, 
 don't they ? Eh, sir ? Good night, sir ; " and then the stranger 
 suddenly clapped spurs to his horse, and galloped onward. Follow- 
 ing a bend of the road, he was in a few minutes out of sight ; upon 
 which our solitary traveller, evidently relieved of an irksome 
 companion, turned his steed, and slowly retraced his "way. He 
 again relapsed into thought — again sufiered his horse to wander 
 at its own will onwai'd. Thus absorbed he had proceeded a short 
 distance when his eye fell upon a miserable man, seated on a 
 mile-stone. He was in rags and almost bare-foot, and there was 
 the shai-p spirit of want in his features, that told a tale of many 
 sufferings. He spoke not — made no gesture of supplication — but 
 looked viith idle, glazing eye upon the earth. This object of 
 desolation — this poor tatterdemalion wretch — suddenly smote our 
 traveller into consciousness ; and with a kind compassionate 
 voice, he accosted him. " My poor fellow, you seem in no plight 
 for travel." 
 
 " Bad enough, sir," said the man, " bad enough ; yet hardly as 
 bad as I wish it was." 
 
 " Indeed ! A strange wish ! Why, I take it, human strength 
 could scarcely bear a heavier load of wretchedness." 
 
 " I wish it couldn't bear it," said the man ; " I 'm tired of it — 
 lieart -tired, and could lay down my life as willingly as a pack." 
 
 " Where do you come from ? " asked the stranger. 
 
 " Oh, sir ! a long way from here — a long way ; and why I 
 came I know not : I was a restless fool, and might have died 
 where I was." 
 
 " And where are your friends ? " questioned the traveller. 
 
 "God only knows," said the man, with a heavy groan; "I 
 don't." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! but hope for better times," said the traveller ; 
 and at the same moment, throwing him a crown-piece, the youth 
 rode briskly on. 
 
 And tlius unknown to one another did St. Giles and St. James 
 a^iin meet. Again w:is St. Giles an outcast, hiding from the 
 law ; fur he had escaped from his far-off place of bondage, and 
 yeariiiiig for England, for the lovely land in which he had no 
 rightful footstep, in whose abounding wealth he had not the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 107 
 
 interest of a farthing ; he had dared death and peril in many- 
 shapes, and hunger and all variety of misery, to stand once more 
 upon his native soil. He knew that, if discovered, the hano-man 
 •would claim him as lawful prey ; he knew that he must hide and 
 slink tlirough life in the mere hope of holding life's poor mockery ; 
 and yet, he had slipped his chains, had suffei-ed the misery of a 
 thousand deaths, that he might once again behold an English sky, 
 once again tread English eai-th ! Poor wretch ! how soon did 
 hard reality disenchant him. How few the days he had passed 
 in England, yet how many the terrors that had encompassed him ! 
 The land that in his dreams of bondage had seemed to him a 
 Paradise ; the very men who in his hopeful visions had promised 
 gentleness and protection ; all was changed. The earth, lovely 
 and fruitfid to happy eyes, to him seemed cursed ; and all men, 
 to his thought, looked at him with denouncing looks. With a 
 crushed heart, and in the very recklessness of despair, he would 
 again have welcomed the chains he had broken. Again and 
 again too, could he have stretched himself upon the earth as upon 
 a bed, and rendered uj") his tired and hopeless spirit to his God. 
 And then fierce thoughts of vengeance on the world's injustice 
 would possess him ; then he would deem himself as one sent upon 
 the earth, missioned for mischief; a mere wretch of prey, to live 
 by wrong and violence. And thus, with the demon rising in his 
 breast, was he broocUng, when St. James accosted him. But when 
 the young man, the child of fortune, soothed the poor outcast 
 with gentle words and timely relief, the sullen, desperate 'WTetch 
 became on the instant penitent and softened ; and his touched 
 heart felt there was goodness stiU in man, and beauty in the 
 world. The thoughts of life came back to him in healthful 
 strength ; for his jaded spirit had drunk at the fountain of hope. 
 In the fervour of his gratitude, he felt not that, in a day or two at 
 most, the sun might see the misery of the past hour again upon 
 him. It was enough that he had the means of present comfort ; 
 that he could quench the fire of hunger ; that he could rest his 
 travel-worn body. With this glad assurance he cast about his 
 thoughts for a place of refuge. He knew not the road ; knew 
 not what ofiered as he advanced ; but he remembered that he had 
 passed a house a little more than a mile back, and retracing his 
 steps, he would there seek refuge for the night. Though his 
 heart was lightened, he walked with difficulty, and the evening 
 closed in rapidly about his path. It was a calm and beautiful 
 night, and the clear moon rose like a spirit in heaven. Suddenly 
 St. Giles was startled by the sound of horses' feet ; in an instant 
 the animal, bearing a rider whose outline was but for a moment 
 visible, at its fullest speed passed him ; a minute, and the sound
 
 108 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 of hoofs died in the di.stance. There -was something strauge in 
 Buch ha.ste ; something that fell upon St. Giles with a sen.se of 
 evil done. For a time he paused, jxsking counsel of himself; and 
 then his sinking vitals, his worn and wearied body, claimed his 
 instant exertion, and again he pressed onward. In half-an-hour 
 he arrived at the wished- for house. Lights shone in the windows ; 
 there was dancing, and the voice of village harmony was loud 
 within. Wherefore, then, did St. Giles pause at the very 
 threshold? "Wlierefore, then, did his knees feel weak, and his 
 very heart sink numbed and dead, as he saw the cheerful light, 
 and heard human voices clamouring their happiness ? "Wherefore 
 should he not join the merry-makers ? Alas ! was there not 
 con^"ict written in his haggaixl cheeks — felon branded on his 
 brow ? Would he not, with a howl of triumph, be set upon by 
 his fellow-men, and, like a wild beast escaped from a cage, be 
 carried back to jail ? His brain swam with the thought, and he 
 almost fell to the earth. '• Wliy, what 's the matter, mate ? " said 
 a country-man, noting St. Giles's hesitation. " Why don't thee 
 step in ? There be plenty of room, if thee have the cash, though 
 it be crowded a plenty." 
 
 " Thank 'ee ; I was a going in," said St. Giles ; and with 
 sudden resolution he entered the house. Happily for him, he 
 thought, the place was thronged. A village-ball was held up- 
 staii-s, and the house throbbed and rocked beneath the vigorous 
 feet of the dancers. The resources of the neighbourhood, how- 
 ever, had supplied one fiddle, and the musician, the village tailor, 
 touched by Phoebus, generously accommodated his instrument to 
 the distant keys and many variations of the singers. Shortly 
 after St. Giles entered, the ears of the company were engaged by 
 the patriotic strains of the Ijarljer of the hamlet, who, with vigour 
 and taste happily mingled, celebrated in good strong, homely 
 verse the magnanimity, courage, and glory of the British Lion ; 
 an animal that has, in its day, had as many fine things wi-ittcn of 
 it as an opera-singer. And as the b;irber sang, fifty throats 
 joined in choru.s, declaratory of the might of the aforesaid British 
 Lion, and evidently claiming a sort of partnership in its greatness. 
 For the time, the Briti.sh Lion was to them a very intimate 
 relati(jn ; and they celebrated its glories as though they had a 
 family interest in them. And St. Giles himself—to his passing 
 astonishment — piped the jjraiscs of the British Lion ! The out- 
 ca-st vag.il.ond, with fear pulling at his heart, had slid among the 
 company, trembling at every man's eye, as it fell upon him ; but 
 Boon he had quallVd some ale, he had eaten invigorating bread 
 and cheese, and his heart, suffused and warm, had cast away all 
 coward thought, and in the fuhiess of its gratitude, in the very
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 109 
 
 surprise of its happiness, had chirped aloud to the honour of the 
 British Lion ; albeit the said Lion, as a very prominent actor in 
 the arms of England — as the typical defender of our hearths and 
 homes, our dearest morals, and sometimes our dearer property — 
 might very justifiably have requii-ed the returned conx-ict for its 
 dinner. Li very ti-uth, St. Giles was the lawful prey of the 
 defrauded, cheated British Lion ; and yet St. Giles, in the igno - 
 ranee of his happiness, sang to the praises of the Lion as though 
 the royal beast had been to him his best friend. But then 
 St. Giles sang as a patriot, though in his heart and soul he might 
 feel no better than a felon. Wicked, h\^ocritic St. Giles ! In all 
 histoiy, did ever man, in liigher places, too, do the like 1 
 
 It was well for St. Giles that he had fortified himself with a 
 cup of ale, ■ft'ith a few mouthfuls of food, ere the maiden who 
 attended to the wants of the \4sitors, asked him for the requiting 
 coin. Otherwise St. Giles had felt somewhat abashed to display 
 his wealth ; the fui'niture of his pocket, and his outside chattels 
 in no way harmonising together. The crown-piece would have 
 confused St. Giles ; as to eyes sharpened by money — and what a 
 whetstone it is even to dullest \'ision ! — he felt that he in no way 
 looked like a man to be honestly j^ossessed of so much wealth. 
 Either he would have thought the lawful metal of the coin 
 might be questioned; or that difficulty overcome, his rightful 
 claim to it disputed. And then, had he out with the truth, who, 
 he thought, in the narrowness of his heart, would believe him .' 
 "\\1iat ! anybody give a beggar a crown-piece ? Then, at once, 
 believe the moon coagulated cream, or any other household sub- 
 stance. But, happily, we say, for St. Giles, his heai-t was suddenly 
 warmed ; and, therefore, with a careless, hapjjy air, never sus- 
 pecting the suspicions of others, he laid his crowm-piece in the 
 hand of the attendant nymph, or if you vdW, bacchante ; and 
 she, with all the trustingness and simplicity of her sex, never 
 looked at St. Giles and then at his money as though, it is some- 
 times done, comparing the face of flesh and the face of metal, to 
 mark if they be worthy of each other ; but instantly gave the 
 change, with a bl}i;he " thank 'ee" for the patronage. Pre- 
 sumptuous is man ! St. Giles, who, five minutes before, felt 
 himself wretched, terrified at the thought of singing in the tap- 
 room of the Lamb and Star, was now made so bold by liis happi- 
 ness, that, his eyes meeting the bright orbs of Becky, full and 
 swimming as they were with satisfaction, and her Uttle plump 
 anatomy swajing to and fro, in kindly sympathy with the dancers 
 up-stairs— St. Giles, we sayj in the hardihood of his sudden 
 confidence, laughed and chucked Becky under the chin. ^ And 
 Becky, looking not more than decently ferocious, bounced lightly
 
 110 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 round, cried " Well, I 'm sure ! " and then, as if notliing had 
 hai'pencd, attended the CiJl of another customer. 
 
 And could St. Giles so soon forget that he was a returned 
 convict, as with slight provocation to chuck the maiden of the 
 Lamb and Star under the chin ? But such is the heart of man ! 
 
 "When the clamour of the room was at its highest, a young 
 man sjjarkishly drest suddenly looked in, and was as suddenly 
 greeted by the merry-makers. A loud cheer for " Mjister Willis" 
 shook the roof-tree. The new-comer was a man of about five- 
 and twenty ; of tall and well-knit frame, with large, fresh-coloured 
 features, and a profusion of black haii' ; the very man to kill 
 village hearts by dozens. He seemed in the highest spirits ; 
 indeed, almost unnaturally gay. There was something in his 
 lubomx'd vivacity that might have awakened the attention of a 
 less merry audience ; a hoUowness in his loud, roaring laugh, 
 that hardly seemed of mirth. But Master Willis was among 
 friends, admirers : he was the favourite of the men, the admired 
 of the women ; besides, he rai-ely failed, on occasions such as the 
 present, to play the patron. Hence, after a few moments, in 
 Avhich his hand was grasped by at least twenty humble acquaint- 
 ances, he gave an order that " ale was to be served all roimd." 
 This largess was greeted with new acclamation. Wlien it had 
 subsided, Master Willis, with a significant killing look, bade all 
 his friends be happy together ; but that for himself, why he must 
 join the gii'ls, and have a d;mce up-stairs. This gallantry was 
 met with another buret of applause, in the midst of which ]\Iaster 
 Willis, jUI smiles and happiness, disappeared. 
 
 " And who is that gentleman ? " St. Giles ventured to ask of 
 the barber, at the time his nearest neighbour. 
 
 _ " Who is he 1 Well, where did you come from ? Not know 
 him ? WTiere was you born ? " cried the bai-ber. 
 
 " I 'm— I 'm a stranger hereabouts," answered St. Giles, a Httle 
 vexed with himself for his untimely curiosity. 
 
 " So I should think, not to know Master Willis. A stranger ! 
 Why I should take you for a Frenchman, or an outhuidish 
 foreigner of some sort, never to have heard of him. The best 
 hand at bowls and smgle-stick— the best hunter— the best shot— 
 the best everj-thing. Well, you do look like a foreigner," said 
 the barber, glancing at St. Giles in a way that made him 
 heai-t-sick. 
 
 " I 'm a true Englishman," said St. Giles, "though I've been 
 some years out of the country." 
 
 " Ha ! serving your king, and aU that ? " said the barber. St. 
 GUes nodded. "Well, hke a good many of the sort, you don't 
 seem to have made your fortm by it. But then, I suppose, you Ve
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 11 1 
 
 got a lot of glory ? Now, within a dozen or two, can you tell us 
 how many Freuclimen you 've killed 1 " St. Giles winced from 
 the small grey eyes of the barber, who, as though conscious of the 
 confusion he created, pursued his queries with growing self- 
 satisfaction. " You can't tell us how many, eh ? A pi-ecious 
 lot I should think, by the look of you. Well, if all over you 
 don't smell of gunpowder ! " and the barber affectedly held his 
 nostrils, to give, as he conceived, point to his wit. St. Giles 
 felt his patience fast dei^artiug : he therefore ojiened his hands, 
 and fixing liis eye upon the barber, agam leisurely doubled his 
 fist. Tlie look, the gestui-e, was instantly imderstood by the wag, 
 for immediately di-oppiug his tone of banter, he became most 
 courteously communicative. " But you was asking about Master 
 "Willis 1 To be sui-e — as a stranger, it 's natm-al you shouldn't 
 know. Well, his uncle's the richest farmer a hundred miles 
 about. His land 's as fat as butter, and Master Bob — we call 
 him Bob here — will have every inch of it. He 's a wild fellow, 
 to be sure. Doesn't mind, when the temper 's on him, knocking 
 down a man like a bullock ; but bless you ! no harm in him — 
 not a bit of harm. My service to you," and quafiing the ale — 
 Master WUlis's liberal gift — the barber moved away. 
 
 The time wore on, and St. Giles, exhausted by fatigue, made 
 drowsy with his entertainment, dared to think of bed. Yes, he 
 had the hardihood to promise himself that night at least, the 
 shelter of a roof. " My good girl," said he, in a confidential 
 whisper to Becky, "can I sleep au;y'where here to-night — any- 
 where, you know ?" 
 
 " Why, you see," answered Becky, her eyes instinctively wan- 
 dering from rag to rag, as worn by St. Giles, " why, you see, the 
 missus is very partic'lar." And then Becky, despite of her, 
 looked dubiously at the toes of St. Giles, indecorously showing 
 their destitution to the world. Ha\'ing, quite unconsciously, 
 counted the said toes, and assm-ed herself there were ten of them, 
 all in flagrant want of shoe-leather, Becky repeated, ^vith even 
 more emphasis — " Very partic'lar." 
 
 " I dare say — she 's right, in course," answered St. Giles ; " but 
 I don't want nothing for uothuig — I can pay for it." 
 
 " Oh, to be sure," said Becky quickly, " it isn't money ; oh no, 
 that's notliing — but it's the character of the house we stand 
 upon. Missus says that houses are like Christians, and catches 
 bad characters all the same as you catch the smaU-pox or any- 
 thing of the sort from them as have 'em. That 's what she says, 
 and I dare say it 's aU true." 
 
 St. Giles made no answer ; but a deep, heart-drawn sigh broke 
 from him. Becky was turning away, when, touched by the sound.
 
 112 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 she siuldunly looked in St. Giles's face — it was on the instant so 
 blankly wretclieJ — so old, so hopeless in its look — the forced 
 BtnUe that had played about it had so quickly vanished, that, 
 unknowii to herself, with a feeling of compassion and sympathy, 
 the poor girl caught St. Giles's hand, and with altered voice said 
 — " I don't think missus has seen you, and as we 're so busy to- 
 night, she iua}'n't want to look at you ; so be quiet a little while, 
 and I dai'e say I can get you some nice straw in the barn." 
 
 " Thank 'ee," said St. Giles — " Do, God bless you ;" and he 
 pressed the girl's hand, and her simple, kindly heart was melted 
 by the poor fellow's wretchedness, and with twinkling eyes and a 
 smile on her coarse, broad, honest face, she left the room. In a 
 few mmutes the door was opened, and Becky -with upraised finger 
 stood without. St. Giles immediately obeyed the signal, and in 
 brief time found himself on his way to bed, preceded by Becky 
 ■with a lanthorn ; for the moon had gone down, and the night was 
 pitchy dark. " I 've brought the light," said she, " for fear oi 
 the dog. He killed one man, or as good as killed him, for he 
 never got over it ; but he won't bite nobody when he sees 'em 
 with me." And the conduct of the dog speedily bore out the 
 character given him ; for though with grinning teeth, and a low, 
 Bnuffling howl, he walked round and round St. GUes, Becky — 
 even as Una dominated the lion — held Dragon in completest 
 subjection. Although she called him a brute, a beast, a nasty 
 creature, and twenty other names of the like prettiness. Dragon 
 with a patient wagging of the tail bore them all, his very patience 
 — what a lesson for human philosophy ! — turning invective into 
 compliment. " Here it is," said Becky, opening the barn-door. 
 "Here 's straw as sweet as any clover ; and there isn't many rats, 
 for they was hunted only a month ago. You 're not afeard oi 
 i-ats ? Bless you, they 're more afeard of Christians than Chi-istians 
 should be afeard of them ; and so I tells missus ; but for all that 
 f^he will squeal at 'em. Well, people can't help what they call 
 'tijjathies. As for me, I minds rats no more than rabbits. There, 
 now, up in that comer ; aad if there isn't a sack and all to cover 
 }ou ! Why, you couldn't sleep better if you was a lord. And 
 Bee here. Here 's a bottle with some beer, and some bread and 
 cheese, when you wake in the morning. I 'm always hungry 
 when I wake in the morning, I am ; no matter what time I goes 
 to bed : but that comes, as I say, of having a clear conscience, and 
 doing no hann to nobody. There, good night — poor soul ! God 
 be with you !" And with this simple, earnest wish— this little 
 wish that like the circle of the univeree holds within it all 
 thing.s— ilid the kind, the gentle drudge of a way-side "pot-house 
 fiend the convict to his bed. No king was ever shown to tapestried
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 113 
 
 chamber with ti-uer wishes for his rest, than weut witli St. Giles 
 to his straw. " God be with you," said the girl ; aud the words 
 of gentleness, the happy, hopeful tone that breathed in them, fell 
 like balm upon the felon's heai-t ; and in a few moments he was 
 sunk in the deep happiness of sleep ; he was far away in that 
 neutral region of life, where emperors put off their crowns — 
 where the arrogance of earth is calm and harmless — where pride 
 and ostentation have not theii* blatant trumpets blo-vvn before 
 them — where the purple of Dives is cast aside on the same heap 
 with the rags of Lazarus — where the equaUty to all, that death 
 shall everlastingly bring, is once a day rehearsed by all men — 
 where life is simple breathing, and the slave loses the master. 
 
 For many nights had St. Giles slept in the open fields. Ragged, 
 and worn, and hunger-stricken, he had nevertheless slept ; and 
 only when the daylight came felt for a time his smews cramped 
 and stiffened with the dews of night. Still with the sky above 
 him, no more sheltered than his neighbour ox or sheep, he had 
 slept ; he had, despite of fortune, cheated misery with forge t- 
 fulness. Nature for a time had blessed him as she had blessed 
 the happiest man. Yet sleep had come to him slowly, reluctantly ; 
 bodily want and suffering would for a time refuse the sweet 
 obhvion. But here in a barn — with fresh, delicious, odorous 
 straw ; with roof and walls to hold out mnd and I'ain — St. Giles 
 composed liimself to sleep as almost to eternal rest. He was 
 hapi^y, profoundly happy that he was lodged, comfortably, as 
 any beast. 
 
 For an hour — yes, an hour at least — ^had St. Giles enjoyed the 
 happiness of rest, when he was loudly, roughly awakened. 
 " Hallo ! you vagabond— get up, and answer for a murder," 
 bawled a voice ; and St. Giles, leaping to his feet, saw the barn 
 half-fiUed with people, ai-med with sticks and weapons as for 
 some sudden fray. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 "What's the matter now?" cried St. Gile.?, pale and aghast; 
 for instantly he believed himself detected ; instantly saw the gaol, 
 the gallows, and the hangman. " What 's the matter ?" he cried, 
 trembling from head to foot. 
 
 " What 's the matter 1 " roared the barber, " only a httle bit of 
 murder, that 's all— and that 's nothing to chaps like you." 
 
 Terrible as was the charge, nevertheless St. Giles felt himself 
 
 I
 
 114 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 somewhat relieved : he was not, he found, apprehended as the 
 escaped convict ; that was yet unknown ; and, oddly enough, with 
 the accusation of bloodshed on him, he felt comparatively tranquil. 
 
 " ^Murder, is it," he said, " well, who 's murdered ? And whoever 
 he is, why is it to be me who 's killed him — tell me that ? " 
 
 " Did you ever hear ? " said the barber. " A chap, with rags 
 on liim, not fit to scare birds in a bean-field, and yet talks like 
 one of us ! I should like to know where such as you get crown 
 pieces ? " 
 
 " Never mind — never mind," said the host of the Lamb and 
 Star, " that 's justice's work — not ours." 
 
 " Justice's work ! " exclaimed the hostess, now pressing fore- 
 most of the crowd — " and what will justice do for us ? When 
 justice has hanged the ragamuffin, will justice give back the cha- 
 racter of the house ? Who 11 come to the Lamb and Star, when 
 it 's kuo\\ii to harbour cut-tlii"oats ? But it 's that hussy, Becky ; 
 it 's she that hid the murderer here ; it 's she, I '11 be sworn it, 
 knows all about the murder, for there isn't such a devil for break- 
 ing in the whole county." Such was the emj^hatic declai'ation of 
 the hostess, who, by a kind of logic — ^not altogether imcommon to 
 the sex — saw in Becky, the reckless destroyer of potteiy, the con- 
 sequent accomplice in human destraction. The reasoning, it must 
 be confessed, was of the most violent, the most tyi'aniiic kind ; on 
 which account, it was somewhat more attractive to Mrs. Blink ; 
 guileless, ingenuous soul ! who, in her innocency, rated her hand- 
 maiden for bestowing a homicide in the barn of the Lamb and Star ; 
 when, had the matron known aught of the moral machinery of life, 
 she ought instantly to have doubled Becky's wages for such inesti- 
 mable service. Mrs. Bhnk ought to have known that to a public- 
 house a murderer was far more profitable, to both tap and parlour, 
 than a pretty barmaid. She ought to have looked upon the Lamb 
 and Star as a made hostelry, from the instant it should be known 
 that St. Giles, with the mark of Cain fresh upon him, changed his 
 first blood-begotten dollar there ; that afterwai'ds he sought the 
 Bweets of sleep in the Lamb and Star's bam. Silly ]Mrs. Blink ! 
 Why, the very straw pressed by St. Giles was precious as though 
 laid upon by Midas : to be split and worked into bonnets it was 
 worth — what brain shall say how much a truss ? But Mrs. Blink 
 thought not after this fashion. She looked upon St. Giles as 
 tliough he had brought so much blood upon the house — so many 
 • ineflfaceable stains of shame and ignominy. Foolish woman ! she 
 ought rather to have made him her humblest curtsey ; ought 
 rather to have set her face with her sunniest smile, for having 
 given the Lamb and Star the preference of his infamy. Benighted 
 creature ! she knew not the worth of a murder to a bar.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 11? 
 
 " And pray who is mxirdered ? " again asked St. Giles, witli an 
 effrontery that again called u^j all the virtuous astonishment of 
 the host and hostess. " If I 've killed any body, can't you let me 
 know who it is ? " 
 
 "Yes, yes," cried the landlord, "you're just the fellow to 
 brazen it out ; but it won't do this time ;" and he then looked 
 knowingly at his wife, who was about to express herself on the 
 eertamty of St. Giles's fate, when she beheld Becky peeping 
 anxiously from the crowd, most shamefully interested, as ^Irs. 
 Blink conceived, in the prisoner's condition. " Why, you wicked 
 hussy ! if you oughtn't to be hanged with him," cried the hostess : 
 whereupon Becky immediately took to her heels, and was imme- 
 diately followed by her mistress, whose loud indignation at length 
 died a muttering death in the distance. Mrs. Blink being gone, 
 there was dead silence for a moment ; and then the landlord, with 
 a puzzled look, jerking his head towards St. Giles, briefly asked 
 counsel of one and all. " "What shall we do with him 1 " 
 
 This query produced another pause. Every man seemed to feel 
 as though the question was specially put to himself, and therefore 
 did his best to prepare to answer it. Yes ; almost every man 
 scratched his head, and suddenly tried to look acute, sharp. 
 "What 's to be done wi 'un ?" asked two or three musmgiy ; and 
 then looked in each other's faces, as though they looked at a dead 
 wall. At length, wisdom descended upon the brain of the barber. 
 "I'll tell you what we'll do with him," said the small oracle of 
 the Lamb and Star, and suddenly all looked satisfied, as though 
 the mystery was at length discovered, — " I 'U tell you wliat we'll 
 do with him : we 'U leave him where he is." Everybody nodded 
 assent to the happy thought. " He 'U be just as safe here as 
 in the cage, and that 's a mile away. We've only got to tie 
 him hand and foot, and three or four of us to sit up and watch 
 him, and I warrant he doesn't slip through our fingers — I warrant 
 me, varmint as he is, we'll give a good account of him to justice." 
 The barber was rewarded with a murmur of applause ; and such 
 approbation he received all tranquilly, like a man accustomed to 
 the sweets of moral incense. For St. Giles, he had again cast 
 himself hopelessly upon the straw ; again lay, secmmgly indifferent 
 to all around him. In the despair, the wretchedness of his con- 
 dition, hfe or death was, he thought, to him alike. On all hands 
 he was a himted, persecuted wretch ; life was to him a miserable 
 disease ; a leprosy of soul that made him alone in a breathing 
 •world. There might be companionship in the grave. And so 
 dreaming, St. Giles lay dumb and motionless as a corpse, the 
 •while his captors took counsel for his security. " Hush ! " said 
 the barber, motioning silence, and then having stood a few 
 
 I 2
 
 lie ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 moments, listening, with upraised finger, he cried — "it's my 
 belief the rogue 's asleep ; in that case, we needn't tie him ; 
 we 've only to watch outside : the night 's warm, the dog 's loose, 
 and with a nnig or so of ale, I "m good to watch with any half- 
 dozen of you." The truth is, the barber had been visited by a 
 second thought that suggested to him the probability of rough 
 usage at the hands of the prisoner, should there be an attempt 
 to put him in bonds, and he therefore, with a pardonable regard 
 for his own features, proposed to waive the ceremony of tying the 
 culprit. " He '11 have his share of rope in time," said the barber, 
 much satisfied with the smallness of the jest. And thereupon, he 
 beckoned his companions from the barn ; and had already imagined 
 the balminess of the coming ale — for the landlord had promised 
 flowing mugs — when justice, professional justice, arrived in the 
 shape of a sworn constable. " Where 's this murdering chap ? " 
 asked the functionary. 
 
 "All right, Master Tipps," said the barber, "all snug ; we've 
 got him." 
 
 " There 's nothing right, nothing snug, without the cufTs," said 
 the constable, displaying the irons with much official pride. — 
 " He 's in the bam, there, eh, Master Blink ? " Then I charge 
 you all in the king's name — and this is his staff" — ^to help me." 
 The landlord, touched by the magic of the adjuration, stepped 
 forward with the lantei'n ; the constable followed, and was sulkily 
 followed by two or tliree of the party. The barber, however, and 
 one or two of his kidney, budged not a foot. " Isn't it always 
 so ? " he exclaimed, " if ever a man puts himself out of the way, 
 and ventures his jjrecious Ufe and limbs, taking up all sorts of 
 varmint— if ever he docs it, why it 's safe for ]\Iaster Constable to 
 come down, and take away all the honour and glory. I should 
 like to know what 's tlie use of a man feeling savage against 
 rogues, if another man 's to have the credit of it ? Now you '11 
 see how it will be, it 's the way of the world, oh yes ! you '11 
 see. Tliey '11 take this chap, and try him, and hang him, perhaps 
 put him in chains and all, and we shall never be so much as 
 thanked for it. No, we shall never be named in the matter, 
 Well, after this, folks may mui'der who they like for me. And 
 Isn't it precious late, too ! and will my wife believe I 've been 
 nowhere but here?" cried the barber; and a sudden cloud 
 darkened his face, and he ran off like a late schoolboy to his task. 
 ■Poor St. Giles ! he knew it not ; but, if vengeance were sweet to 
 think upon, there was somebody at home who would revenge the 
 wrongs of the vagrant upon the barber. Somebody, who, at deep 
 mi(Liight, would scare sleep from his pillow, even whilst the 
 feloniously accused snored among the straw. And after this 
 
 m
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 1 17 
 
 fashion may many a wretch take sweet comfurt ; — if, indeed, 
 revenge be sweet ; and there are very respectable folks to whom, 
 in truth, it has very saccharine qualities, for they seem to enjoy 
 it as children enjoy sugai'-cane ; — sweet comfort that, whatever 
 wrong or contumely may be cast upon him in the light of day 
 there may be somebody, as it would seem especially appointed, 
 to chastise the evil-doer ; and that, too, " in the dead waste and 
 middle of the night ;" to drive sleep from his eyeballs ; to make 
 him feel a coward, a nobody, a nincomjDoop, in his own hoUand. 
 
 Pleasant is it for the sour-thinking man who sees a blustering 
 authority — whether grasping a beadle's staff or holding the scales 
 of justice— sometimes to know that there is a louder authority at 
 home, a greater vehemence of reproof, that may make the bully 
 of the day the sleepless culprit of the night. Was there not 
 WTiitlow, beadle of the parish of St. Scraggs 1 "What a man- 
 beast was Whitlow ! How would he, like an avenging ogre, 
 scatter apple-women ! How would he foot little boys, guilty of 
 peg-tops and marbles ! How would he puff at a beggar — puff 
 like the picture of the north-wind in the spelling-book ! What 
 a huge, heavy, purple face he had, as though all the blood of his 
 body was stagnant in his cheeks ! And then, when he spoke, 
 would he not growl and snuffle like a dog ? How the parish 
 would have hated him, but that the parish heard there was a 
 Mrs. Whitlow ; a small fragile woman, with a face sharp as a 
 penknife, and lips that cut her words hke scissors ! And what a 
 forlorn wretch was "Whitlow, with his head brought once a night 
 to the pillow ! Poor creature ! helpless, confused ; a huge imbe- 
 cility, a stranded whale ! Mrs. Wliitlow talked and talked ; and 
 there was not an apple-woman but in Wliitlow's sufferings was 
 hot avenged ; not a beggar, that thinking of the beadle at mid- 
 night, might not, in his compassion, have forgiven the beadle of 
 the day. And in this punishment we acknowledge a grand, a 
 beautiful retribution. A Judge Jefferys in his wig is an abom- 
 inable tyi-ant ; yet may his victims sometimes smile to think what 
 Judge Jefferys suffers in his night-cap ! 
 
 And now leave we for awhile St. Giles in the official custody of 
 Tipps, who, proud of his handcuffs as a chamberlain of his wand, 
 suffered not the least opportunity to pass without resorting to 
 them. To him, handcuffs were the grace of life, the only security 
 of our social condition. Man, without the knowledge of hand- 
 cuffs, would to Tipps have been a naked wretch, indeed ; a poor 
 barbarian, needing the first glimmer of civilisation. Had philo- 
 sophy talked to Tipps of the golden chain of necessity, to the 
 sense of Tipps the chain would have been made of handcuffs. 
 Hence, the constable had thought it his prime duty to handcuff
 
 118 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 St. Giles ; and then, he suffered himself to be pei-suaded to leave 
 the murderer in his straw ; the landlord luiudsomely promising 
 the loan of a cart to remove the prisoner in the morumg. 
 
 Some two miles distant from the Lamb and Star, where the 
 road turned with a sharp angle, there was a deep hollow ; this 
 place had been known, it may he, to the Driuds, as the Devil's 
 Elbow. Throughout the world, mtm has ungraciously given 
 sundry ugly spots of the earth's face — itsw^arts and pock-marks — ■ 
 to the fiend ; and the liberal dwellers of Kent had, as we say, made 
 over an abrupt break-neck comer of eai-th to the Devil for his 
 Elbow. It was at this spot that, whilst St. Giles was swallowing 
 ale at the Lamb and Star, his supposed victim, the handsome, 
 generous St. James was discovered prostrate, stunned, and 
 wounded. Eumoiu- had, of coui-se, taken his life ; making with 
 easiest despatch St. Giles a murderer ; for being an outcast and a 
 beggar, how lacile was the transformation ! But St. James was 
 not dead ; idbeit a deep wound, as from some mortal instrument, 
 some dull weapon, as the law has it, on his temple, looked more 
 than l:u"ge enough for life to escape from. Happily for St. James, 
 there were men in Kent who lived not a life of reverence for the 
 law ; otherwise, it is more than i^robable that, undiscovered until 
 the morning, the De\'irs Elbow might have been haunted by 
 another ghost. But it was to be otherwise. It was provided by 
 fate that there should be half-a-dozen smugglers, bound on an 
 unhallowed mission to the coast ; who, first observing St. James's 
 horse, masterless and quietly grazing at the road's side, made 
 closer search and thence discovered young St. James, as they at 
 firet believed, killed, and lying half-way down the hollow. " Here's 
 been rough work," cried one of the men ; "see, the old, wicked 
 story — blood flowing, and pockets inside out. He 's a fine lad ; 
 too tine for such a death." " All 's one for that," said a second ; 
 " we can't bring him to life by stju-ing at him : we 've queer work 
 enough of oui- own on hand — every one for his own business. 
 Come along." '' He 's alive ! " exclaimed a third, with an oath ; 
 and as he spoke, St. James di-ew a long, deep sigh. "All the 
 better for him," cried the second, " then he can take care of him- 
 flelf." " Why, Jack Bilson, you 'd never be such a hard-hearted 
 chap as to leave anj^hing with life in it, in this fabhion ? " was 
 the remonstrance of the first discoverer of St. James ; whereupon 
 Mr. Bilson, with a worldliness of prudence, sometimes worth 
 uncounted gold to the possessor, remai'ked that humanity was 
 very well — but that everybody was made for everybody's self— 
 and that while they were palavering there over nobody know who, 
 they might lose the running of the tubs. Humanity, as Mr. Bilson 
 said, was very well ; but then there was a breeches pocket -\artue 
 
 ]A'
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. ng 
 
 in smuggled Sclieidam. " Well, if I was to leave a fellow-cretur 
 iu this plight, I should never have the impudence to hope to have 
 a bit of luck again," said the more compassionate contrabandist 
 whose nice superstition came ia aid of his benevolence ; " and so 
 I say, mates, let us carry him to that house yonder, make 'em 
 take him in, and then go with light hearts and clean consciences 
 upon om' business." " Yes ; if we ain't all taken up for robbers 
 and murderers for our pains : but, Ben Magsby, you always was 
 a obstinate gi-ampus." And Ben Magsby carried out his humane 
 purpose ; for St. James was immediately borne to the house afore- 
 said. Loud and long was the knocking at the door, ere it was 
 opened. At length, a little sharp-faced old woman appeared, and, 
 with wonderful serenity, begged to know what was the matter. 
 " Why, here 's a gentleman," said Magsby, " who 's been altogether 
 robbed and well-nigh murdered." 
 
 " Eobbed and murdered ! " said the matron, calmly as though 
 she spoke of a pie over-baked, or a johit over-roasted, — " robbed 
 and murdered ! What 's that to us ? The public-house is the 
 place for such things. Go to the Lamb and Stai-." But the woman 
 spoke to heedless eare ; for Ben Magsby and his mates — ere the 
 woman had ceased her counsel — had borne the wounded man 
 across the threshold, and unceremoniously entering the first 
 discoverable apartment, had laid him on a couch. 
 
 " There," said Ben, returning with his companions to the door, 
 " there, we 've done our duty as Christians, mind you do yours." 
 And with this admonition, the smugglers vanished. 
 
 It was then that the little old woman showed signs of emotion. 
 Murder and robbery at the public-house she could have contem- 
 plated with becoming composure ; but to be under the same roof 
 with the horror was not to be quietly endured so long as she had 
 lungs ; and so thinkmg, she stood in the hall, and vehemently 
 screamed. Like boatswain's whistle did that feminine summons 
 pierce every corner of the mansion : the cupboard mouse jsaused 
 over stolen cheese — the hearth-cricket suddenly was dumb — the 
 deathwatch in the wall ceased its amorous tick-tick — so sudden, 
 sharp, and all-pervading was that old woman's scream. " "WTiy, 
 Dorothy ! is that you 1 " exclaimed a matronly gentlewoman, 
 hastening down stau-s, and followed l)y a young lady of apparently 
 some three or four and twenty. " Is it possible ? Why, what 's 
 the matter ? " 
 
 "Nothmg at all, ma'am — nothing," said Dorothy, suddenly 
 relapsing into her customary apathy ; for, sooth to say, she was a 
 sort of vegetable woman ; a drowsy, dreamy person, whose per- 
 formance of such a scream was considered by its hearers as a 
 most wondrous manifestation of power. Nobody, to have looked
 
 120 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 at Dorothy Yale, would have thought that -within her dwelt such 
 a scream in posse ; but, sometimes, great is the mystery of little 
 old women. " Nothing at all, ma'am — that is, don't be fi-ightened 
 — that is, they say, ma'am, murder and robbery." 
 
 " Heavens ! Where — where ? " exclaimed the young lady. 
 
 "It isn't your dear husband, ma'am — oh no, it isn't master, 
 so don't be fi-ightened," said the trancjuil Dorothy. " But, 
 if you please, ma'am, it 's in that room — I mean the body, 
 ma'am." 
 
 The young lady, for a moment, shrank back in terror ; and 
 then, as though reproving hei-self for the weakness, she rapidly 
 passed into the room, followed by her elder companion. At the 
 same instant, the wounded man had half-risen from the couch, and 
 was looking wanderingly around him — " Clarissa ! Can it be ? " 
 he cried, and again swooning, fell back. Instantly, the girl was 
 on her kuees at his side ; unconscious of the reproving, the 
 astonished looks of the matron. 
 
 " He 's dying — oh, Mrs. Wilton, he is djdng ! Murdered — I 
 know it all — I see it all — and for me — wretch that I am — for 
 me," and her form WTithed with anguish, and she burst into an 
 agony of tears. 
 
 " Oh, no — the hurt is not mortal ; be assured, I am surgeon 
 enough to know that ; be assured of it, Mrs. Snipeton ; " thus 
 spoke Mrs. Wilton, in words of coldest comfort, and with a 
 manner strangely fi*ozen. " Dorothy, stay j'ou with your mis- 
 tress, whilst I send for assistance, and seek what remedies I can 
 myself I will return instantly : meanwhile, I say, remain with 
 your mistress." 
 
 And St. James, unconscious of the hospitality, was the guest 
 of Mr. Ebenezer Snipeton ; whose character, the reader may 
 remember, was somewhat abruptly discussed by the stranger 
 horseman in the pa.st chapter. It was here, at Dovesnest, that 
 the thrifty money-seller kept his young wife close ; far away, and 
 safe, as he thought, from the bold compliments, the reckless 
 gallantry of the rich young men who, in their fi-equent time of 
 need, paid visits to the friend who, the security certain as the 
 hour, never failed to assist them. Mr. Snipeton was not, in the 
 ordinary matters of life, a man who underrated his ovvni advan- 
 tages, moral and physical. Sooth to say, he was, at times, not 
 unapt to set what detraction might have thought an interested 
 value on them. And yet, what a touchstone for trae humility in 
 man is woman ; Ebenezer Snipeton, in all worldly dealings, held 
 himself a match for any of the money-coining sons of Adam. He 
 could fence with a guinea — and sure we are guinea-fencing is a 
 far more delicate art, is an exercise demanding a finer touch, a
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 121 
 
 readier sleight, than the mere twisting of steel foils ; — he could 
 fence, nay, with even the smallest current coin of the realm, and 
 — no matter who stood against him — come off conqueroi-. " Gold." 
 says Shelley, " is the old man's sword." And most wickedly at 
 times, will hoary-bearded men, with blood as cold and thin as 
 water in their veins, hack and slash with it ! They know — the 
 glim, palsied warriors ! — how the weapon will cut heart-strings ; 
 they know what wounds it will inflict ; but then, the wounds 
 bleed mwardly : there is no outward and visible hurt to call for 
 the coroner ; and so the victim may die, and show, as gossips 
 have it, a very handsome corpse, whilst homicidal avarice, with 
 no drop of outward gore upon his hands — no damning spots seen 
 by the world's naked eye — mixes in the w^orld, a very respectable 
 old gentleman ; a man who has a file of receipts to show for 
 ever\i;hing ; a man who never did owe a shilling ; and above all, 
 a man who takes all the good he gets as nothing more than a 
 proper pajTnent for his exceeding respectability. He is a pattern 
 man ; and for such men heaven rains manna ; only in these days 
 the shower comes down in gold. 
 
 Ebenezer Snipeton, we say, had a high, and therefore market- 
 able opinion of himself ; for the larger the man's self-esteem the 
 surer is he of putting it off in the world's mart. The small 
 dealer in conceit may wait from the opening to the closing of the 
 market, and not a soul shall cany away his little pennyworth ; 
 now the large holder is certain of a quick demand for all his 
 stock. Men are taken by its extent, and close with him imme- 
 diately. If, reader, you wanted to buy one single egg, would you 
 purchase that one egg of the poor, rascal dealer, who had only 
 one egg to sell ? Answer us, truly. Behold the modest trades- 
 man. He stands shrinkingly, with one leg drawn up, and his tea 
 fingers interlaced lackadaisically, the while his soul, in its more 
 than maiden bashfiJness, would retreat, get away, escape anyhow 
 from its consciousness. And so he stands, all but hopeless behind 
 his one egg. He feels a blush crawl over his face — for there are 
 blushes that do crawl — as you pass by him, for pass him you do. 
 It is true you want but one egg ; nevertheless, to bring only 
 one egg to market shows a misery, a meanness in the man, that 
 in the generous heat of your heart's-blood, you most manfully 
 despise. And, therefore, you straddle on to the tradesman who 
 stands behind a little mountain of eggs ; and timidly asking for one 
 — it is so very poor, so wretched a bit of huckstering, you are 
 ashamed to be seen at it — you take the first egg offered you, and 
 humbly laying down your halfpenny fiirthing, vanish straight 
 away ! As it is with eggs, so, in the world-market, is it with 
 human pretensions. The man with a small, single conceit is
 
 122 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 sliunned, a silly, misenible feUow ; but the brave, wholesale- 
 dealer, the man of a thousand pretensions, is beset by buyers. 
 Now, Ebenczer was one of your merchants of ten thousand eggs 
 — and though to others they had proved addled, they had never- 
 theless been gold to liim. And yet, did Ebenezer's wife — his 
 ripe, red-lipped spouse of two-and-twenty — somehow touch her 
 husband with a strange, a painful humility. He had sixty iron 
 •wintei-s — and every one of them plain as an ii'on-bar — in his face. 
 Time had used his visage as Robinson Crusoe used his wooden 
 calendar, notching every day in it. And what was worse, though 
 Time had kept an honest account — and what, indeed, so honest, 
 so terribly honest as Time ? — nevertheless, he had so marked the 
 countenance — (it is a shabby, shameful trick Time has with some 
 faces) — that eveiy mark to the thoughtless eye counted well-nigh 
 double. And Snipeton knew this. He knew, too, that upon his 
 nose — half-way, like sentinel on the middle of a bridge — there 
 was a wart very much bigger than a pea, with bristles, sticking 
 like black pins in it. Now, this wart Ebenezer in his bachelor 
 days had thought of like a philosopher ; that is, he had never 
 thought about it. Nay, his honeymoon had almost waned into 
 the cold, real moon that was ever after to blink upon his marriage 
 life, ere Ebenezer thought of his wrinkled, pouch-like cheeks ; of 
 his more terrible wart. And then did every bristle burn in it, as 
 though it was turned to red hot wire : then was he plagued, tor- 
 mented by the thought of the wart, as by some avenging imp. 
 He seemed to have become all wart : to be one unsightly 
 excrescence. The pauper world envied the happiness of Ebenezer 
 Snipeton : with such wealth, with such a wife, oh, what a blessed 
 man ! But the world knew not the torments of the wart ! And 
 wherefore was Ebenezer thus suddenly mortined ? "We have 
 said, he had taken a Avife as young, and fresh, and beautiful as 
 spring. And therefore, after a shox-t season, was Ebenezer in 
 misery. He looked at his wife's beauty, and then he thought of 
 his withered face — that felon wart ! In her very loveliness — 
 like a satyr drinking at a crystal fount — he saw his own deformity. 
 Was it possible she could love him 1 The self-put question — and 
 he could not but ask it, — with her, alone, in bed, at board — that 
 tormentuig question still would whisper, snake-voiced in his ear, 
 could she love him ? And his heart — his heart that heretofore 
 had been cold and blooded like a fish — would shrink and tremble, 
 and dare not answer. True it was, she was obedient ; too 
 obedient. She did his bidding promptly, humbly, as though he 
 had bought her for his slave. And so, in truth, he had : and 
 there had been a grave man of the church, grave witnesses, too, 
 to bind the bargain. Verily, he had bought her; and on her
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 123 
 
 small white finger — it was plain to all who saw her — she wore 
 the manacle of her purchaser. 
 
 And Ebenezer, as his doubt grew stronger — as the memory of 
 his outside ugliness became to him a daily spectre — resolved to 
 hide this human ware, this pretty chattel of flesh and blood, far 
 away in rustic scenes. And therefore bought he a secluded 
 house, half-buried amid gloomy trees — cypress and dead man's 
 yew — and this house, in the imp-like playfulness of his soul, he 
 called Dovesnest. That it should be so very near the Devil's 
 Elbow was of no matter to Ebenezer ; nay, there was something 
 quaint, odd, fantastic in the contrast ; a grim humoiu- that a little 
 tickled him. 
 
 And thus, reader, have we at an important moment — if this 
 small toy of a history may be allowed to have important moments 
 — thus have we paused to sketch the owner of Dovesnest ; to 
 digress on his bachelor confidence, and his married modesty ; to 
 speak of his love, and of the demon ugliness — the wrinkles and 
 the ever-burning wart — that jjerplexed it. All this delay, we 
 know, is a gross misdemeanour committed on the reader of 
 romance ; who, when two lovers meet in misery and peril, has 
 all his heart and understanding for them alone ; and cares not 
 that the writer — their honoured parent, be it remembered — 
 should walk out upon the foolscap, and without ever so much as 
 asking permission, begin balancing some peacock's feather on his 
 nose ; talking the while of the deep Argus' eye — purple and 
 green and gold, glowing at the end of it ; if, mdeed, it be an 
 Argus' eye. For ourselves, we doubt the truth of the trans- 
 formation. We see in the story nothing but a wicked parable, 
 reflecting most ungraciously on the meekness and modesty of the 
 last-made sex ; the straitened rib. Juno, we are told, when she 
 had kiUed Argus, took the poor fellow's eyes and fixed tliem for 
 ever and for ever on her peacock's tail. Now, what is most 
 unseemiugly shadowed forth in tliis 1 Why, a most mean, 
 pusillanimous insinuation that when a woman wears a most 
 beautiful gown, she desii-es that the eyes of all the world may 
 hang upon it. This we take to be the meanmg of^but we are 
 balancing the feather again : and here is poor St. James bleedmg 
 on the couch whilst — stony-hearted theorists that we ai'e ! — we 
 are talking of peacocks. 
 
 Mrs. Suipeton — (such was the name which, among the other 
 ■vjrrongs Ebenezer, the money merchant, had committed upon the 
 young and beautiful creature who knelt at the side of St. James) 
 — Mrs. Snipeton — no ; it will not do. We will not meddle with 
 the ugly gift of her husband : we will rather owe an obhgation 
 to her godfathers and godmothers.
 
 124 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Clarissa still knelt at the side of St. James ; and even IMrs. 
 Dorothy Valo marvelled at the whiteness of her mistress's cheeks 
 — at the big tears that rolled from lier upraised eyes — whilst her 
 lips moved as though in passionate prayer. " God bless me ! " 
 said ;Mrs. Vale, " I don't think the young man 's dead, but — oh, 
 the goodness ! what a pretty couch his wound will make ! Ha ! 
 people have no thought, or they 'd have taken him into the 
 kitchen. He 'U be worse than five pound to that couch if a 
 groat. You can get out an}i;hing but blood," said Mrs. Vale. 
 " If it had been wine, I shouldn't have minded it." 
 
 " He 's dying ! He 's murdered — his blood is on my head ! " 
 cried Clarissa, as Isirs. Wilton returned to the room. 
 
 " Be tranquil ; pray Ije calm," said Mrs. Wilton in a tone of 
 something like command that, but for the misery of the moment, 
 could not have escaped Clarissa ; for Mrs. Wilton was only house- 
 keeper at Dovesnest. " He will be well — quite well. I have 
 despatchetl Nicholas for the surgeon ; though I think I have 
 skill sufficient to save the fee." And this she said in so hojieful 
 a tone, that Clarissa languidly smiled at the encouragement. 
 " You will leave the gentleman with me and Dorothy. We wUl 
 sit up with him." 
 
 " No," said Clarissa, with a calm determination, seating herself 
 near the wounded man. " No." 
 
 " Mrs. Snipeton ! " cried the housekeeper in a tone of mixed 
 remonstrance and reproach. 
 
 " !My husband being absent, it is my duty — yes, my duty " — 
 repeated Clarissa, "to attend to the hosjiitality of his house." 
 
 " Hospitality," repeated Mrs. Wilton ; and her cold, yet anxious 
 eye glanced at Clarissa, who, slightly frowning, repelled the look. 
 "As you will, IMis. Snipeton — as you will, Mi-s. Snipeton," and 
 the housekeeper gave an emjAasis to the conjugal name that 
 made its bearer wince as at a sudden pain. " There is no danger 
 uow, I am sure," she continued ; washing the wound, whilst the 
 sufferer every moment breathed more freely. At length, con- 
 sciousness returned. He knew the face that looked with such 
 earnest pity on him. 
 
 " Clarissa — Clarissa ! " cried St. James. 
 
 " Be silent — you must be silent," said Mrs. Wilton, with some- 
 what more than the authority of a nurse — " You must not speak 
 — indeed, you must not — you are liurt, greatly hurt, — and for 
 your own sake — for more than your own sake " — and the lips of 
 the speaker trembled and gi-ew pale — "yes, for more than your 
 own sake, you must be silent." 
 
 " All will be well, sir," said Clarissa; "trust me, you are in 
 careful hands. The doctor will be here, and — ■'
 
 ST. GILES AND ST JAMES. 12-5 
 
 " Nay, I need none, fair lady," answered St. James ; " for I 
 am already in careful hands. Indeed, I know it — feel it." 
 
 " Oil, you must be silent — indeed you must," urged Mrs. 
 Wilton imperatively ; and then she added in a voice of sorrow, 
 and with a most troubled look, — " otherwise you know not the 
 danger, the misery that may befal you. Mi-s. Siiipeton," and 
 again she turned vntli anxious face towards Clarissa, " Dorothy 
 and I can watch." 
 
 Clarissa made no answer ; but gravely bowed her head. Mrs. 
 Wilton, suppressing a sigh, spoke no further ; but busied hei'self 
 with her patient's wound, whilst Clarissa and St. James mutely 
 interchanged looks that went to the heart of the saddened, the 
 unheeded housekeeper. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The hall clock had struck five. The beauty of a spring morn- 
 ing was upon the earth. The sun shone into the sick man's 
 room ; green leaves rustled at his window ; and a robin, perched 
 on the topmost branch of a tall holly, sang a song of thankful 
 gladness to the world. Clarissa, who had watched all night, 
 walked in the garden. How fresh and full of hope was all around 
 her ; how the very heart of the earth seemed to beat with the 
 new life of spring ! And she, who was made to s}Tnpathise with 
 all that was beautiful — she, who M^as formed to dwell on this 
 earth as in a Eolemn place, seeing in even its meanest things 
 adornments of a holy temple ; vessels sacred to the service of 
 glorifying nature ; why to her, in that hour, all around was but a 
 painted scene ; an unreal thing that with its mockery pained her 
 wearied heart ; yearning as it did for what lay beyond. Who 
 could have thought — who had seen that beautiful creature — that 
 she walked with death ? And yet, with no eyes, no ears, for the 
 lovely sights and sounds about her, she walked and talked with 
 the great Comforter. Her look was solemn, too ; as though 
 caught from her companion. Her eye was full and clear ; and 
 now gleaming strangely as with the light of another world. 
 And now she would press her forehead with her small thin hand, 
 as though to soothe its misery ; and now she would look clouded 
 and perplexed ; and now, so sweet a smile of patience would 
 break into her face, that it was to wrong her nobleness to pity 
 her. And still — as we have said — she talked with death. 
 
 St. James lay in a deep sleep. For a few moments he had
 
 126 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 been left alone— his door unclosed. With soft, hut sudden step, 
 a man entered the apartment. It was Ebenezer Snipeton. He 
 had slept half-way on his journey from London ; and rising early 
 had ridden hard that he might surprise his solitary wife -n-ith a 
 husband's smiles at breakfast. The morning was so beautiful 
 that its spirit had entered even the heart of Ebenezer ; and so, 
 he had ridden, for him, very gaily along. Yes ; he was touched 
 by the season. He felt — or thought he felt — that there was 
 something under the blue sky, something almost as good as ready 
 gold. He looked with a favourable eye upon the primroses that 
 lighted up the hedge-sides, and thought them really pretty : 
 thought that, when all was said, there might really be some use 
 in fluwers. Once, too, he checked his horse into a slow walk, 
 that he might listen to a lark that sang above him, and with its 
 gushing melody made the sweet air throb. He smiled too, gi'imly 
 smiled, at the cunning of two magpies that, alighted from a tall 
 elm, walked in the road, talking — though with unslit tongues — 
 of their family's affairs ; of where best to provide worms for 
 their little ones ; of their plumage, sprouting daily ; of the time 
 when they would fly alone ; and of other matters, pei-haps, too 
 familiar to the reader, if he be parental. And Ebenezer thought 
 nothing was so beautiful as the couutiy ; as, iu truth, other men 
 like Ebenezer might have thought at four or five in the morning : 
 but then as 'Change hours approach, the romance fedes with the 
 early mist ; and at 10, a.m., the Arcadian somehow finds himself 
 the scrivener. Thus, too, the early rising man of law — subvirban 
 lodged — may before breakfast feel his heart leap with the lambkins 
 in the mead ; but, breakfost swallowed, he journeys with unabated 
 zeal, inexorable to the parchment. 
 
 And Ebenezer, as he rode, determined henceforth to look on 
 everything with smiling eyes. Yes ; he had before always stared 
 at the wrong side of the tapestry. He would henceforth amend 
 such unprofitable foolishness. He had all to make man happy ; 
 wealth, a lovely wife, and no gout. To be sure, there were a few 
 things of former times that — well, he would hope there was time 
 enough to think of them. Of them, when the time came, he 
 would repent ; and that, too, most vehemently. And so Ebenezer 
 forgot his ^\Tinkled face ; almost forgot the wart upon his nose. 
 And Claris.sa loved him ? Of course. It was not her nature to 
 be impetuous : no, she was mild and nun-like ; he had chosen 
 her for those rare qualities, but she loved him as a meek and 
 moflest gentlewoman ought to love her husband. This sweet 
 conviction brought Ebenezer to his court-yard door. It was 
 open. Weil, there was nothing strange in that. Nicholas, of 
 course, was up; and yet— where was he? Ebenezer's heart
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 127 
 
 seemed to fall fathoms ; to drop in his body, like a plummet. In 
 a moment, the earth was disenchanted. There, before the eyes 
 of Ebeuezer, stood Ebenezer withered, with the bristled wart 
 bigger than ever upon his nose ; in his sudden despair, he saw 
 his bad gifts magnified. And there was something, too, about 
 the house that looked suspicious. The windows seemed to leer 
 at him. The old house-dog crawled towards him, with no wag 
 in his tail. The sparrows chirped mockingly. The house now 
 looked as though it held a corpse — and now, as though deserted. 
 Ebenezer held his breath and listened. He heard nothing — 
 nothing. And now, far, far away, from a thick, night-dark wood, 
 the cuckoo shouted. Ebenezer passed into the court-yard, and 
 entered his silent house. In a few moments he stood beside the 
 couch of the sleeping St. James. 
 
 A terrible darkness fell upon the old man's face as he gazed 
 at the patient. A tumult, an agony of heart was raging witliin 
 him, and he shook like a reed. Still he was silent ; silent and 
 struggling to master the fury that possessed him. He breathed 
 heavily ; and then seated himself in a chair, and still with the 
 eyes of a ghost looked on the sleeper. Devilish thoughts passed 
 through the old man's brain : murder whispered in his ear, and 
 still he fiercely smiled and listened. With his five fingers he 
 could do it — strangle the disturber in his sleep. And the old 
 man looked at his hands and chuckled. And now there is a quick 
 step in the passage ; and now, Clarissa enters the apartment. 
 
 " Dear sir! husband," at length she uttered. 
 
 Suddenly standing statue-like, the old man with pointing figure, 
 and fierce accusing face, asked " Who is this ? " 
 
 Ere Clarissa could answer, hasty feet were heard in the hall, 
 and Mrs. Wilton entered the room, followed by a thick-set man, 
 with a red, round, oily face, and his hair matted with stale 
 powder. He was dressed in a very brown black coat, that 
 scarcely looked made for him ; with buckskin breeches, and high 
 riding boots. Under one arm he carried a thick-thonged whip ; 
 and in his right hand, prominently held forth, as ehallengmg the 
 eyes of all men, a rusty beaver. " Couldn't come before — very 
 sorry, but it always is so ; those paupers — I 'm sure of it, it 's 
 like 'em — they always do it on purpose. It 's a part of the wicked 
 obstinacy of the poor, and I don't know, sir, whether you 've 
 observed it ; but the poor are always obstinate — it 's in 'em from 
 the beginning. I 've not brought so many into the world — the 
 more my ill-luck — without knowing their wickedness from the 
 first." Thus spoke, in high, brassy voice, Mr. Peter Crossbone — 
 Tinconsciously flattered by the poor as Doctor Crossbone — parish 
 doctor ; who, when sought for at his house by Nicholas, was four
 
 128 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 miles away, summoned to assist the introduction of auother 
 pauper baby into tliis over-stocked, and therefore pauperised 
 planet. Wliat ]\Iercury, Yenus, and other respectable planets 
 must think of this our reckless, disrei^utable mother earth — tliis 
 workhouse planet, the shame and i-eproach of all better systems — 
 it is not for a sou of eiu-th to say. But, surely, if Mercury, Venus, 
 and others know an}^hiug of our goings on, they must now and 
 then look down upon us with ineffable scorn : at least, they ought. 
 And yet, they do not ; but with all our sins and all our foolish- 
 ness, still beam upon us, with eyes of love and tenderness. 
 
 The voice of Crossbone immediately awakened the patient. 
 Crossbone had, however, in his time sent so many patients to 
 sleep, that he might fairly be permitted occasionally to disturb a 
 slumberer. St. James, ob.serving Suipeton, rose up hastily, and 
 with his blood burning m his face, was about to speak. 
 
 " You must be quiet, sir. Mrs. Wilton has told me all that a 
 mere woman can know of your case, and — I am sorry to say it to 
 you, sir," — and here Crossbone shook his head, and heaved a 
 laborious sigh — " I 'm sorry to say it, you must be very quiet." 
 
 " But, Mr. Snipeton," cried St. James, " permit me even now 
 to explain — " 
 
 " The doctor says, no," answered Snipeton, and his lip curled, 
 " you must be quiet. There wall be time for us to talk, when 
 your wounds are healed. For the present, we will leave you with 
 your surgeon." And Suipeton, looking command at his wife, 
 quitted the room, followed by his obedient, trembling helpmate. 
 
 " Phwegh ! " cried Crossbone, possessing himself of his patient's 
 wrist, " a race-horse pulse ; a mile a minute. Fever, very high. 
 Let me look at your tongue, su- : don't laugh, sii' — pray don't 
 laugh " — for St. James was already tittering at the solemnity of 
 Crossbone — " a doctor is the last man to be laughed at." 
 
 " That 's true indeed : I never before felt the force of that 
 truth," said St. James. 
 
 " Your tongue, sir, if you please ? " St. James, mastering his 
 mirth, displayed that organ. 
 
 " Ila ! Humph ! Tongue like a chalk-pit. This, sir," and here 
 Crossbone instmctively thrust both his hands into his pockets, 
 " this will 1)6 a long buut, sir— a very long bout." 
 
 " I tlmik not— I feel not," said St. James, smiling. " 'Tis 
 nothing — a mere nothing." 
 
 . ^ " Ha, sir ! " cried Crossbone. " 'Tis jileasant — di-oll, some- 
 times—to hear %vhat people call nothmg ; and m a few days, 
 they're gone, sir; entu-ely gone. But I'll not alarm you— I 
 have had worse cases— nevertheless, sir, a man with a hole in his 
 skull, such a hole as that "—and here Crossbone tightly closed
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 129 
 
 his eyelids, and gave a sharp, short shake of the head — " but I '11 
 not alarm you. Still, sir, if you 've auy little affairs to make 
 straight — there 's a jewel of a lawyer ouly five miles oil", the 
 prettiest hand at a will — " 
 
 " 1 11 not trouble him this bout, doctor," said St. James, who 
 saw as clearly into Crossbone, as though, like Momns' man, he 
 Avore a pane of the best plate-glass iu his bosom. " I have every 
 faith in you." 
 
 " Sir, the confidence is flattering : and I think between us, "we 
 may cheat the worms. Nevertheless, it 's an ugly blow — the 
 eighth of an uich more to the right or left, and — " 
 
 " I know what you would say," cried St. James. " Blows are 
 generally dealt after that fashion ; there 's great good luck in 
 'em. The faculty are often much indebted to the eighth of an 
 inch, more or less." 
 
 " You must not talk, sir : indeed, you must not, delighted as 
 otherwise I should be to hear you. — Yes : now I see the whole of 
 the mischief : now I am thoroughly possessed of the matter," 
 and Crossbone looked with an air of considerable satisfaction at 
 the wound. " 'Twill be a tedious, but a beautiful case. Pray, 
 sir, should you know the ruffian who has nearly deprived the 
 world of what I am sure will be — with a blessing on my poor 
 assistance " — and here Crossbone softly closed his hands and 
 bowed — " one of its noblest ornaments '] Should you know the 
 wretch ? " 
 
 " I don't know — perhaps — I can't say," answered St. James, 
 carelessly. 
 
 " When you see him, no doubt ? And I am delighted to inform 
 you the villain is secured. With the blessing of justice he '11 be 
 hanged ; which will be a gi'eat consolation to all the neighbour- 
 hood. Yes ; I heard it all, as I came along. The ruffian, with 
 your blood upon his liands, was taken at the Lamb and Star — 
 taken with a purse of gold in his pocket. His execution will be 
 a holiday for the whole country ;" and Crossbone spoke as of a 
 coming jubilee. 
 
 " Taken, is he 1 " cried St. James, with a vexed look. " I 'm 
 sorry for it. Come, doctor, I must leave this to-day. My hurt is 
 but a trifle ; but I can feel, can appreciate your professional 
 tenderness. I must make towards London this very morning." 
 
 " Humph ! Well, sir, we '11 talk about it ; we '11 see what 's to 
 be done ;" said Crossbone, with sudden melancholy at the resolute 
 manner of his head-strong patient. '' Nevertheless, you must let 
 me di-ess your wound, and then take a little potion that I '11 make 
 up for you, and then— we shall see." Hereupon, St. James placidly 
 resigned himself to the hands of Crossbone, who very leisui'ely
 
 130 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 drest the wound, again and again declai'iug that the patient was 
 only on this side of the grave by the eighth of an inch. There 
 never had been a skull so curiously broken. At length, Cioss- 
 bone took his leave of the sufferer, with the benevolent assurance 
 that he would make up something nice for hun ; of w'hich the 
 patient silently determined not to swallow a drop. 
 
 " Well, doctor ? " asked Suipeton, with a savage leer, as Cross- 
 bone passed into the hall, — '' how is his lordsliij) now 1 " 
 
 " Lordship ! " exclaimed Crossbone, now looking wonderment, 
 and now smirking — " is he really a lord ? Bless me ! " 
 
 " How is lie, man ? " cried Snipetou, fiercely. 
 
 " Hush ! Mr. Snijjetou — hush, we can't talk here ; for 1 've a 
 great responsibiUty — I feel it, a great responsibility — hush, my 
 dear sii* — hush ! " and Crossbone trod silently as though he walked 
 on felt, and lifting his finger wdth an air of professional command, 
 he led Snipetou into an adjoining apai'tment, where sat Clarissa, 
 piUe and motionless. Here Snipetou expected an answer to his 
 question ; but Crossbone, raising his eyes and his closed hands — 
 a favoui'ite gesture with him when deeply moved — only said, 
 " and he is a lord ! " 
 
 " Well, lords die, don't they 1 " asked Snipetou, with a sneer. 
 
 "Why" — Crossbone unconsciously hesitated — "yes. And, 
 between ourselves, Mr. Snipetou, — I can speak confidently on the 
 matter, having the gentleman in my hands, he is " — Crossbone 
 gave a knell-like emphasis to eveiy syllable — " he is in very great 
 danger." 
 
 " Indeed ? " cried old Snipeton, and a smile lighted up his 
 withered face, and he looked intently at his wife, as her hand 
 unconsciously grasped her chaii". " indeed 1 " repeated the old 
 man very blithely. 
 
 " Your pardon, for a minute, my good sir," said the apothecary, 
 " I '11 just send this to my assistant — your man Nicholas must 
 mount aiid gallop — for there's a life, a very dear life to the 
 country no doubt, depending on it." Aaid Crossbone proceeded 
 to write his sentence in his best bad Latin. 
 
 Clarissa felt that her husband's eye was upon her ; yet sat she 
 statue-like, with a terrible calmness in her pale face. The old 
 man, his heart stung by scorpion jealousy, gazed on her with 
 savage satisfaction. And she knew this ; and still was calm, 
 tranquil as stone. She felt the hate that fed upon her misery, 
 yet slirank not from its tooth. 
 
 " Mrs. Wilton," said Crossbone, as tlie housekeeper timidly 
 entered the room, " you '11 give this to Nicholas— tell him to gallop 
 with it to my a.ssistant. Mi". Sims ; and, above all, let him take 
 care of the medicme, for there 's hfe and death— a lord's life and
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 131 
 
 death iu it," said the doctor, luiconscious of the probable truth he 
 uttered. 
 
 " And his lordship," said old Snipeton, gently rubbing his hands, 
 " his lordship is in very great danger 1 " 
 
 " The fact is, Mr. Snipeton, there are men — I blush to say it, 
 who belong to our glorious profession — ^there are men who always 
 magnify a case that they may magnify their own small abilities, 
 their next-to-nothing talent, in the treatment of it. I need not 
 say that Peter Crossbone is not such a man. But this, sir, I will 
 say ; that every week of my life I do such things here in the 
 country — hedge-side practice, sir, nothing more ; hedge-side 
 practice ; — such things that if any one of 'em was done in London, 
 that one would lift me into my carriage, and give me a cane with 
 ten pounds' worth of virgin gold upon it. But, sir, no man can 
 cultivate a reputation among paupers. It 's no matter what cure 
 you make ; they 're thought things of course ; paupers are known 
 to stand anything. Why there was a case of hip-joint I had — 
 there never was so sweet a case. If that hip-joint had been a 
 lord's, as I say, I ought to have stepped from it into my carriage. 
 But it was a cow-boy's, sir ; a wretched cow-boy's ; a lad very 
 evilly-disposed — very : he '11 be hanged, I 've no doubt, — and, sir, 
 isn't it a dreadful thing to consider, that a man's genius — a case 
 like that — should go to the gallows, and never be heard of ? I 
 put it to you, sir, isn't it cb'eadfiil ? " 
 
 Snipeton grvmted something that Crossbone took as an affirma- 
 tive ; and, thus encouraged, proceeded. " Ha, sir ! how different 
 is London practice among people who really ai-e peoj^le ! AVliat 's 
 that, sir, to the — yes, I must say it — to the disgrace of being a 
 parish doctor ? Now, sir, the man — the man-midwife, su-, in a 
 proper walk of society, feels that he is nobly employed. He 's 
 bi-inging dukes and lords into the world ; he 's what I call culti- 
 vating the lilies, that, as they say, neither toil nor spin : that 's a 
 pleasiu-e — that 's an honour — that 's a delight. But what does a 
 pai-ish man-midwife do, sir 1 AATiy, he brings paupers upon the 
 earth : he does nothing but cultivate weeds, sir — weeds : and if 
 he is a man of any feeling, su-, he can't but feel it as a thing 
 beneath him. Mr. Snipeton, I 'm almost ashamed of myself to 
 declare, that within these eight-and-forty hours I 've brought thi'ee 
 more weeds into the world." 
 
 " Humph !" said Snipeton. 
 
 " And, as a man who wishes well to his countiy, you may guess 
 my feelings. How different, now, with the man who practises 
 among people who, as I say, ai-e people ! A beautiful high-life 
 baby is born. The practitioner may at once be proud of it. In 
 its fii-st little squeal he hears the voice, as I may say, of the 
 
 K-2
 
 132 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 House of Lords. In its little head he sees, if I may be allowed to 
 use the expression, the ovaria of acts of parliament ; for he's a 
 bom law-maker. About its little, kicking, red leg, he already 
 beholds the most noble Order of the Giu-ter. Now, sir, this is 
 something to make a man proud of his handiwork : but, sir, what 
 is the reflection of the parish doctor ? He never works for his 
 countrj'. No ; when he looks upon a baby — if he 's any feelings 
 worthy of a man — he must feel that he 's brought so much offal 
 into the world. He looks upon a head which is to have nothing 
 put into it ; nothing, perhaps, but sedition and rebellion, and all 
 that infamy. He sees little fingers that are bom — yes, sir, born — 
 to set wires for hares ; and the fact is, if, as I say, the man has 
 feelings, he feels that he 's an abettor of poaching, and all sorts of 
 wickedness ; — of wickedness that at last — and it 's very right it 
 should be so — at last takes the creature to the gallows. Now, sir, 
 isn't it a dreadful thing for a man — for a professional man, for a 
 man who has had a deal of money spent upon his education — isn't 
 it a dreadful thing for him to know that he may be only a soi-t of 
 purveyor to the gallows ? I feel the wrong, sir ; feel it, acutely, 
 here ;" and Crossbone tapped his left side with his fore-finger. 
 " I know that I 'm an abettor to a crying e^'il, going about as I 
 do, bringing weeds into the world : but I can't help it, it 's my 
 business : nevertheless I feel it. Something ought to be done to 
 put a stop to it : I'm not politician enough to say what ; but unless 
 something 's done, all I know is this, the weeds will certainly over- 
 grow the lilies." 
 
 " And your patient, Ms gallant and amiable lordship," said 
 Snipeton, still eyeing his wife, " is in danger ? " 
 
 " Great danger," answered Crossbone. " Nevertheless, with a 
 blessing— undei-stand me, Mr. Snipeton, with a blessing, for how- 
 ever wondrous my cure, I hope I have not the presumption to take 
 it all to myself — no, I trust, without offence be it said, to some 
 iiractitioners I could name, that I have some religion — thei'efore, 
 with a blessing, his lordship may be set upon his legs. But it will 
 Vje a long job, a very long job ; and he mustn't be removed. Just 
 now, he 's in a slight delirium ; talked about travelling towards 
 London this very day. 'Twould be death, sir ; cei-tain death." 
 And Crossbone blew his nose. 
 
 " Indeed ! Certain death ? " repeated Snipeton, smiling grimly ; 
 and still watching the face of his wife. " I fear — I mean I hope 
 — ]SIr. Crossbone, that your anxiety for so good, so handsome a 
 young man — a nobleman too — may, without any real cause, 
 increa.se your feai-s. For, as you say, we ought to be anxious for 
 the lilies." 
 
 " I 'd have given the worth of— of— I don't know what — could
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 133 
 
 I have been here before. Two or three hours earlier might have 
 made all the difl'erence ; for his lordship has great nervous irritar 
 bility ; is most wonderfully and dehcately strung. But I was 
 away, as I say, producing the weeds, sir. Yes, I 've ridden I' m 
 ashamed to own how many miles since ten o'clock last night ; and 
 what 's my reward, sir ? What, as parish doctor and midwife, is 
 my consolation ? Why this, sir ; that I 've helped to bring misery 
 and want, and I don't know how many other sorts of vices into the 
 world, when I miglit — for without vanity T will say it — when I 
 might have been employed for the future honour and glory of my 
 country. Ha, Mr. Snipeton, happy is the pi'ofessional man who 
 labours among the lilies ! Sweet is his satisfaction ! Now, sir, 
 when I ride home early in the morning — for the parish people, as 
 I say, always make a point of knocking a man up at the most vm- 
 seasonable hour ; they do it on purpose, sii", to show the power they 
 have over you — now, sir, when I 'm ritUng home, what 's my feel- 
 ings 1 Why, sir, as a lover of my country, there 's something in 
 my breast that won't let me feel happy and comfortable. There 's 
 something that continually reproaches me with having helped to 
 add to the incumbrance of the nation : as I say, that distresses me 
 with the thought that I've been cultivating weeds, sir, nothing but 
 weeds. Now a job like the present I look upon as a reward for 
 my past misfortunes. It is a beautiful case ! " 
 
 " Because so full of danger 1 " said Snipeton, still looking at his 
 pale and silent wife. 
 
 " It is impossible that a blow could have been struck more 
 favourably for a skilful surgeon. The sixteenth part of an inch, 
 sir, more or less on one side or the other, and that young man 
 must have been a very handsome corpse." 
 
 Snipeton made no answer ; but with clenched teeth, and sup- 
 pressed breath, still glared at his wife. Passion shook him, yet 
 he controlled it ; his eyes still upon the pale face that eveiy 
 moment grew whiter. Another instant, and Clarissa fell back in 
 her chair, speechless, motionless. Her husband moved not, but 
 groaned despairingly. 
 
 " Fainted ! " cried Crossbone. " Call Mrs. Wilton," and at the 
 same moment the housekeeijer appeared. With anguish in her 
 look she hastened to her mistress. "Nothing, nothing at all," 
 said the apothecary ; and then, with a smirk towards Snipeton, 
 " nothing, my dear sir, but what 's to be expected." 
 
 " She 's worse, sir — much worse, I fear, than you suppose," 
 said Mrs. Wilton, and she trembled. 
 
 " I think, ma'am," replied Crossbone with true pill-box dignity, 
 " I think I ought to know how ill a lady is, and how ill she ought 
 to be. Have you no salts — no water, in the house ? "
 
 134 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " I shall be better — in a moment, better," said Clarissa feebly ; 
 and then gi-aspiug the arm of Mm. Wilton, she added, " help me 
 to my room." She then rose \\'ith an effort, and supported by the 
 housekeeper, quitted the apartment. And still her husband fol- 
 lowed her with eyes glaring like a wild beast's. Then, looking 
 up, he caught the relaxed, tlie simpering face of the apothecaiy. 
 
 " In the name of the fiends," cried Snipeton, fiercely, " where- 
 fore, with that monkey face, do you grin at me 1 " 
 
 " My dear sir," said Crossbone, smiling still more laboriously, 
 " my dear sir, you 're a happy man ! " 
 
 " Happy ! " cried Snipeton, in a hoarse voice, and with a look of 
 deepest misery — " Happy ! " 
 
 " Of course. You ought to be. What more delightfiU than 
 the hope of — eh ? — a gi-owing comfort to yom- declining yeare — 
 a staff, as the saying is, to yom- old age 1 " 
 
 The mystic meaning of the apothecary flashed upon the hus- 
 band ; the old man shook, as though ague-stricken, and covering 
 his face with his hands, he fell heavily as lead into a chair. 
 
 Mr. Crossbone was silent in his astonishment. He looked won- 
 deriugly about him. Was his practice to be so gi-eatly enlarged 
 in one day ? Could it be possible that Snipeton, a man who wore 
 like oak, could be ill 1 Snipeton, to be sure, was not, to Cross- 
 bone's tliought, a lily patient ; but then, how very far was he 
 above the weeds ! The apothecaiy was about to feel Snipeton's 
 puLse ; had the pi'ofessioual fingers on the wrist, when the old 
 man snatched his arm aAvay, and that with a vigour that well 
 nigh cai-ried Crossbone off his legs. The apothecary was about to 
 pay some equivocal compliment to the old gentleman's strength, 
 when Nicholas, flustered, with a startling piece of news, ran in 
 with the mediciue duly compounded by IMr. Sims. 
 
 " They was bringing the murderer to the house, that the gen- 
 tleman " — for Nicholas knew not the sufferer was a lord — 
 " might 'dentify the bloodspiller afore he died." 
 
 And Nichohi-s repeated truly what he had heard. Eumour had 
 travelled — and she rarely goes so fast as when drawn by lies — to 
 the Lamb and Star. And there — not stopping to alight — she 
 hallooed into the gaping ears of the landlady the ten-ible intelli- 
 gence that the young gentleman almost murdered last night, lay 
 at Dovesnest ; that his wound was mortal ; that he was dying 
 fast ; that he had ah-eady made his will, Dorothy Yale and 
 Ebenezer Snipeton havuig duly witnessed it. This news, sooner 
 tlian smoke, filled every corner of the house. Great was the stir 
 throughout the Lamb and Star. Tipps, the constable, on the 
 instaut, wore a more solemn look of authority ; on the instant, 
 Biuumoued St, Giles to prepai'e for his removal, at the same time
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 13.5 
 
 cautiously feeling the handcuffs to learu if they still remained 
 true to their trust. The barber left a pedlar half-shaved to 
 accompany the party ; and in a few minutes tlie horse was put to 
 the cait ; and St. Giles, who spoke not a syllable, was seated in 
 it between Tipps and the landlord, Mr. Blink having donned his 
 Sunday coat and waistcoat, that he might pay proper respect to 
 the solemnity ; whilst the barber, grasping a cudgel, guai-ded the 
 culprit from behind. " Stop ! shall I take the blunderbuss, for 
 fear 1 " asked the landlord of Ti23ps, and eyeing St. Giles. " No," 
 answered the constable, smihng confidently and looking affec- 
 tionately at the manacle, " no ; them dear cuffs never deceived 
 me yet." Crack went the whip — away started the horse ; and 
 Tipps, the landlord, and the barber, looked about them freshly, 
 happily ; smiling gaily in the morning sun — gaily as though they 
 Avere carrying a sheep to market — ay, a sheep with a golden 
 fleece. 
 
 And the landlady watched the whirhng wheels, and with heart- 
 warm wish (poor soul !) wished that the wretch might be hanged, 
 yes, fifty feet high. And Becky, the maid, in her deep pity, 
 braving the tongue of her mistress, stood sobbing in the road, and 
 then, as suddenly inspired, plucked off one of her old shoes, 
 and flung it after St. Giles, with kindly superstition as she said 
 for luck. " For she know'd it, and could swear it ; the poor 
 cretur's hands was as innocent of blood as any babby's." FooUsh 
 Becky ! By such presumptuous pity — a pity, as Mrs. Blink 
 thought, flying in the face of all respectability, did you fearfully 
 risk the j^lace of maid-of-all-work at a hedge-side hotel ; a place 
 worth a certain forty shillings a year, besides the complimentary 
 half-pence. 
 
 Eeturn we to Nicholas. Ere Snipeton and Crossbone were well 
 possessed of the news, the cart drove up before the window. " And 
 there is the murderer ! " cried Crossbone. " Bless me ! there 's 
 no need at all to try that man — there 's every letter of Cain all 
 over the villain's face. A child at the horn-book might spell it. 
 And now they 're going to bring him in. Ha ! my fine fellow," 
 added the apothecary, as St. Giles alighted ; " there 's a cart you 
 won't get into so quickly, I can tell you. What a bold lookmg 
 villain 1 With so much blood upon him, too ! A lord's blood, 
 and to look so brazenly ! What do you think, J\tr. Snipeton ? " 
 
 Now, Snipeton was not a man of overflowing charity, yet, oddly 
 enough, he looked at St. Giles with placid eyes. The old man, 
 to the scandal of Crossbone, merely said, " Poor fellow ! He looks 
 in sad plight. Poor fellow ! " 
 
 In a few moments, Tipjjs, the constable, was shown to the 
 presence of the master of Dovesnest. " He was very sorry to
 
 inc ST. GILES A'SD ST. JAMES 
 
 make a hubbub in his honour's house, but as the gentleman was 
 djnng, there was no time to be lost afore he swore to the murderer. 
 Sam, from the Lamb and Star, had gone off to the justice to tell 
 him all about it, and in a jiffy Mr. Wattles would be there." 
 
 " I think." observed Crossbone, " I think I had better see how 
 my distinguished patient is." With this, the apothecary, making 
 himself up for the important task, softly quitted the room. 
 
 " And you 're sure you have the right man 1 " asked Snipeton 
 of the constable. 
 
 " Never made a blunder in all my life, sir," answered Tipps, 
 with a mild pride. 
 
 " Mr. Justice Wattles," cried Nicholas, big with the words, and 
 showing in the magistrate. 
 
 " IVIr. Snipeton," said Wattles, " this business is — " 
 
 But the Justice was suddenly stopped by the doctor. Crossbone 
 rushed in, slightly pale and much agitated, exclaiming, " The 
 patient 's gone ! " 
 
 " Not dead ! " cried Snipeton, exultingly, and rubbing his hands. 
 
 " Dead ? no ! But he 's gone — left the house — vanished ; — come 
 and see ! " Ci'ossbone, followed by all, rushed to the room in 
 which, some minutes before, lay the murdered St. James. 
 
 He was gone ! All were astonished. So great was the svu'prise, 
 not a word was spoken ; until Dorothy Yale, who had crept into 
 the room, with her cold, calm voice, addressed the apothecary. 
 Pointing to the stams in the couch, she said, " If j^ou please, sir 
 can you give me nothing to take out that blood 1 " 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV, 
 
 '■And now," thinks the reader, "St. Giles is fi-ee. There is 
 no charge against him ; he is not the murderer men, in his 
 wretchedness, took him for. St. James, with his injuries upon 
 him, has withdrawn himself ; and once again the world lies wide 
 before St. Giles." Not so. There still remains, to his confusion, 
 a hard accuser. St. Giles is destitute. In the teeming, luxurious 
 county of Kent, amidst God's promises of plenty to man, he is a 
 guilty interloper. He may not gra.sp a handful of the soil, he 
 cannot purchase one blade of wheat ; he is a pauper and a vagrant ; 
 a foul presence in the world's garden, and must therefore be 
 punished for his intrusion. Eveiy rag he cai-ries is an accusing 
 tongue : he is destitute and wandering : he has strayed into the 
 paradise of the well-to-do, and must le sharply reproved for his
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 137 
 
 whereabout. And therefore St. Giles will be committed for a 
 seasou to the coimty gaol, as a rogue and vagabond. The roguery ' 
 is not proved upon him, but it has been shown that whilst decent 
 people have goose-beds and weather-proof chambers, he, at the 
 best, has straw and a barn. It is, too, made a misdemeanor 
 against mother eailh to sleep upon her naked breast, with only 
 the heavens above the sleeper ; and as St. Giles had often so 
 ofiended — he could not deny the iniqviity — he was, we say, com- 
 mitted to gaol by Justice Wattles, as rogue and vagabond. Now, 
 to jjunish a man for having nothing, is surely a sport invented by 
 Beelzebub for the pleasure of the rich ; yes, to whip a rascal for 
 his rags is to pay flattering homage to cloth of gold. Nothing 
 was i^roved against St. Giles but want ; which, being high treason 
 against the majesty of property, that large oflence might be 
 reasonably supposed to contain every other. 
 
 " Something, I 've no doubt, will be brought against him," 
 said Justice Wattles ; " in the mean time, he stands committed 
 as a rogue and vagabond." And Tipps, the constable, led away 
 his i^risoner, preceded by the host of the Lamb and Star ; whilst 
 the dispirited barber very dolorously expressed his disappoint- 
 ment, " that he left his business and all, and only for a ragamuffin 
 as wasn't worth salt ! If he hadn't thought him a murderer, 
 he 'd never have troubled his head with such rubbish." " No, 
 and j'ou 'd never have had my cart," said the landlord to Tipps. 
 " I thought the fellow would turn out somebody ; and he 's 
 nothing but a vagrom. Come up ! " cried the Lamb and Star ; 
 and sharply whipping his horse to ease his own bad temper, he 
 di'ove ofl", the bai'ber vainly hallooing for a seat in the vehicle. 
 Wliereupon, Constable Tipps, casting a savagely inquu-ing look 
 at St. Giles's handcutfs, with an oath bade his prisoner move on, 
 and then railed at liis own particular planet, that had troubled 
 him with such varmint. 
 
 Nevertheless, although St. Giles's hands were wlute, murder 
 had done its worst. As yet none, save the homicide, already 
 blasted with the knowledge, knew of the deed. How lovelily the 
 sun shone ; how beautiful all things looked and beamed in its 
 light : the lark sang, like a freed spirit, in the dome of heaven : 
 and yet, beneath it, lay a terrible witness of the guilt of man ; a 
 mute and bloody evidence of another Cain ! St. Giles, however, 
 was on his way to the county gaol, ere the deed was discovered. 
 Not willing to give an account of himself, he was committed to 
 imprisonment and hard labour in punishment of his destitution. 
 That he was not in addition whipped for his poverty, testified 
 strongly to the injudicious clemency of Justice Wattles. Such 
 mercy went far to encourage rags and tatters.
 
 138 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Leave we for a while the desolate home of Dovesnest. Leave 
 we that miserable old man, Snijietou, writhing at his hearth ; 
 now stri\ing to seek for hope, for confidence, in the meek and 
 wretched face of his wife, and now starting at her look as at 
 a dagger's }X)int. 
 
 A few houi-s had passed, and again the Lamb and Star was a 
 scene of tumult. And this time, there was no doubt of the 
 atrocity. It was now impossible that the worthy folks, assembled 
 in the hostelry, could be tricked into useless S3^llpathy. There was 
 now no doubt that a man was killed ; and if St. Giles had escaped 
 the charge of former homicide, why such escape only the more 
 strongly proved his guilt of the new Avickedness. " He 11 be 
 hanged, after all ! " cried the landlord, Avith the air of a man 
 foretasting an enjoyment. " The villain ! he was born for the 
 gibbet," said the barber ; " if I woukin't walk over glass bottles 
 to see him hanged, I 'm not a Christian." Whilst the barber and 
 others were thus vehemently declaiming theii- Chi-istianity, there 
 ai'rived at the Lamb and Star a most important person. Up to 
 that hour, he had been a nistic of average insigniiicance ; but he 
 suddenly found himself a creature of considerable interest — a 
 man, heartily welcomed, as a boon and a treasure. This hapjjy 
 man was one Pyefinch ; and was knoA\Ti to the surrounding 
 coinitry as a mole-catcher of tolerable parts. It was he Avho had 
 discovered the body of the murdei'ed man : and had he discovered 
 some great blessing to the human family, it is very questionable 
 whether he would have been so heartily Avelcomed by many of its 
 menibei-s. It had, however, been his good fortune — for we must 
 still call it so — to light upon the body of Farmer Willis, bloody 
 and stark in his own meadow ; and again and again was he 
 pressed to rehearse the tale, whilst mugs of ale rewarded the 
 story-teller. Instantly was ryefinch fastened upon by Mrs. Blink, 
 and it was hard to deny such a woman anj'thing. After short 
 preparation, did the mole-catcher — stimulated by malt and hops 
 — begin his terrible history. 
 
 " Why, you see, it was in this manner," said Pyefinch. " I was 
 a goin' along by Cow Meadow, 'bout four in the mornin' wi' ray 
 dog Tliistie, just to look arter the snares. Cruel sight of varmint 
 there be along that meadow to be sure. Well, I was a thinking 
 of nothing — or what I was a tjiinking on, fur I scorns a lie, is 
 notliin' to nobody. AVell, goin' along in this manner, Thistle 
 funning afore me, and ahind rae, and a both sides o' me — " 
 
 " Never mind, Thistle," cried the landlady, " come to the 
 murder, Tom." 
 
 " A.\ your pardon, missus. I shall have to tell all this stoiy at 
 'sizes J I know what them chaps, the lawyers be, to bother a poor
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 139 
 
 man who 's no scholard ; so I Ve made my mind up, never to tell 
 the story ; but after one way ; then I "m cocksure not to be caut^lit 
 off my legs nohow." And P3^efinch di-ank, doubtless, to his own 
 sagacity. 
 
 "Very right, Tom," cried the landlord; and then he turned 
 vnth knit eyebrows to his M-ife. " Be quiet, will you 1 like all 
 women ; want the kernel without cracking the nut. Be quiet." 
 And Blink gave a conjugal growl. " Go on, Tom." 
 
 " As I was a sajong," continued the mole-catcher, " Tliistle 
 was a running afore me, and ahind me, and a both sides o' me — 
 and barking as though he wished he could talk ; just to say, how 
 comfortable he felt, now that the spring was come — for depend 
 upon it, dumb creturs have theii* notions of spring just as well 
 as we — well, whei'e was I ? " 
 
 " Thistle was barking," prompted the landlady, fidgetting and 
 casting about impatient looks. 
 
 " To be sure he was. Well, all on a sudden he held his tongue ; 
 he was then a good way on afoi'e me, down in the pitch o' the 
 field. I thought nothing o' that ; when on a sudden he give cry 
 agin, but quite a different bark to t' other. That didn't stagger 
 me, neither ; for I thought he 'd lit on a hedgehog ; and of aU 
 varmint o' the eai-th. Thistle hates a hedgehog ; ha ! worse than 
 pison, that he do. Well, arter a while, Thistle runs up to me. 
 You should ha' seen that dog," cried the mole-catcher, rising bolt 
 from his seat, " his face was as fuU o' sense as any Christian's : 
 his eyes ! if they didn't burn in's head hke any blacksmith's 
 coals ; and his jaw was dropt as if he couldn't shut it, it were so 
 stiff wi' wunder — and all his hairs upon his back right away down 
 to the end o' his tad stood up Uke hedge-stakes — and he looked 
 at me, as much as to say — ' what do you think 1 ' " 
 
 " Bless us, and save us ! " cried the landlady, wondering at the 
 discrunination of the dog. 
 
 " I didn't make him no answer," said the mole-catcher, " but 
 walks on arter him, he looking behind him now and then, and 
 shaking liis head sometimes terrible, until I come to the pitch o' 
 the field ; and there — oh. Lord ! " Here Pyefinch seized the 
 mug, and, emptying it, was newly strengthened. " There, I saw 
 Master Willis in his best clothes— and you know he was always 
 particlar hke in them matters — there I saw him, as at first I 
 thought, fast asleep, looking so blessed happj', you can't think. 
 Howsumever, Thistle puts his nose to the grass, and sets up sich 
 a howl, and then I sees a pool of blood, and then I run away as 
 fast as legs 'ud carry me, right away to the farm. Well, they 'd 
 never looked for Master Willis. They 'd thought he 'd stayed at 
 Canterbury aU night ; and there he was, poor soul ! killed like a
 
 140 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 sheep in lii.s own field. Terrible, isn't it ? and Pyefinch presented 
 the empty mug to the landlady, who, the tale being told, set the 
 vessel down again. 
 
 " It 's the smugglers as has done it," cried Becky. " They owed 
 him a grmlge since autumn, when he found their tubs among his 
 coni ; it 's the smugglei"S, as I 'm a sinner." 
 
 " The smugglers ! — poor souls ! " — said Mrs. Blink, who, though 
 a licensed dealer in spii-its, had, strangely enough, a large sym- 
 patliy for contraband traders ; " they woukhi't hurt a lauib. It 's 
 that \illain that slept in the bam ; and I only hope that you, 
 IMiss Trollop, knew nothing of the business." 
 
 " Me ! " exclaimed Becky, " me know anything ! " Had it been 
 any other than her mistress, Becky would have been too happy 
 to vindicate the strength and volubility of her tongue. The 
 woman rose strongly within her, and tempted her to speak : but 
 she thought of her forty shillings per annum ; and so the woman 
 railed not, but cried. 
 
 " And how does Master Robert take it 1 " cried the landlord. 
 
 " AMiy, wonderful, considering," said the mole-catcher. " A 
 httle dashed at first, in course." 
 
 " And he that was so merry, too, at the dance ! Well, it is a 
 world to live in," moralised the barber. " He stood ale all round, 
 and little thought that he 'd no uncle. He danced with every gal 
 above stairs, and never di'eamed o' what was going on in Cow 
 Meadow. He '11 have the old man's land o' course ? Poor soul ! 
 He '11 feel it if anybody do." 
 
 " Wakes and fares won't be no woi'se for Master Robert," said 
 the landlord. " That is, supposing this matter don't steady him. 
 But, to be sure, what a noble soul it is ! Well, if we could cry 
 till the sea run over, it wouldn't bring back the old man ; and so 
 here 's long life and good fortiu to his heii-. And a rare niglit we 
 shall have of it — that is, when the mourning 's over and it 's all 
 jn-opor; yes ; a rare night we shall have at the Lamb and Star." 
 
 " I wonder who he '11 marry ? " cried the landlady. 
 
 " Nobody," averred Mr. Blink ; " he 's too free a spirit— too 
 noble a cretur. Besides, he knows too much of life. She must 
 be a shai-p thing — yes, she must get up very early for mushrooms, 
 wlio 'd get Bob Willis." 
 
 Uf course, suspicion followed St. Giles to the gaol : but although 
 his poverty, his liouseless condition, and, more, his refusal to give 
 any account of himself, fixed liim in the minds of many as the 
 murderer, there was no point, no circumstaiice (and many were 
 the examinations of the vagrant,) that could connect him with the 
 deed. It w:ia an esjjecial annoyance to several wortliy jjeople that 
 nothing, as they said, could be brought home to St. Giles. He
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 141 
 
 seemed, above all creatures, the very creature whom such an 
 atrocity would fit ; and yet the failure of all evidence was as 
 complete as to certain folks it was distressing. However, there 
 was one comfort. St. Giles was fast in prison as a rogue and 
 vagabond ; and, in good time, sufficient facts might rise up against 
 him. He had been set down to be hanged ; and in the cheerful 
 faith of those who had judged him, it was impossible he should 
 escape a doom so peculiarly fitted to him. Hence, St. Giles 
 remained in gaol, like a fine haunch in a larder, to be some day 
 feasted on. 
 
 A week had passed, and still justice was baffled. The murdered 
 man slept in his grave, and stiU his murderer walked the free 
 earth. Justice Wattles had a double motive for the restless zeal 
 which animated him in his search for the culprit : tliere was his 
 character as a magistrate ; and, more ; there was his feeling of 
 kinship towards the victim, Farmer Willis being his brother-in- 
 law. Hence, Justice Wattles, indefatigable in his purpose, called 
 at Dovesnest. A most unwelcome \dsitor was his worship to 
 Ebenezer Snipeton, then pre^jaring to depart from his hermitage 
 for the din of London ; and at the very moment the magistrate 
 was announced, rehearsing a farewell speech to Clarissa ; a speech 
 that, until her husband's return, should be to her as a charm, 
 an amulet, to preserve her from the temptations of evil sjjirits. 
 Snipeton had compelled himself to believe the story of his wife, 
 avouched, too, as it was by Mrs. Wilton. He had tjTannised over 
 his heart that it should give credence to what he fain would hope ! 
 And so, he would leave home, a happy husband, convinced, assured 
 past all suspicion, of the unbroken faith, the enduring loyalty of 
 his devoted wife. It was better so to feed himself, than yield to 
 the despaii- that would destroy him. Better to be duped by false- 
 hood, than crushed by truth. It was accident — mere accident — 
 that had brought St. James to his house ; and that, too, in such a 
 plight, it was impossible that Clarissa could deny him hospitable 
 usage. And with this thought, a load was lifted from tlie old 
 man's heart, and he would — yes, he would be h;ippy. Snipeton 
 was w^andering in this Paradise of Fools, when the name of Justice 
 Wattles called liim home. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Snipeton — a dreadful matter this, sii- — a 
 dreadful calamity to fall upon a respectable femUy — a startling 
 end, sir, for my poor brother, — so punctual and so excellent a 
 man," were the first words of the Justice. 
 
 " Very terrible," answered Snipeton. " I have already heard 
 all the particulars," and he pulled on his glove, 
 
 " Not all, sir— I 'm afraid not all," said Wattles. " That young 
 gentleman who was brought to your house — "
 
 142 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 « Well ] " 
 
 " He 's a young nobleman, to be sure ; but still it 's odd, Mr. 
 Suipeton ; I say, it 's odd," and the Justice leered at Ebenezer. 
 
 " Speak out, man ; " cried Snipeton : and the Justice pulled 
 himself up at the abruptness of the command. " What of him 1" 
 
 " ^^^ly, the tnith is, 'Mr. Suipeton, that young nobleman has 
 been seen lurking about here very much of late. That 's odd. 
 Do you know what business brings him to these parts ? " 
 
 " How should I know ? " exclaimed Suipeton, looking fiercely 
 at the Justice, as at one who would read the secrets of his soul. 
 
 " To be siu'e ; perhaps not," said Wattles, " and yet you see 
 it 's odd : he was brought here wounded, the very night my poor 
 brother — the most respectable man in Kent — what a sort of stain 
 it is upon the family ! — the very night he met his fate. You 
 didn't know, then, that the young nobleman used to hang about 
 these quarters ? " 
 
 " Justice Wattles," replied Suipeton, " if as a magistrate you 
 would examine me, I must attend your summons. My house is 
 not a court." 
 
 " Certainly not — certainly not," answered the Justice, suddenly 
 taking up his dignity. " I ask your paixlon ; of course, this matter 
 will be sifted elsewhere — thoroughly sifted. Only believing the 
 young nobleman to be your friend — " 
 
 " He 's no friend of mine," said Suipeton, sullenly. 
 
 " Well, a friend of Mrs. Snipeton's — oh, my dear sir ! don 't look 
 at me in that way — I meant no offence, none whatever ; I meant 
 an acquaintance — a visitor of Mrs. Snipeton's, nothing more. But, 
 of course, the law can reach him — of course, he can be made to 
 explain everji^hing — lord as he is. Still, being a friend of yours — 
 I mean of your wife's — I intended to show him some consideration. 
 Nevertheless, as you say your house is not a court, why good 
 morning, Mr. Suipeton — good morning." And saving this, Justice 
 Wattles, with all the dignity he could compass, quitted the master 
 of Dovesnest. Poor Snipeton ! but now he was blowing bu1>bles 
 of hope, so brightly tinted ; but now they were floating about 
 him in a sunny sky, and now they were broken, vanished ! 
 
 As Justice Wattles, with a flushed countenance, crossed the 
 threshol.i of Dovesnest, he was encountered by Nicholas, the sole 
 serving-man of Snipeton. " Bless me ! your woi-ship," cried 
 Nicholas, " here 's luck in meeting you — here 's a something as I 
 wa-s first going to show master, and then to bring to you," and 
 with this, the man presented to the magistrate an old black leather 
 pocket -book. 
 
 " God save us ! " cried Wattles, and he trembled ^iolently^ 
 " where did this come from ? "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES, 145 
 
 " I found it in a hedge — just as it is — I haven'v looked at it — 
 in a hedge by Pinkton's Corner," said the man. 
 
 Wattles, with great emotion, opened the book — turned deadly 
 pale — suddenly closed it again, and with a faint, forced smile at 
 his white lips, said — " Oh, it 's nothing — nothing at all. But you 
 may as well leave it with me, Nicholas : if it 's inquired for, I 
 shall have it ready. You know it 's in good hands, Nicholas ; and 
 take this for your honesty ; and until I call upon you, say nothing 
 at all about it — nothing at all." With this, the Justice imcou- 
 sciously made a low bow to the serving-man, and walked a few 
 steps rapidly on. Suddenly he paused, and calhng the man to 
 him, gave him a gi;inea. " For your honesty, Nicholas — though 
 the thing isn't worth a groat — stiU for your honesty ; and as I 've 
 told you, till you hear from me, you need say nothing of the 
 matter." Nicholas, well jsleased to sell his silence on such terms, 
 pocketed the guinea, and with a knowing nod at the Justice, went 
 his way. Wattles walked hurriedly on, turning down a lane that 
 sku'ted the Dexil's Elbow. The old man trembled from head to 
 foot ; his eyes wandered, and his lips moved "with unspoken woi'ds. 
 Now he ran, and now staggered and tottered down the lane ; and 
 at length paused midway and looked cautiously about him. He 
 then ch'ew forth the pocket-book, and with deepest misery in his 
 face, proceeded to search it. It contained nothing save a large 
 gold ring, set with a cornelian. As he held it to the hght, the 
 old man sighed ; then teai's fast and thick fell from liis eyes, and 
 he sank down upon a bank, and, hiding his face in his hands, 
 groaned most piteously. " God pardon him ! " at length he ci'ied 
 — " but Eobert 's done it : Eobei-t 's killed the old man ; it 's 
 Robert's ring — my Bible oath to it — his ring ; and the Lord has 
 brought it to witness against him. I was sm'e he had done it ; 
 no. no, not sure, — bvit I feared it, and — merciful heaven ! — to 
 butcher his own flesh and blood — to kill his own uncle ! " 
 Again the old man wept and sobbed, and wrung his hands in the 
 very imiDotence of sorrow. " And what am I to do ? Ami to 
 hang him ? Heaven shield us ! Hang a Willis !— 'Twould be 
 horrible. And then the disgrace to the family — the oldest in 
 Kent ! What shall I do— what shall I do ? " again and again 
 cried the Justice. " The murderer must not escape ; but tlien, to 
 hang him ! — the respectability of the family— the respectability 
 of the ftimily ! " And thus was the old man peqilexed. His 
 horror of the deed was great ; he wept e;u-nest, truthful tears 
 over the fate of his brother-in-law, a worthy, honest soul, whose 
 greatest weakness had been, indeed, undue indulgence of his 
 wa-etched assassin. All the horror, the ingratitude of his crime 
 would present itself to the mind of the Justice, who would for
 
 144 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 the moment determine to deuouuce the homicide : and then his 
 pride was touched ; he thought of the shame, the lasting ignominy, 
 as he deemed it, that would cling to the family, and thus held in 
 doubt, suspense — he would in his weakness weep and pray of 
 heaven to be supported and dii-ected. " Eobert 's a monster that 
 pollutes the eailh," he would cry — "he must, he shall be hanged." 
 And then the stern Justice would clasp his hands, and moan, 
 and mutter — " But the disgrace to the family — the disgrace to 
 the iamily ! " And thus, unresolved, days passed, and Justice 
 AVattles said no word of the pocket-book of the murdered man — 
 breathed no syllable of the damning evidence, supplied by the 
 ring, against his nephew ; who, it apjieared, had been wrought to 
 the commission of the act, by the refusal of the old man to supply 
 the means of his profuse expense, cast away as it was upon the 
 idle and the profligate throughout the coimtry. The old man 
 had returned from Canterbury fail', as his assassin thought, with 
 a large sum of money in his possession. The mui'derer, ready 
 dressed for the village festival, had awaited his victim ; had 
 accomplished the act ; and then, with hottest speed, made for the 
 Lamb and Star, to join in the revelry of the merry-makers. More 
 of this, however, as we proceed in our history. 
 
 And now old Suipeton must say farewell to his young wife. 
 How beautiful she looked ! What an aii* of truth and purity was 
 around her ! How her mute meekness rebuked her husband's 
 doubts ! She wanly smiled, and the old man reproached himself 
 tliat for a moment he could suspect that angel sweetness. He 
 had taken new resolution from her trustful gentleness. That 
 smile of iimocence had determined him. He would quit trade : 
 retii-e from London. He had enough, more than enougli, of 
 worlilly means ; and he would no longer separate himself from 
 such a wife ; but — his present ventures realised — he would retire 
 to Dovesnest, and there pass away a life, dedicating every moment, 
 every feeling to the better treasure that there enriched him. 
 Henceforth he would destroy, amdhilate, every rising thought 
 that should do her honour injury ; he would be a confiding, happy 
 husband. Nothing should jjeril the great felicity m store for him. 
 "With this thought, this fooling of the heart, he kissed his wife ; 
 and though she met his touch with lips of ice, he could not, would 
 not, feci their coldness ; but serenely left his home, and for many 
 . a mile upon the road strove to possess himself with the great 
 assurance that lie was still an honoured, hajjpy husband. Oh, it 
 was a sin, a great wickedness done to heaven's brightest truth to 
 doul.it it. 
 
 Poor old man ! Wretched huckster! Tricked and betrayed in 
 the bai-gain he had purchased : bought with so much money from
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 145 
 
 the priest. Willingly befooled by hope, he couUl not see the 
 desperate calmness, the firm, cold resolution that possessed his 
 young wife at the time of parting. At that moment, as she 
 beheved, she looked upon her husband for the last time : in that 
 moment, it was her comfort that she bade farewell to him who 
 made her life a daily misery — a daily lie. She had taken counsel 
 with herself, and, come what might, would end the loathsome 
 hj^jocrisy, that, like a foul disease, consumed her. He quitted 
 her. She wept ; and then a ray of comfort brightened her lace : 
 and she moved with lightened step, a thing of new-found liberty. 
 She sought to be alone ; and yet — it was very strange — that old 
 house-keeper, Mrs. Wilton, would still find an excuse to follow 
 her : still, with questioning face, would look upon her. The 
 woman could not know her resolution 1 Impossible. Yet still, 
 hke a spy, the hireling of her husband, she would watch her. 
 And then, at times, the woman gazed so mournfully at her ; 
 answered her with such strange emotion in her voice, with such 
 familiar tenderness, she knew not how to rebuke her. 
 
 " And my master returns in a week 1 " said Mrs. Wilton ; " a 
 long time for one who loves a wife so dearly." 
 
 " Loves me ! " answered Clarissa with a shudder, which she 
 strove not to disguise. " Yes ; there it is — he loves me." 
 
 " A great happiness, if ■^'isely thought of," said the house- 
 keeper, with cold calm looks. " A great happiness." 
 
 " No doubt, if wisely thought of," rejoined Clarissa ; then, with 
 a sigh, she .added : " How hard the task of wisdom ! But we will 
 not talk (rf this now, Mrs. Wilton ; T have another matter to speak 
 of : I am kept such a prisoner here " — and Clarissa smiled, and 
 tried to talk gaily — " that for once I am determined to play 
 truant. Would you believe it 1 I have scarcely seen Canterbury. 
 I have a mighty wish to "vnsit the Cathedral ; I hear it is so 
 beautiful — so awful." 
 
 " I would you had spoken of this to Mr. Smi:'eton," said the 
 housekeeper gi'avely. 
 
 " And wherefore 1 To have my wish refused ? To be sentenced 
 a prisoner to the house ; or, at most, to the limits of the garden ? 
 No : I know his anxiety, his tenderness, his love for me, a.s you 
 would say — therefore, if I would go at all, I must go unknown to 
 my lord and owner." 
 
 " Lord and husband," you would say, observed Mi-s. Wilton, 
 looking full at Clarissa. 
 
 " Owner is sometimes a better word ; at least, I feel it so. And 
 therefore, as I am detennined on my pilgi'image — " 
 _ " Very well, it must be made," sfiid Mi-s. Wilton. " "WTienever 
 you will, I •will be ready to accompany you." 
 
 L
 
 146 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Oh no ; I will not take you from the house : it is necessary 
 that you should remain. Dorothy is so dull and slow, I should 
 not feel happy to leave her alone. Let Nicholas order a chaise, 
 and he — yes, he can attend me. Now, no words, good Mrs. Wilton ; 
 for once I must have my way — for once you must not hope to 
 deny me." 
 
 " Aud when, Mrs. Snipeton," added the housekeeper, "when do 
 you go ? " 
 
 " Oh, to-morrow," answered Clarissa, with forced \4vacity. 
 
 ]Mrs. Wilton looked at the girl with i)ierciug eyes ; then slowly, 
 gi-avely asked — " And when return ? " 
 
 " Oh, the next day," and the blood flushed in Clarissa's face as 
 the words fell from her. 
 
 " No, no, no : that day would never come ; your buiTiing face, 
 your looks, tell me it would not." 
 
 " jMrs. Wilton ! " cried Clarissa, who vainly sti'ove to look 
 commanding, dignified ; to play the mistress to the presumj^tuous 
 menial. " Mrs. Wilton, by what right do you thus question my 
 word ? " 
 
 " By the right of love ; yes, by the love I bear you, lady," 
 answered the housekeeper. " I know your heart ; can see tlie 
 woimd witliin it. I know the gi'ief that daily wears you ; but, 
 with the knowledge of a deeper wound — of gi-ief more terrible — a 
 grief made of remorse and shame — I implore you, leave not your 
 home." 
 
 " And why not 1 Smce you know the bondage I endure — the 
 loathsomeness of life I bear about me — the cancer of *the heai-t 
 that toi-tures me — the degradation of everythmg that makes life 
 good and holy, — wherefore should T not break the chain that body 
 and soul enslaves me 1 Tell me this," exclaimed Clarissa ; and 
 her face grew deathly pale ; and her whole form rose and dilated 
 with the passion that, fury-like, possessed her. 
 
 " I have told you," said Mrs. Wilton, — " for the more terrible 
 grief that follows." 
 
 " Can it be shai-per, more consuming, than that I now endure ?" 
 asked Clarissa, smilhig bitterly. 
 
 " Yes — yes ! " was the answer, solemnly uttered. 
 
 " How know you this ? " asked the young wife ; and she looked 
 with new and curious intei'est at tlie woman fast changing before 
 her. Clianging. Her face always so calm, so self-possessed, so 
 statue-hke, relaxed and beamed with a sweet yet mournful look. 
 It seemed as though to that time she had only plaj^ed a part- 
 that now, the tioie woman would reveal herself. Clarissa was 
 SUi7jrised, subdued, by the new aspect of her housekeeper. 
 
 " You ask me, how I know this. It is a brief tale : and I will
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 147 
 
 tell you. I knew a maid sold like yourself — sold is the word — in 
 lawful wedlock. The mau who purchased her was good and 
 honourable ; one of the men whom the world accounts as its best 
 citizens ; plain, woi-thy, and lUsj^assiouate ; a person most respect- 
 able. He would not, in his daily bargains, have wronged his 
 neighbour of a doit. An upright, a most punctual man. And 
 yet he took a wife without a heart. He loved the hollow thinw 
 that, like a si^eakiug image, vowed in the face of God to do that 
 she knew she never could fulfil, to love and honour him ; and 
 he, that just, good man, smiled with great happiness ujaon the 
 pretty perjurer ; and took her to his bosom as the treasure of the 
 world. True, at times he had his doubts — his sad misgivings. 
 He would look in his wife's face — would meet her cold, obedient 
 eyes — and sometimes wonder when a heart would grow within 
 her. He had married her, believing in such growth ; it was his 
 wisdom — his knowledge of mankind and the world — to be assm-ed 
 of it. And so they lived for three long years together ; the chain 
 of wedlock growing heavier with every heavy day. She became 
 a mother. Even that new woman's life — that sudden knowledge 
 that opens in the heart an unimagined fount of love — failed to 
 harmonise her soul with him who was her child's father. Still 
 they jarred ; or, at best, were silent towards each other. I wiU 
 hurry to the close. She left him ; worse, she left her child. That 
 silver Unk, that precious bond that should have held her even 
 to scorn, unkindness, misery, — with sacrilegious act she broke. 
 She left her husband for one who should have been her husband. 
 You do not listen to me ? " 
 
 " Yes — ^yes — yes," cried Clarissa — " every word ; each syllable. 
 Go on." 
 
 " For a few months she lived a mockery of happiness. A year 
 or two passed, and then her lover left her, and she stood alone in 
 the world, clothed with her harlot shame. It was then, indeed, 
 she felt the mother : then, what should have been her joys were 
 turned to agonies ; and conscience, daily conscience, made her 
 look within a glass to see a monster there. Oh, she has told me, 
 again and again, has told me ! The look, the voice of childhood — 
 with all its sweetness, all its music — was to her as an accusing 
 angel that frowned, and told her of her fall." 
 
 " And she never saw her child 1 " asked Clarissa. 
 
 " For years she knew not where to seek it. At length, accident 
 discovered to her the place of its abode. And then the babe — 
 the motherless innocence — had become almost a woman." 
 
 " And then the mother sought her ? " 
 
 " No. Her husband still lived ; she did not dare attempt it. 
 Her child ! How knew she that that child had not been taught 
 
 l2
 
 14S ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 to think her mother in the grave ? And more ; the mother had 
 foregone her noblest claim at that jjoor little one's best need — • 
 and could the wanton come back again to urge it ? Therefore, 
 unkno'sv-n, she watched her ; and, like a thief, stole glances of the 
 precious creature of her blood — her only comfort, and her worst 
 reproach. The girl became a wife ; her father died, and then — " 
 
 " And then 1 " repeated Clarissa, as the woman paused in the 
 fulness of her emotion. 
 
 " And then the mother dared not reveal herself. As servant, 
 she entered her daughter's house, that, all imknown, she might feed 
 her daily Ufe viith looking at her." The woman paused ; and, 
 with clasped hands, looked with imploring anguish in the face of 
 Clarissa. Tliat look told all : Clarissa, with a scream, leapt to 
 her feet, and hrmg at her mother's neck. 
 
 " Be warned — be warned," cried the woman, and like a dead 
 thing, she sank in a chair. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 To the astonishment, the rage, and indignation of the neighbour- 
 hood, Robert WilUs had been apjirehended, charged \iith. the 
 murder of his imcle. After such audacity on the part of the law, 
 no man held himself safe. The whole countiy rang Tsith the 
 charge ; the whole countiy more or less sjin^jathised with the 
 iimocent ^dctim of the tp-anny of justice. It was impossible to 
 associate the jovial, warm-hearted, merry-maker with any wrong ; 
 so wholly had he won the hearts of all by his many feats of inistic 
 skill, his many qualities of good fellowship. The men admired him 
 for his athletic daring ; and the women for his noble figure, his 
 ruddy face, black whiskers, and very white teeth. To be sure, he had 
 had his follies ; now and then he had played the bull} , and the small 
 voice of detraction added, the black-leg : he had moreover broken 
 a heart or so : but he had never wanted money to pay a treat ; 
 and young men would be young men, was the chai'itable creed of 
 the treated. Nevertheless, it was impossible for justice to close 
 her ears to rumours that, first muttered, grew louder and louder. 
 Willis had been seen hurr}'ing from Cow Meadow at the time that 
 — according to evidence — the murder must have been committed. 
 He had moreover paid many debts of late ; had been seen with 
 much money in his hands ; and there was a strange, forced gaiety 
 in his manner that showed him restless, ill at ease. In fine, 
 although Justice Wattles — the prisoner's relative, and the pos- 
 sessor of the dead man's pocket-book — loudly protested against
 
 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 149 
 
 the indignity offered to his kinsman ; although he eloquently put 
 it to his brother magistrates, whether it was in the circle of pro- 
 bability for one so respectably born and bred, to shed the blood 
 of his own relation, — Eobert "Willis was committed, charged with 
 the wilful murder of Arthur Willis. And then Justice Wattles 
 said it was best it should be so : it was the shortest, clearest way, 
 to stop the mouths of slanderers, and to show to the world the 
 innocence, and, above all, the respectability of his kinsman. Yet 
 Avere there people who wondered at the change so suddenly worked 
 in the Justice. His face, before so round and red, became shrunk 
 and yellow ; and then he would strive to look so happy — would 
 laugh at every other word he spoke ; would prophesy %vith such 
 enjojTneut the triumph of his brave, his much-wronged relative. 
 
 And so the vagabond St. Giles and the gay and generous Robeit 
 WUlis were brought together. In the very good old times of our 
 history, there was deeper and better homage paid to the well-to-do 
 who, somehow, had done ill and was imprisoned therefore, than in 
 these our sterner days, when the successoi's of Blueskros and 
 Sheppards, no longer hold their levees in gaol lobbies, and fine 
 ladies may not prattle with felons. However lovely and interest- 
 ing may be the doomed man to the female heart, his fascinations 
 are to be contemplated only through the filmy medium of 
 the newspapers, and not, as in those very good and much- 
 lamented old times, hob and nob with the housebreaker and 
 murderer. Hence, Robert Willis lived in happier days. Hence, 
 by the gi'ace of money and station, had he many little indulgencies 
 which softened the rigour of captivity. Wine and brandy came 
 to him like good genii through the prison bars, and by their magic 
 gave to stone walls a comfortable, jolly aspect ; again placed the 
 prisoner in a tavern ; again surrounded him with the best of 
 fellows ; hearts of gold ! 
 
 It was yet early morning, and Willis, flushed with diink, 
 walked the court-yard -oath St. Giles ; for whom, at their first 
 meeting, he had shown a strange interest. How changed was he 
 from the merry-maker who, but for a few moments, was before 
 the reader at the Lamb and Star ! He seemed to have grown 
 biggei- — ^burlier. His face was full-blooded ; his eyebrows shagged 
 and ragged ; his eyes flashed to and fro, dwelling upon no object ; 
 and then he would laugh loudly, hollowly. He walked the coui-t- 
 yard, talking to St. Giles ; and now and then slapping him on the 
 shoulder, to the wonder of other more respectable prisoners, who 
 much marvelled that a gentleman like master Robert Wilhs could 
 take up with such a vagabond. And so they wallced : and by degrees 
 Willis laughed less, and spoke ia a lower tone ; and it was plain 
 — from the agitation of his comi^ade — that he spoke of something
 
 150 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 straxige and terrible. At length St. Giles stop]3e(l shoi-t, and 
 cried, " I "will he:ir no more — not a word more, I tell you. God 
 forgive you ! " 
 
 " Why, what 's the matter, fool — butter-heart ? " cried Willis, 
 " I thought you a man, aud you 're a cur. Ha ! ha ! all 's one 
 for that ; " and again Willis laughed, and pointed scornfully at 
 St. Giles, as — with face aghast — he walked to the further end 
 of the court. Willis was about to follow him, when he was 
 accosted by one of the turnkeys. 
 
 " j\Iaster Willis, here 's 'Mr. Montecute Crawley, the lawyer, 
 come to talk to you about your defence. He 's in a great 
 hurry ; so, if you please, you must make haste : he 's so much 
 to do, he can't stay for nobody." And the turnkey only 
 spoke the truth of the absorbing business of Mr. Montecute 
 Crawley ; to w'hose silver tongue the world owed the liberty 
 of many a ruffian. Happy was the CAil-doer whose means 
 might pm-chase the good offices of !Mr. Montecute Crawley ! 
 There was no man at the bar who could so completely extract the 
 stain of blood from a murderer. Had he defended Sawny Bean, 
 dipped a hundred times in infanticide, he would have presented 
 him to the court as a shepherd with the bloom and fragrance of 
 Arcady upon him. Worthy man ! "WTiat a constitution had 
 JNIr, I^lontecute Crawley, to stand the wear and tear of his own 
 feelings, racked, agonised, as they always were for his innocent, 
 his much-pereecuted client, the homicide or highwapnan at the 
 bar ! Happily, his emotion was always so very natural, and so 
 very intense, that again and again it touched the bosoms of the 
 jury, who could not — simple creatures ! — but believe so eloquent, so 
 earnest a gentleman, when he not only vouclied for the innocence 
 of the unfortunate accused, but wept a shower of tears in testi- 
 mony thereof. Tears, in fact, were INlr. Montecute Crawley's 
 great weapons : but he had too true a notion of their value to use 
 them save on extraordinary occasions. With all his tenderness, 
 he had great powers of self-restraint ; and. thei-efore, never dropt 
 a tear upon any brief that brought him less than five hundred 
 guineas. He had heard of " the luxury of woe," and wa;^ deter- 
 mined tliat with him at least the luxury should bear its proper 
 price. His coarse and stony-heai'ted brethren at the bar had, in 
 the envy and brutality of their souls, nicknamed Mr. Montecute 
 Crawley, the watering-pot. But he — good, silver-tongued man — 
 heeded not the miserable jest. He talked and wept, and wept 
 and talked, as though he felt a.ssured that all the world believed 
 his words and teara, and that the angels knew them to be only* 
 counterfeit. 
 
 And Robert Willis was now to interest the sj-mpathies of Mr.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 151 
 
 Crawley, who had been paid the full weeping price — the fee being, 
 as a junior counsel said, up to water-mark. The jsrisoner and his 
 counsel were i:)rivate together ; and, as the accused went through 
 his simple tale, it w^as delightful to perceive the intelligence that 
 beamed in Mr. Montecute Crawley's eye, as though he spied a 
 flaw, no wider than a spider's thread, in the indictment ; and then 
 for a moment he would place his ample brow — writ and overwrit 
 with so many acts of Parliament — in his snow-pure hand, medi- 
 tating a legal escape. " That 's enough," said Mr. Crawley, 
 abruptly stopping the prisoner : " I 've made up my mind ; yes, I 
 see it at once ; an alibi, of course ; an alibi. You were at the 
 dance at the Lamb and Star : you 've witnesses — yes, I know — 
 Mr. Swag, your attorney, has told me all, and;^ " 
 
 " And you think I shall get over it 1" asked Willis, looking up 
 with unabashed face at his defender. Mr. Montecute Crawley 
 slightly nodded his head ; wdiereupon the prisoner, with grossest 
 familiarity, offered his hand. Mr. Crawley knew what was due to 
 the dignity of his profession ; he, therefore, looked frozenly at the 
 prisoner, rebuking him by that look into a pro2>er sense of his 
 infamy, and at the same time asserting his ovni forensic conse- 
 quence. " Meant no offence, sir," said the reprobate, " but as I 
 thought we met as friends, and as Master Wattles has promised to 
 come down well if you get me off, why I thought we might as 
 well shake hands on the bargaiji." 
 
 " It is not necessary," said Mr. Crawley, with a new stock of 
 dignity. " And now I think you have told me all ? I hope so, 
 because I can give no further time to see you ; and therefore I 
 hope, for your sake, I now know all ? You understand me ? " 
 
 Innocent murderer — imsojAisticated assassin ! He did not 
 understand his best defendei-. Deceived by what he thought a 
 cordiality of voice, a look of interest, in ISIr. Montecute Crawley — 
 and suddenly feeling that- it would doubtless be for his own 
 especial benefit if he laid bare his heart — that black, bad thing — 
 before so able, so excellent a gentleman, Eobert Willis thought 
 that he owed him eveiy confidence, and would, therefore, without 
 further ceremony, discharge the debt. " Why, no, sir," he 
 said, wdth the air of a man prepared to be praised for his ingenu- 
 ousness, — "no, sir, I hav'n't told you all. You see, uncle — I 
 must say it — had been a good sort of a fellow to me ui his time : 
 but somehow, he got plaguy cranky of late ; wouldn't come do-svn 
 with the money nohow. And I put it to you, sir, who know 
 what life is, — what 's a young fellow like me to do without money? 
 Well, the long and the short of it is this,— I shot the old chap, 
 and that 's the truth." 
 
 If viitue could have peeped into that prison, could at that
 
 162 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 momeut have beheld the face of !Mr. Moutecute Crawley, ■would 
 she not have embraced — have wept over her champion — even as 
 he had often wept on her accoimt 1 He stai'ted from the confessed 
 homicide, as though Cain himself had risen fi'om beside him. 
 " Scoundrel ! monster ! \illain ! " he exclaimed with passion, 
 that must have been genuine, it was so violent. 
 
 " Bless me ! " cried the prisoner. " I hope you 're not oifended. 
 You wanted to know all, sir." 
 
 " Not that — not that, miscreant ! " and ^Mr. Montecute Crawley 
 paced up and down in the very greatest distress. " Monster, — I 
 leave you to your fate : I '11 not stain my hands with such a brief. 
 No — never — ^never." 
 
 " You '11 not do that, sii', I 'm sure," said the murderer. " Too 
 much of a gentleman for that. 'Specially when the Justice has 
 come down so handsomely. And I know him ; that 's not all he'll 
 do, if you get me otf." 
 
 " Get you off I " cried JSIr. Montecute Crawley with a disgust 
 that did the very highest and deepest honour to his heart. — 
 "What ! let loose a wild beast — a man-tiger into the world. 
 Monster — miscreant — miscreant ! " With all ]\Ir. Crawley's envi- 
 able command of abuse, he lacked vituperation wherewith to 
 express the intensity of his loathing ; and he therefore quitted the 
 murderer with a look of inexpressible scorn ; Robert Willis having, 
 in his unagination, the very clearest view of the gallows, with 
 himself in the cart, wending to his inevitable destination. He 
 was given up by that miracle of an orator, ]Mi". Montecute Crawley, 
 and there was nothing left h'jn but the hangman. 
 
 Ingeimous Eobert Willis — unsophisticated homicide ! Little 
 knew that simple mm-derer the magnanimity of the lawyer, who 
 would forget the imprudence of the blood-shedder in pity for the 
 eiTing fellow-creature. Besides, 'Mr. Montecute Crawley, in his great 
 respect for the intellectual cra\T.ngs of the pubUc, could not consent 
 to deprive a crowded court of his expected speech : an oration that, 
 as he knew, would impart veiy considerable enjojTnent to his 
 aufhtors, and, possibly achieve a lasting glory for himself There- 
 fore, possessed of the knowledge of the prisoner's crime, it would 
 be the business, the pride of j\Ir. Crawley to aiTay him in a garb of 
 innocence : though, everlastingly stained with blood, it would be 
 the fame of the orator to purify the assassin, returning him back to 
 the world snow-white and sweetened. And, with this determina- 
 tion, when the day of trial came, Mr. Moutecute Crawley entered 
 the court, amidst the flattering admii-ation of all assembled. What 
 a solemn man he looked ! What a champion of truth — what an 
 earnest orator in tlie cause of innocence — with eveiy line in his 
 face a swelling lie !
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 153 
 
 And the day of trial came. St. James sat upon the bench 
 in close neighbourhood to the Judge. The court was crowded. 
 Ladies had dressed themselves as for a gala ; and when the 
 prisoner — habited with scrupulous neatness — appeared at the 
 bar, there was a murmiir from the fair that at once acquitted so 
 handsome, so finely-made a man, of such a naughty crime. It 
 was impossible that with such a face — such very tine eyes — such 
 wavy, silken hair, and above all with such a self-assuring smile 
 — it was impossible that such a creature covild be stained with 
 an old man's blood. And then the gentlewomen looked from 
 the prisoner to the prisoner's counsel, and beheld in his sweet 
 gravity, his beautiful composure, an assurance that he, that 
 eloquent and sympathetic pleader, was possessed as with the con- 
 sciousness of his own soul, of the guiltlessness of that oppressed, 
 that handsome young man ; and would therefore plead with the 
 voice and sublime fervour of a superior spirit f<jr the accused at 
 the bar. Men of every degree thronged the court. The gentry — 
 the yeomen — the rustics of the country ; all prepossessed for the 
 prisoner. And many were the greetings and shakings of the 
 hand exchanged with the prisoner's kinsman. Justice Wattles, 
 who tiied to look hopeful, and to speak of the trial as nothing 
 more than a ceremony, necessary to stop the mouth of slanderous 
 wickedness. And so, restless and inwardly sick at heart and 
 trembling, the Justice looked smilingly about the court : but 
 never looked at the prisoner at the bar. The prisoner gazed 
 searchingly at the jury, and his eyes brightened when he saw 
 that Simon Blink, landlord of the Lamb and Star, was foi-eman 
 of the twelve. 
 
 The trial began. One witness swore that on the evening of the 
 murder he heard a gun fired ; and immediately he saw the prisoner 
 at the bar rush from the direction of Cow Meadow. The ball 
 had been extracted from the murdered man, and found to fit a 
 gun, the i^risoner's property, subsequently discovered in the farm- 
 house. Every face in the court — even the face of Mr. Montecute 
 Crawley — fell, darkened at the direct, straightforward evidence of 
 the witness. He was then handed over to be dealt with by the 
 prisoner's counsel. What awful meaning possessed his features, 
 when he rose to turn inside out the witness ! What lightning in 
 his eye — what a weight of scorn at his li}3 — what thunder in his 
 voice, terrifying and confounding the simple man who had spoken 
 a simple truth. Poor fellow ! m a few minutes he knew not what 
 he had spoken : his senses were distraught, lost : he would 
 scarcely to himself answer for his own consciousness, so much was 
 he bewildered, flung about, made nothing of by that tremendous 
 man, Mr. Montecute Crawley.
 
 154 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Answei- me, sir," tliundered the indic^ant counsel ; " were 
 you never in gaol for felony ? Answer, sir." 
 
 Tlie man paused for a moment. He had never been in gaol for 
 felony — Mr. Crawley knew that well enough — nevertheless the 
 question was put with such vehement confidence, that, honest man 
 a.s he was, the witness was for a time unable to answer. At 
 length he ventured to reply that he never had been so imprisoned: 
 which reply he again and again rejjeated, warned by the counsel — 
 as by the trumpet of judgment — that he was upon his oath. 
 
 " And you 've never been caught poaching — come, I shall get 
 something out of you 1 Speak up, sir ! Upon j'our oath — have 
 you never been* caught setting wires for hares 1 " roared Mr. 
 Crawley. 
 
 " Never, sir," stammered the witness. '•' Never caught in my 
 Hfe." 
 
 " Ha ! you 've been lucky, then, my fine fellow," said the counsel. 
 " You haven 't been caught, that 's what you mean, eh ? " And 
 at this humorous distinction, Mr. Montecute Crawley laughed — 
 the prisoner, out of gratitude to his champion, laughed — all men 
 in the court laughed, and the pretty ladies giggled. Assuredly 
 there is no place in which the very smallest joke goes so far as in 
 a court of justice. There, a farthing's worth of wit is often taken 
 as though it were an ingot. And, accepted after such value, Mr. 
 Montecute Crawley was a tremendous wit. " I believe, sir," — he 
 continued, — " come, sir, leave off twiddling your thumbs and look 
 at me — I believe you 've been mixed up a little in smuggling ? 
 Come, you don't think there 's much hai'm in that ? You know 
 how to run a tub or two, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No, I don't," answered the witness with new confidence. 
 
 " Bless me ! " cried Mr. Crawley, " you 're a very innocent 
 gentleman — very innocent, indeed." And then with much indig- 
 nation at the unspotted character of the witness, he thundered, 
 " Get down, sir ! " Now, this seeming uncharitableness was, it 
 may be hoped, very repulsive to the kindly nature of Mr. Crawley; 
 but what he did, he did for the benefit of his client. To serve his 
 client it was — he held the obligation as his forensic creed — it was 
 his duty to ]iaint every witness against him the blackest black, 
 that the suffering, ill-used man at the bar might stand out in 
 candid relief to the moral darkness fro^\Tiing agamst him. Poor 
 Mr. Crawley ! In his heart of hearts, it was to him a great 
 sorrow that — for the interest of his client — he was sometimes 
 coinpellod to wear his go^^^^, the solemn robe of the champion of 
 truth, ;us the jn-ivlleged garment, holding safe the coward and the 
 bully. He wjus a gentleman — a most perfect gentleman — with an 
 almost ellemmate sense of honour when — his trown was off. But
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 165 
 
 when he i-obed himself, he knew that there might be dirty work to 
 do, and if it must be done, why he did it as though he loved it. 
 
 All the witnesses for the prosecution, save one, had been 
 examined ; and the prisoner looked about him with blither looks : 
 and there was an interchange of triumphant glances between 
 himself and valued old cronies in court that plainly said, " All 's 
 right ; " when St. Giles was called. Then the prisoner bit his 
 Up, and impatiently struck his fist upon the spikes in the front of 
 the bar, and then with a hard smile — as at his folly, his absence 
 of mind — wrapt his handkei'chief about his bleeding hand. It 
 was nothing — a mere moment of absurd forgetfuluess. How could 
 he be so ridiculous ! 
 
 St. Giles was sworn. There was something strange and solemn 
 in that miserable face ; marked and lined as it was with a sad 
 history. The man had been well-fed, well-lodged, though in a 
 gaol. Imprisoned as a rogue and vagabond, he had nevertheless 
 tasted of comforts that, until the crime of poverty and destitution 
 was put upon him, he had not for many a season, known ; and 
 yet he looked harassed, weary, and wasted. Poor WTetch ! He 
 had long wrestled with himself He felt that he was cursed with 
 knowledge of a secret forced upon him. It was another of the 
 many unearned wrongs that blighted him. He hated himself that 
 he had been brought to stand in that coui't an accuser of that 
 man at the bar. He had fought against the feeling that had 
 urged him to tell all ; and then in the dead of night a voice would 
 cry in his ear, " Murder — murder ! remember, it is murder ! base, 
 bad, most unnatuial murder ! " — and so, as he thought, to lift a 
 load from his heart, he demanded to be taken to the keeper of the 
 gaol ; and then — solemnly admonished by the prison chaplain — 
 he narrated the terrible story that, in his hour of mad defiance, 
 Eobert Willis had told his fellow-prisoner. That confession made, 
 St. Giles felt himself a wretch — a traitor to the man who had put 
 the secret on him : he would have given worlds to recall the story 
 told : it was impossible. He had told all. And in open court, 
 he would be summoned to meet, eye to eye, the prisoner : would 
 be made to rehearse a tale that should make that man, smiling so 
 full of health and strength at the bar, a clod of earth. It was 
 these thoughts that had cut themselves in the face of St. Giles : 
 it was these thoughts that, like poison, struck a coldness at his 
 heart ; made him tremble, and look a most forlorn and guilty 
 wretch, when called upon to tell his story. 
 
 He told all he knew. The prisoner at the bar had confessed to 
 him that, stung by the unwillhiguess of his uncle to feed his 
 means, he had killed the old man : at such an hour — with such 
 an instrument. More : he had robbed him : and had hidden the
 
 156 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 dead man's pocket-book somewhere near Pinckton's Corner. The 
 prisoner had dropt a ring — it had always been too large for him 
 — as he feared, upon the spot where the old man fell, 
 
 And then St. Giles was cross-examined : anatomised, torn to 
 pieces by the counsel for the prisoner. A very few minutes, and 
 so potent was the scorn, the indignation of Mr. Crawley, that St, 
 Giles stood before the court the vilest of the vile of men ; a human 
 reptile, a moral blotch : a shame upon the i-ace of Adam. The 
 whole court looked upon him with wondering eyes — a monster of 
 wickedness. And St. Giles felt the ignominy : it pierced him 
 like a sword ; yet with calm, unaltered looks he met the hatred of 
 all around him. 
 
 And with the testimony of St. Giles closed the evidence for the 
 prosecuti"on. Twenty witnesses for the prisoner proved that it 
 was impossible he could have been near Cow Meadow at the time 
 of the murder ; no : he was at a merry-making at the Lamb and 
 Stai\ Again, every inch of Pinckton's Corner had been searched, 
 and thei'e was no pocket-book : another proof — if such indeed 
 were needed — of the diabolic malice of St. Giles, who, it was plain, 
 to cloak his own infamy with some small credit, hoped to destroy 
 the prisoner. Mr. Montecute Crawley had been exceedingly moved 
 by this tremendous evidence of the iniqviity of man. "Whilst cross- 
 examining St. Giles, the counsel, touching upon what he termed 
 the apocryphal pocket-book, had wept ; yes, had suffered large 
 round tears to "course down his innocent nose," to the lively 
 concern of the court ; and, more especially, to the emotion of 
 many ladies, who wept in spnpathy with that sweet man, that 
 soft-hearted barrister. 
 
 The judge summed up the evidence ; and the jury, after the 
 pause of perhaps two minutes — their verdict was already smiling 
 in theii" faces — through their ready foreman, Simon Blink, 
 acquitted the prisoner. Eobert Willis was — Not Guilty ! What 
 a shout rose from the court ! It was in vain that the judge looked 
 angrily around him : there was another huzza ; another, and 
 another. Friends and neighbours shook each other by the hand ; 
 and all blessed the admirable Mr. Crawley, the excellent judge, 
 the upright and most manly jury. The hubbub suddenly ceased : 
 and wherefore ? Men were touched into respectful silence ; and 
 why ? Oh, the scene was most impressive : for Mr. Justice 
 Wattles — an old and most respectable magistrate — entered the 
 dock ; and there, in the face of the world, embraced his innocent 
 kinsman — folded to his heart the pure, the spotless, the acquitted. 
 And then Ptobert Willis left the gaol ; and the multitude without 
 shouted their sympathy and gratitude. 
 
 St. Giles remained ^^•ithin the prison. Ilis term of captivity
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 157 
 
 was ended : yet, compassionating his miseiy, the governor would 
 permit him to remain until night- fall, when he might depart 
 unseen. Did he show himself in open day — such was the belief 
 of the people of the gaol — the mob would tear him piecemeal. He 
 had tried to hang an innocent man : would have shed the blood 
 of the noblest creature in the county ; and burning alive was a 
 fate too good for him. And thus St. Giles was spurned and 
 execrated. Shut up with felons, he was shunned by them as 
 something monstrous ; a demon, for whom they had no words 
 save those of cursing and contempt. St. Giles, with a crushed 
 heart, walked the court-yard. A few paces were tacitly allowed 
 him by his fellow-prisoners ; and he walked, in misery, apart 
 from all. It was a beautiful summer's evening, and he paused, 
 and \vith glassy, vacant eye, surveyed a swarm of insects dancing 
 and whirling in that brief, bright world of theirs, a sunbeam in a 
 gaol. " A gentleman wants to speak to you," said one of the 
 turnkeys, looking contemptuously at the witness for the crown 
 " Come this way." St. Giles obeyed the order, and entering the 
 body of the prison, found there his former benefactor, young 
 St. James. 
 
 " You are the man who gave evidence against the person tried 
 to-day for murder ? " said St. James. 
 
 " Yes, sii- ; and I s^joke the truth : the very words the man 
 said to me, 1 — " 
 
 " It is no matter. I did not send for you on that bad business. 
 You and I have met before 1 How is it that I find you in this 
 place ? " 
 
 " I had no place to lay my head in, not a penny, only what 
 your honour's goodness gave me, to buy a crumb ; and so for that 
 reason, after I 'd been hauled up, as they said, for killing a man 
 that was afterwards found alive, they sent me here. But bless 
 you, kind gentleman ! for your goodness to me. I hav'n't been 
 without doing wi-oug in my time, sir, I know that : but the world, 
 sir, hasn't dealt kindly with me, nohow ; it hasn't, indeed, su-." 
 
 " Where do you come from 1 " asked St. James. 
 
 "I come, sir, from" — and St. Giles stammered — "I come from 
 abroad." 
 
 " And you are willing to earn honest bread ? Is it so 1 " said 
 his lordship. 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " cried St. Giles, " if I might only have the chance ! 
 But it 's a hard case to put a man to — a hard case to deny a 
 misei-able cretur honest bread, and then if he don't starve without 
 a word like a rat in a hole, to send him here to gaol. I say it, 
 sir ; I 've had my sins — God pardon 'em — but I 've been roughly 
 treated, sir ; roughly treated."
 
 158 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " I hope to think so," said St. Jaxaes. " I may be MTong ; but 
 what I have seen of you to-day induces me to trust you. I want 
 to know nothing of your history ; nothing of the past. All I 
 expect is an honest future. If you can promise this, you shall 
 enter my service, and so stand upright again in the world." 
 
 "I do i:)roniise, sir — with aU my heart and soul — with all" — 
 but the poor fellow could speak no more ; tears poured down his 
 face ; teai-s choked his speech. 
 
 "Here is money. Get yourself decent covering, and make 
 your way to London. "VVlien there, present yourself at my house. 
 Send this card to me, and I will see what may be done for you. 
 Remember, I depend upon yoiu' good resolution, that I may not 
 be laughed at for liiriug a servant from a gaol." With these 
 words, St. James quitted the prison, leaving St. Giles be^vildered, 
 lost in haijplness. He glanced at the card, saw the name — the 
 name of that noble, gracious boy, who had before preserved him 
 — and the poor convict fell upon his knees, and with a grateful, 
 bursting heart prayed for his protector. 
 
 Let us now for a brief space, shift the scene to the Lamb and 
 Star. It was ten at night, and the house was crammed with 
 revellers, all met to celebrate the triumph of injui'ed innocence ; 
 to drink and cb-ink to the attested pmity of Robert Willis. What 
 stories were told of his spu-it, his addi-ess, his gallantry ; how 
 often, too, were curses called down upon the head of him who 
 would have spilt such guiltless blood ; how often did the drhikers 
 wish they had St. Giles among them, that they might tear him 
 to bits — yes, limb him for his mfamy ! And ere the night passed 
 they had their wish ; for St. Giles entered the Lamb and Stai-, 
 and called vnih the confidence of a customer about him. But 
 Avho was to know St. Giles in the neatly-dressed, trim-looking 
 groom — the taU, clean-faced looking young fellow — that took his 
 mug of ale from the hands of Becky, and nodded so smiUngly at 
 her ? True it is, the girl stared ; the blood rushed about her face, 
 and darting from the room, she cried to herself, " It is — it is ! the 
 Lord i)reserve us ; " but Becky looked with womanly eyes, and so 
 remembered the ragged outcast in the spruce servdng-man. In a 
 few moments she returned to the room, and whilst she aifected to 
 give change to St. Giles, she said in a low, agitated voice—" I 
 know you— they '11 know you, too, soon ; and then they '11 have 
 your life ; go away : if you love— if you love yourself go away ! 
 Wliat a man you are ! What brings you here ?" 
 
 " Just this little remembrance," said St. Giles, " for you got 
 yourself into trouble for helping me : just this odd little matter ; 
 keep it for my sake, wench," and he placed a little silken huswife 
 in her trembliuf^ hand.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 15y 
 
 " Law ! " said Becky, " I didn't do nothing for you that I 
 ■wouldn't ha' done for any body else ; still I will keep this anyhow ;" 
 and Becky again blushing, again ran from the room. At the 
 same moment there was a shout outside the house of "Master 
 Willis — Master Willis ! " and loud and long were the liuzzas that 
 followed. The door was flving open, and Willis, franticly drunk, 
 rushed in, followed by several of his companions who with him 
 had celebrated the triumph of the day. Willis threw himself into 
 a chair, and called for a " thousand bowls of punch " — and then 
 he would have a song — and then he would have all the village 
 gu'ls roused ujj, and would dance the night through. 
 
 Great was the respect felt by the landlord of the Lamb and Star 
 for Mr. Willis : nevertheless, the tumult rose to such a height, 
 that Blink, with bending back, and in the very softest voice, begged 
 of his honour not to insist upon a dance so late at night. Willis, 
 with a death-pale face — his hair disordered — his eyes stupidly 
 rolling — glared and hiccupped, and snapped his fingevs at the nose 
 of the landlord. 
 
 " Now squire, do be advised ; do, indeed : you '11 hurt your 
 health, squire, if you 've any more to night, I know you will," 
 said Bluik. 
 
 " You know ! " shouted Willis — " Mughead ! what do you 
 know ? Yes — ha ! ha ! ha ! — you 're a pretty conjuror, you are. 
 You know ! Ha ! you were the foreman of the jury, I believe ? 
 A pretty foreman — a jarecious jury ! And you found me Not 
 Guilty ! Fool ! nincompoop — ass ! Here, I want to say some- 
 thing to you. Closer — a little closer." Blink approached stiU 
 nearer to the drunken madman, when the ruffian spat in the land- 
 lord's face ; he then roared a laugh, and shouted — " That for you ! 
 I killed the old fellow — I did it — damn me, I did it." And the 
 ■wretch, trjing to rise from his chair, fell prostrate to the ground ; 
 whilst all in the room shrunk -with horror from the self-denounced 
 homicide. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 E^VTERT guest of the Lamb and Star bore .away the confession ot 
 the assasshi ; and full soon scornful, loathing looks beset the path 
 of Robert Willis. The gossipping -vdllagers would stand silent, 
 eyeing him askaimce, as he passed them. The dullest liiud would 
 return his nod and good-mon-ow with a sullen, awkward air. Even 
 little children cowered from him, huddling about their mothers, as 
 the gay homicide would pat their heads, and give them pennies.
 
 160 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 It did not serve, that Eobert Willis with a roaring laugh declared 
 the whole a jest — a tlrunkeu frolic just to make folks stare. It 
 served not that he would loudly and laboriously chuckle " to think 
 how he had made Blink shake — and how, with just a word or so, 
 he had taken everybody in." No ; the confession of the murderer 
 had sunk into the hearts of his hearers ; the tale spread far and 
 wide, and not even butts of ale — and Willis tried that Lethe — • 
 would drown the memory of it. And so in brief time, the miser- 
 able wretch was left alone with the fiends. A few, out of pure love 
 of the liquor he bestowed, would still have doubted the blood- 
 guiltiness of their patron ; but even they could not long confront 
 the reproaches of their fellows. And so, with a late and hesitating 
 virtue, they wiped then* lips of the murderer's malt, and consented 
 to beUeve him very bad indeed. Willis, as one by one dropt fi'om 
 him, grew fiercely confident ; battling with bi'azen brow the looks 
 of all. Unequal fight ! The devil is a coward in the end : and 
 so, after a show of scornful opposition, the poor cowed fiend gave 
 uj) the contest and Robert Willis went no man knew whether. A 
 sad blow was this to Justice Wattles. That he should have spent 
 so much money on so hopeless a creature ! That he should have 
 gone to the hea^y expense of Mr. IMontecute Crawley ! That at 
 so vast a price he should have saved his kinsman from the gibbet, — 
 when the desperate fool had hung himself in the opinion of all 
 men ! It would have been better, fiir cheaper, to let truth take 
 its course, — but then there was the respectability of the family ! 
 And yet, it was some poor consolation to the puzzled justice, that 
 however a Willis might have deserved the gallows, he had escaped 
 it : opinion was a hard thing ; but at the hardest it was not 
 tightened hemp. Nobody could say that a Willis was ever hanged. 
 Truth, after all, had not been sacrificed for nothing ; and that was 
 some comfort. 
 
 In due course, the Kent waggon brought St. Giles to London. 
 It was about five o'clock on a bright summer morning when 
 St. Giles, witli raj)turous eyes looked upon the Borough. Yes, he 
 liad retunied to his hard-nursing mother, Loudon. She had taught 
 him to pick and steal, and lie, and when yet a child, to anticipate 
 iniquities of men ; and then — foolish, guilty mother ! — she had 
 scourged her youngling for liis naughtiness ; believing by the 
 severity of her chastisement best to show her scorn of vice, her 
 Jove of goodness. And St. Giles, as the waggon crawled along, 
 lay full length upon the straw, and mused upon the frequent 
 liaunts of his early days. 
 
 Sweet and balmy sweet such thoughts! Refreshing to the soul, 
 jaded and fretful from the fight of men, to slake its thir.st for 
 peace and beauty, at the fountain of memory, when childhood
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 161 
 
 seemed to have played with aDgels ! What a luxury of the 
 heart, to cast oif the present like a foul, begrimed garment, 
 and let the soul walk awhile in the naked innocence of the 
 past ! Here is the scene of a happy childhood. It is full of 
 gracious shapes — a resurrection of the gentle, beautiful ! We have 
 lain in that field, and thought the lark — a trembling, fluttering 
 speck of song above us — must be very near to God. That field 
 is filled with sweetest memories, as with flowers. And there 
 is an old — old tree. How often have we climbed it, and, throned 
 amid its boughs, have read a wondrous book ; a something 
 beating like a drum at oiu- heart : a something that confusing us 
 with a dim sense of glory, has filled om- soul with a strange, fitful 
 music, as with the sounds of a far-coming triumph ! Such may 
 be the memories of a happy youth ! And what, as St. Giles, with 
 his face leaning on his propped hands, gazed from the waggon, 
 what, seeing the scenes of his childhood — what saw he 1 Many 
 things big with many thoughts. 
 
 Yes ; how well he knew that court ! Six-and-thu-ty hours' 
 hunger had raged in his vitals, and with a desperate plunge, he had 
 dived into a pocket. It was empty. Bv;t the would-be thief had 
 been felt, and was hotly pursued. He tm-ned up that court. He 
 was very young, then ; and, Hke a fool, knew not the ins-and-outs of 
 the Borough. He ran up the court ; there was no outlet ; and the 
 young thief was caught hke a stoat in a trap. And now St. Giles 
 sees the joy of his pursuer ; and almost feels the blow the good, 
 indignant man, dealt as with a flail u^jon the half-naked child. 
 Ay, and it was at that post, that his foot shpt when he was chased 
 by the beadle for stealing two potatoes from a dealer's sack. — Yes ; 
 and opposite that very house, the beadle laid about him with his 
 cane ; and there it was that the big, raw-boned, painted woman, 
 tore him from the beadle's grasp ; and giving him a penny, told 
 him with an oath to run for very life. Such were the memories 
 — yes, every turning had such — that thronged upon St. Giles, 
 gazing in thought upon his childhood days, from the Kent waggon. 
 
 And then happier thoughts possessed om- hero. He looked 
 again and again at the card given him by St. James ; and that 
 bit of paper with its few words was a talisman to his soul ; a 
 written spell that threw a beauty and a brightness about the mean- 
 est things of London. Human life moved about him full of hope 
 and dignity. He had — or would have — an interest in the great 
 game — how great and how small !— of men. He would no longer 
 be a man-wolf ; a wretched thing to hunt and be hunted. He 
 would know the daily sweets of lionest bread, and sleep the sleep 
 of peace. What a promotion in the scale of life ! AVhat unlioped 
 feUcity, to be permitted to be honest, gentle ! What a savmg
 
 162 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 luercy, to be allowed to walk npriglit with those he might begin to 
 look upon as fellow-creatures ! And as St. Giles thought of this, 
 he could have fallen upon his knees on London stones, in thank- 
 fulness and penitence. Solitude to him had been a softening 
 teacher. JMeditation had come upon him in the far wilds : and 
 the isolated, badged, and toiling felon for the first time thought 
 of the mystery of liimself ; for the first time daied to look in upon 
 his heart — a look that some who pass for bold men sometimes care 
 not to take — and he resolved to fight against what seemed his fate. 
 He would get back to tlie world. Despite of the sentence that 
 bade him not to hope, he would hope. Though doomed to be a 
 life-long human instrument, a drudging carcase, he would win 
 back his manhood — he would return to life a self-respecting being. 
 And this possessing will beat, constant as a pulse, within him. 
 And these feelings, though the untutored man could give them no 
 harmonious utterance, still sustained and soothed him, and now*, 
 in London streets, made most hopeful music to his soul. 
 
 And St. Giles passed through old familiar places, and would not 
 ponder on the miserable memories that thronged them. No ; with 
 a strong will, he laid the rising ghosts of his boyish days, and 
 went with gro\ving stoutness on. He was bound for St. James's- 
 square, and the way before him was a path of pleasure. How 
 changed was London-bridge ! To his boyhood it had been a ma.ss 
 of smoked, grimed stone : and now it seemed a shape of grace and 
 beauty. He looked, too, at the thousand ships that, wherever the 
 sea rolled, with mute gigantic power told the strength, tlie wealth, 
 and enterprise of England. He looked, and woiild not think of the 
 convict craft, laden with crimes, and w'rong, and blasphemy, that 
 had borne him to his doom. He passed along, through Lombard- 
 street to the Bank ; and he paused and smiled as he thought of the 
 time when the place seemed to him a place of awful splendour ; a 
 visible heaven, and they he thought who went for moneys there, 
 "angels ascending and descending." And above all, what a glory 
 it would be for him — a fame surpassing all burglarious renown — 
 to rob that Bank of England. And then he saw the Mansion- 
 house ; and thought of the severe and solemn Alderman who 
 had sentenced him to Bridewell. And then St. Giles passed 
 along Cheapside, and stood before St. Paul's church ; and then for 
 the fii'st time felt somewhat of its tremendous beauty. It had been 
 to him a mere mountain of stone, with a clock upon it : and now, 
 he felt himself subdued, refined, as the Cathedral, hke «ome 
 strange harmony, sank into his soul. He thought, too, of Christ 
 and the fishermen and tent-makers Christ had glorified — for he 
 had learned to read of them when a felon in the wilderness, — and 
 his heart glowed with Christian fervour at Christ's temple, — tliat
 
 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 163 
 
 visible glory made and dedicated to the purposes, of the Great 
 Teacher — most mighty in his gentleness, most triumphant by his 
 endurance, most adorable by the charity that he tauglit to men, as 
 the immortal link to hold them still to God ! Could expression 
 have breathed upon the thoughts of St. Giles, thus he might have 
 delivered himself. He spoke not : but stood gazing at the church, 
 and thinking what a blessing it was upon a land, wherein temjilea 
 for such purjjoses abounded ; where solemn men set themselves 
 apart from the sordid ways of life, keepmg then* minds calm 
 and undefiled from the chink and touch of money, to heed of 
 nothing but the fainting, bleeding, en-ing hearts of those who had 
 dwelt upon the earth as though the earth had never a grave. Yes ; 
 it was a blessing to breathe in such a land. It was a destiny 
 demanding a daily prayer of thankfulness, to know that Christian 
 charity was preached from a thousand and a thousand pulpits ; to 
 feel that the spirits of the Apostles, their earnest, truthful spirits, 
 (ere solemnised by inspii'ation), still animated bishops, deans, and 
 rectors ; and even cast a glory on the worn coats of how many 
 thousand curates ! St. Giles, the returned transport, the igno- 
 rant and sinning man ; St. Giles, whose innocence of childhood 
 had been offered to the Moloch selfishness of society, even 
 St. Giles felt all this ; and with swelling heart and the tears in 
 his throat, passed down Ludgate-Hill with a fervent devotion, 
 thanking his God who had brought him from the land of cannibals 
 to the land of Christians. 
 
 And now is St. Giles aroused by a stream of people passing 
 upward and downward, and as though led by one purpose turning 
 into the Old Bailey. " What 's this crowd about 1 " he asked of 
 one, and ere he was answered, he saw far down at Newgate door 
 a scaffold and a beam ; and a mass of human creatures, crowded 
 like bees, gazing upon them. — " What 's this 1 " again asked 
 St. Giles, and he felt the sickness of death upon him. 
 
 " What 's this ! " cried a fellow with a sneering leer, — " Why, 
 where do you come tx-om to ask that ? Why it 's kmg George's 
 new drop, and this is the first day he 's going to try it. No more 
 hanging at Tyburn now; no more drinks of ale at the Pound. It 's 
 all now to be the matter of a minute, they say. But it will never 
 answer — it never does ; none of these new-fangled thmgs. Nothing 
 like the old horse and cai-t, take my word for it. Besides, all 
 London could see something of the show when they went to 
 Tyburn, while next to nobody can be 'commodated in the Old 
 Bailey. But it serves me right. If I hadn't got so preciou.s 
 drank last night, I 'd been up in time to have got a place near the 
 gallows. Silence ! There goes eight o'clock." 
 
 And as the hour was struck by the bells of Christian churches— 
 
 M -2
 
 164 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES 
 
 of churches b^iiK in Christ's name, who conquered vengeance by 
 charity — men were led forth to be strangled by men, their last 
 moments soothed and made hopeful by Christ's clergyman. 
 
 There was a sudden hush among the crowd ; and St. Giles 
 felt himself rooted where he stood ; with gaping mouth, and eyes 
 glaring towards Newgate. The criminals, trussed for the grave, 
 came out. " One — two — three — four — five — six — seven," — cried 
 St. Giles in a rising scream, numbering the wi'etches as each 
 passed to his place — " eight — nine — ten — good God ! how many? " 
 — and terror-stricken, he could count no further. 
 
 And then tlie last night's bacchanal next St. Giles, took up the 
 reckoning, counting as he would have counted so many logs of 
 wood, so many sacks of coals. — "Eight — nine — ten — eleven — 
 twelve — thirteen — fourteen — lifteen. That 's all ; yes, it was to 
 be fifteen : that little chap 's the last. Fifteen." 
 
 Reader, pause a moment. Drop not the book with sudden 
 indignation at the writer who, to make the ingredients of his story 
 " thick and slab," invents this horror. No ; he but copies from 
 the ckronicles of the Old Bailey. Turn to them, incredulous 
 reader, and you will find that on the balmy morning of the twenty- 
 third of June, in the year of our Offended Lord, one thousand 
 seven hundred and eighty-four, fifteen human beings were hanged 
 in front of Newgate : death-ofierings to the laws and virtues of 
 merry England. It was the firet day, too, of the new drop ; and 
 the novel engine must be graced with a gallant number. Fame 
 has her laurels ; why should not Justice have her ropes ? There 
 was, too, a pleasantry — the devil must joke after some such 
 fashion — in trying the substance and capacity of a new gallows, 
 by so much weight of human flesh convulsed in the death- 
 struggle. And so — great was the legislative wit ! — there were 
 fifteen to be strangled. A great example this to an erring, law- 
 breaking world of — the strength of timber ! 
 
 The Lords of the Privy Council had met, with good king George 
 the Third at their head, to correct the vices of the land. There 
 was death for the burglar — death for the footpad — death for the 
 sheejj-stealer — death, death, death for a huncbed difi"erent sinners. 
 The hangman was the one social jjliysician, and was thought to 
 cure all peccant ills. Horrible, ghastly quack ! And yet the 
 king's majesty believed ui the hideous mountebank, and every 
 week, by the advice of his Lords of the Council — the wise men 
 of St. James's, the Magi of the kingdom, the starred and gartered 
 philosojiliers and philanthropists — every week did sacred royalty 
 call in Jack Ketch to cure his soul-sick children ! Yea ; it was 
 with the hangman's fingers, that the father of his people touched 
 the People's Evil. And if in sooth the malady was not allayed.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 166 
 
 it wa.s for no lack of paternal tending, since we find in the Old 
 Bailey Register — that thing of blood, and bigotry, and ignorance, 
 — that, in one little year, in almost the first twelvemonth of the 
 new drop, the hangman was sent to ninety-six wretches, who were 
 publicly cured of their ills in the front of Newgate ! And the 
 Bang in Council thought there was no such remedy for crime as 
 the grave ; and therefore, by the counsel of his privy sages, foiled 
 not to prescribe death-warrants. To reform man was a tedious 
 and uncertain labour : now hanging was the sure work of a 
 minute. 
 
 Oh, that the ghosts of all the martyrs of the Old Bailey — and, 
 though our profession of faith may make some moral anti- 
 quarians stare, it is our invincible belief that the Newgate 
 Calendar has its black array of martyrs ; victims to ignorance, 
 perverseness, prejudice ; creatures doomed by the bigotry of the 
 Council table ; by the old haunting love of blood as the best cure 
 for worst of ills : — Oh, that the faces of all of these could look 
 from Newgate walls ! That but for a moment the men who 
 stickle for the laws of death, as for some sweet household privi- 
 lege, might behold the grim mistake ; the awful sacrilegious 
 blunder of the past ; and, seeing, make amendment for the 
 future. 
 
 A few minutes, and fifteen human creatures, sanctified with 
 immortal souls, were carcases. The vsdsdom of the king and 
 lords in council was made manifest to the world by fifteen scare- 
 crows to guilt, pendent, and swaying to and fro. A few minutes, 
 and the heart of London, ay of the Old Bailey, beat equably as 
 before. The criminals were hanged, cut down, and the mob 
 separated only to meet — if it should again please the wisdom of 
 the king in council — for a like show on the next Monday ; Saint 
 Monday being, in the good old hempen times, the hangman's 
 special saint's day. 
 
 The sufferers were scarcely dead, when St. Giles staggered like 
 a drunken man from the crowd. He made his way down Lud- 
 gate-hill, and sick and reelmg, proceeded up Fleet-street. He 
 saw, he felt that the people stared at him ; and the thought that 
 he was an escaped felon — that if detected he would as surely 
 rehearse the bloody scene, as surely as those fifteen corses scarce 
 done struggling — seemed to wither him. He stumbled against a 
 post ; then, for a moment gathering energy for the effort, he turned 
 up Shoe-lane, and entered a pulalic-house. " A mug of water, 
 master ; " he asked of the landlord. 
 
 " It's a liquor we don't sell," said the host, "and I can't afibrd 
 to give it away. "Water ! I should think a di-ara of brandy would 
 be better for your complaint. Why, you look like a blue-bag.
 
 1C6 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Got no catching sickness I hope ? If so, be so good as to go to 
 another house. I 've never yet had a day's ilhiess, and I don't 
 intend to have." 
 
 " Nothing but a little faint, master. I passed, just now, by the 
 OKI Bailey, and — and it 's been too much for me." 
 
 " Well, you must have a coddled sort of heart, you must. I 
 should have gone m^'self, only I couldn't leave the bar ; for they 
 don't hang fifteen every day, and — why, if now you aint as white 
 as if you 'd lun from the gallows yourself." 
 
 "Water, ma.ster — water," cried St. Giles, — " and for the 
 brandy, I '11 take that afterwards." 
 
 " Better take it fii-st," said the landlord, " but that 's your 
 business. Well, I shouldn't much like such customers as you," 
 he added, as St. Giles hastily quaifed the lymph. " Now, do 
 take some of the real stuff ; or, with that cold i-ubbish, you '11 give 
 yourself the aygur ; " and the host pressed the brandy. 
 
 " In a minute ; I '11 just sit down a bit," said St. Giles, and 
 taking the brandy, he entered a side-room. It was empty. Seat- 
 ing himself, with the untasted liquor before him, he again saw the 
 vision that had appalled and rooted him in the Old Bailey. He 
 could swear to it — it was clear to his eye as his own hand. All 
 but himself had beheld fifteen felons on the drop, but he had 
 seen sixteen ; and the last, the sixteenth, was himself; yes, if in 
 a glass he hail ever seen himself True ; it was but a vision — but 
 a vision that foreshadowed a horrid truth. He had escaped from 
 captivity to be hanged for the crime. All the bright promises of 
 the morning had vanished, and, in the bitterness of his thoughts, 
 he already sat in the gloom of Newgate. Thus sunk in miserj', 
 he was unconscious of the entrance of a \isitor, who, in a few 
 moments, startled him with a gi*eeting. 
 
 " Been to the Jug, mate ? A cruel fine day to be hanged on, 
 Lsn't it ? " asked the new-comer. 
 
 St. Giles looked at the speaker, who suddenly recoiled from 
 his glance, as from the glare of some wild beast. " Why, 
 what 's the matter ? " asked the man. " Do you think you '11 
 know me again, that you stai-e in that way ? Perhaps, you do 
 know me ? " 
 
 " Not at all, friend ; not at all ; though coming suddenly, you 
 startled me a little at first." But instantly, St. Giles recognised 
 his old ma.ster and tempter, Tom Blast. Vice had cut still deeper 
 lines in his wicked face ; time had crowned him with its most 
 horrid crown, grey haii-s upon a guilty head ; time sat heavily 
 up<jn his back, yet St. Giles knew his early tutor ; knew the 
 villain who had snared his boyhood, making him a doomed slave 
 for his natural life. Fierce thoughts rose in the heart of St. Giles,
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 167 
 
 as he gazed upon the traitor who had sokl him ; a moment, and 
 he could have dipped his hands in that old man's blood : another, 
 instant, and he looked upon him with compassion, -s^dth deepest 
 pity. The villain saw the change, and took new confidence. 
 
 " It 's lucky times for you, mate, if you can tipple brandy. If 
 I 've had nothing but five-farden beer since Tuesday, may I be 
 pisoned ! " 
 
 " You may have this for me," said St. Giles, and he gave 
 Blast the brand}', which the old knave greedily swallowed. 
 
 " Should like to meet with one o' your sort every day," cried 
 Blast, smacking his lips. " Never saw your like afore." 
 
 " Indeed 1 " asked St. Giles, who, from the tone and manner of 
 Blast, felt himself secure from discovery. " Indeed ? " 
 
 " No, never. You couldn't tell me where I could see you to- 
 morrow ? " asked Blast. 
 
 " Why, where may you be found — where do you live ? " ques- 
 tioned St. Giles quickly. 
 
 " Oh, I live at Horsleydown ; but I so like the look o' you, 
 mate, I '11 meet you here," answered Blast. " I 'm agreeable to 
 anything." 
 
 " Very well," said St. Giles, " say twelve o'clock ; we '11 have 
 another glass. Stay, you can have another now ; here 's sixpence 
 for the treat. I must go ; good bye ; " and St. Giles was hurrying 
 away, when Blast seized him by the hand, and whilst our hero 
 shrunk and shook at his touch, swore that he was a good fellow, 
 and a regular king. St. Giles, releasing himself, retreated quickly 
 from the house, casting frequent looks behind that lie might 
 not be followed by his former friend, whom, it was his hope, 
 desjjite of the engagement of the morrow, never to behold again. 
 Nevertheless, St. Giles had yearned to have some further speech 
 with Blast. Half-a-dozen times the words were at his Ii})s, and 
 then the fear of the chance of detection kept him dumb. And 
 then again he repented that he had not risked the peril, tliat he 
 might at once have known the fate of his mother. He had heai-d 
 no word of her. Was she dead ? Eemembering what was her 
 hfe, he almost hoped so. Yet she was the only creature of his 
 blood : and, if still li\'ing, it would be to him some solace — some- 
 thing to Imk him anew to her — to snatch her old age from the 
 horrors that defiled it. With. these thoughts, St. Giles took his 
 •way up the Strand, and feeling a strange pleasure in the daring, 
 was soon in Bow-street. He approached the office : the judg- 
 ment-seat where he was arraigned for his maiden theft. There at 
 the door, playing with his watch-chain — with almost the same face, 
 the same cut clothes, the same flower in his mouth, of fifteen years 
 before — stood Jerry "Whistle, otficer, and prime thief-taker. A sort
 
 168 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 of human blood-hound, as it seemed expressly fashioned by madam 
 nature, to watch and seize on evil-doers. He appeared to be sent 
 into this world with a peculiar nose for robbers ; scenting them 
 through all their doublings, although they should ])ut seas between 
 him and them. And Jerry performed his functions with such 
 extreme good-humour, seized upon a culprit with such great good- 
 nature, that it seemed imijossible that death should end a cere- 
 mony so cordially began. Jerry Wliistle would take a man to 
 Newgate as to a tavern ; a place wherein human uatui-e might 
 with the fattest and the strongest enjoy itself. 
 
 As St. Giles approached Whistle, he thought that worthy officer, 
 learned as he was in human countenances, eyed him with a look 
 of remembrance ; whereupon, with a wise boldness, St. Giles 
 stepped up to him, and asked the way to Seven Dials. " Straight 
 ahead, my tulip, and ask again," said Jerry ; and he continued to 
 suck his pink and chink his watch chain. 
 
 In a few minutes, St. GUes was in Short's Gardens. He looked 
 upwai'ds at the third floor ; where his first friend, ]\Irs. Aniseed, 
 had carried him to her gentle-hearted lord. Bright Jem. No : 
 they were tenants there no longer. The windows, always bright, 
 were crusted with dust ; two were broken, and patched with 
 paper. And there was no flower-pot, with its three-pennyworth 
 of nature from Covent-garden ; no siuging-bu-d. St. Giles, -n-ith a 
 sinking of the heart, passed on. It was plain he had lost a j^art of 
 something that, in his hours of exile, had made England so fair a 
 laud of promise to him. He turned his steps towards Seven 
 Dials. He would look up at the shop of the muffin-maker : of 
 course he could not make himself known — at least not yet — to 
 that sweet-aud-bitter philanthropist, Cajistick : but it would be 
 something to see how time had dealt with him. A short space, 
 and St. Giles approached the door ; the very threshold he had 
 crossed with basket and bell. Capstick had departed ; no muffin 
 graced the window. The shop was tenanted by a small under- 
 taker ; a tradesman who had to higgle with the poor ft)r his price 
 of laying that eye-sore, poverty, in the arms of the maternal earth 
 who, least partial of all mothers, treats her oflspring all ahke. 
 " Can he be dead ? " thought St. Giles, for the moment uncon- 
 sciously a.ssociatiiig his benefactor with the emblems of mortality ; 
 as tliough deatli had come there and edged the muffin-maker out. 
 .Ei-e he could think another thought, St. Giles stood in the shop. 
 The ma.ster, whistling a jig of the time, was at his work, driving 
 tin tacks into a ]>aby's coffin. The pawnbroker would have an- 
 other gown — a blanket, it might be — for those tin tacks ; but 
 that was nothing : why should wealth claim all the pride of the 
 world, even where pride is said to leave us — at the grave ?
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 1G9 
 
 " Do you know whether Mi-. Capstick 's alive 1 " asked St. Giles 
 of the whistling workman. 
 
 " Can't say, I 'm sure," answered the undertaker. " I only 
 know I Ve not yet had the luck of burj-ing him," 
 
 " I mean the muffin-maker, who lived here before you," said 
 St. Giles ; " you knew him 1 " 
 
 " 1 Ve heard of him, but never seen him — never want. He 
 was a tailor as was ruined last here. I say," — cried the under- 
 taker, with an intended joke in his eye — " I say, j^ou don't want 
 anjiihing in my way 1 " 
 
 St. Giles, making no answer, stept into the street. He then 
 paused. Should he go forward 1 He should have no luck that 
 day, and he would seek no further. And while he so determined, 
 he moved towards his native nook — the fetid, filthy comer, in 
 which he fii'st smelt what was called the air. He walked towards 
 Hog Lane. 
 
 Again and again did he pass it. Again and again did he 
 approach St. Giles's Church, and gaze upon the clock. It was 
 only ten ; too early — he was siu'e of that — to present himself in 
 St. James's-square. Otherwise he would first go there, and return 
 to the Lane under cover of the night. He then crossed the way, 
 and looked up the Lane. He saw not a face he knew. All he 
 had left were dead ; and new tenants, other wretches, fighting 
 against want, and gin, and ty]ihus, were preparing new loam for 
 the churchyard. No : he would not seek now. He would come 
 in the evening — it would be the best time, the very best. 
 
 With this feeling, St. Giles turned away, and was proceeding 
 slowly onward, when he paused at a shop-window. In a moment, 
 he felt a twitch at his pocket, and turning, lie saw a child of some 
 eight or ten years old, carrying away a silk handkerchief that 
 Becky, in exchange for the huswife, had forced upon him. How 
 sudden, and how great was St. Giles's indignation at the \Tillain 
 thief ! Never had St. Giles felt so strongly virtuous ! The pigmy 
 felon flew towards Hog Lane ; and in a moment, St. Giles 
 followed him and stood at the threshold of the house wherein 
 the thief had taken shelter. St. Giles was about to enter, when 
 he was suddenly stopt by a man — that man w;is Tom Blast. 
 
 " Well, if this isn't luck ! " said Blast spreading himself in the 
 door-way, to secure the retreat of the thief " Who 'd ha' thought 
 we should ha' met so soon 1 " 
 
 " All 's one for that," said St. Giles. " I 've been robbed, and 
 the young thief 's here, and you know it." 
 
 " A thief here ! Mind what you 're about, young man : do 
 mind what you say, afore you take away the character of a honest 
 house. We 've nothin' here but our good name to live upon, and
 
 170 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 so do mind what you 're about." And Blast uttered this with 
 such mock earnestness, looked so knowingly in the face of St. Giles, 
 that, unconsciou.sIy, he shrank from the speaker ; who contmued : 
 " Ls it likely now, that you could think anybody in this Lane 
 would pick a gentleman's pocket ? Bless your heart ! we 're all 
 so honest here, we are," and Blast laughed. 
 
 " I thought you told me," said St. Giles, confused, " that you 
 lived somewhere away at Ilorsleydown." 
 
 " Lor love you ! folks as are poor like us have, you know, a 
 dozen town-houses ; besides country ones under hedges and hay- 
 stacks. We can easily move about : we haven't much to stop us. 
 A ud now, to business. You 've really lost your handkercher 1 " 
 
 " 'Tisn't that I care about it," said St. Giles, " only you see 'twas 
 given me by somebody." 
 
 " Given ! To be sure. Folks do give away things, don't they ? 
 All the world 's gone mad, I thuik ; people do so give away." 
 St. Giles's heart fell at the laughuig, malignant look vnth which 
 Blast gazed upon him. It was plain that he was once again in 
 the hands of his master ; again in the power of the devil that had 
 first sold him. " Howsomever," continued Blast, " if you 've 
 really been robbed, and the thief 's in this house, shall T go and 
 fetch a officer ? You don't think, sir, do you" — and Blast grimied 
 and bowed his head — " you don't think, sir, as how I 'd pertect 
 anybody as had broke the laws of my native land ? Is it likely ? 
 Only say the word. Shall I go for a officer ? " 
 
 " No ; never mind — it doesn't matter. Still, I 've a ftmcy for 
 that handkercher, and will give more than it 's worth for it," 
 
 " Well, that 's like a nobleman, that is. Here, Jingo ! " — cried 
 Blast, stepping a pace or two into the passage, and bawling his 
 lustiest — "Jingo, here 's the gen'lman as has lost the handkercher 
 y(ju found ; bring it down, my beauty." Obedient to the command, 
 a ludf-naked chUd — with the very look and manner of St. Giles's 
 former self — instantly appeared, -w-ith the stolen goods in his hand. 
 " He 's sich a lucky little chap, this is," — said Blast — " nothin's 
 lost hereabout, that he doesji't find it. Give the fogle to the 
 gen'lman ; and who knows ? perhai)S, he '11 give you a guinea for 
 it." The boy obeyed the order, and stood with open hand for the 
 reward. St. Giles was about to bestow a shilling, when Tom 
 Bhust sidled towards him, and m an affected tone of confidence, 
 said, — " Couldn't think o' letting you do sich a thing." 
 
 " And why not ? " asked St. Giles, becoramg more and more 
 terrHied at the bold familiarity of tlie ruffian. " Why not ? " 
 
 " 'Tisn't right ; not at all proper ; not at all what I call natral" 
 — and liere Blast whispered in St. Giles's ear — "that money 
 should pass atween brothers."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. I7I 
 
 " Brothers ! " cried St. Giles. 
 
 " Ha, sir ! " said Blast, taking his former manner, — " you don't 
 know what a woman that Mrs. St. Giles was ! She was a good 
 soul, wasn't she ? You must know that her little boy fell in 
 trouble about a pony ; and then he was iu Newgate, being made 
 all right for Tyburn, jist as this little feller was born. And then 
 they took and transported young St. Giles ; and he never seed his 
 mother — never know'd nothin' that she'd got a little baby." 
 
 " And she 's dead ! " cried St. Giles. 
 
 " And, this I will say," answered Blast, " comfortably buried. 
 She was a good soul — too good for this world. You didn't know 
 St. Giles, did you 1 " said Blast with a laugh. 
 
 " Why do you ask 1 " replied the trembling transport. 
 
 " Because if you did, you mvist see the likeness. Come here, 
 Jingo," and Blast laid one hand upon the urchin's head, and with 
 the other pointed out his many traits of resemblance. " There 's 
 the same eye for a fogle — the same nose — the same everything. 
 And oh, isn't he fond o' ponies, neither ! jist like his poor dear 
 brother as is far away in Botany Bay. Don't you see that he's 
 the very spit on him ? " cried Blast. 
 
 " I can't say — ^how should I know 1 " answered St. Giles, about 
 to hurry off ; and then he felt a strange interest in the victim, 
 and paused and asked — " Who takes care of him, now his mother's 
 gone 1 " 
 
 " He hasn't a friend in the world but me," said Blast. 
 
 " God help hun ! " thought St. Giles. 
 
 " And I — though you'd never think it " — continued Blast, " 1 
 love the little varmint, jist as much as if I was his own father." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 With many words did Tom Blast strive to assure St Giles that 
 the orphan boy had foimd a watchful parent in his mother's 
 friend ; and St. Giles was fain to look believingly. He saw his 
 own doomed childhood in the miserable, mistaught creature : he 
 saw the wretch prepared to sell him, in due season, to Newgate 
 shambles ; and yet the passion, the agony that tugged at the 
 transport's heart must be subdued : he must mask his hate with 
 a calm look, must utter fi-iendly words. " 'Twas kind of you, 
 mate, — very kind," said St. Giles, "to take such cai-e of the 
 young cretm\ Well, good day ; " and St. Giles coloured and
 
 172 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 stammered as he felt the eye of Blast was upon him — " we shaJl 
 meet again." 
 
 " You never said a truer word," cried Blast, and he held forth 
 his hand. St. Giles breathed lieavily ; he would rather have 
 grasped a wolf by the throat ; and then he took the hand that 
 had all but fitted the halter to his neck. " We shall meet agin," 
 said Blast ; and the words, like bodiless furies, seemed to St. Giles 
 to fill the air around him. He passed from the lane into the open 
 street, and still they followed him ; each syllable seemed a devil 
 threatening him. " We shall meet again," rang in his ears, 
 torturing his brain ; and again he saw the ghastly horror of the 
 morning ; again beheld those fifteen corded wi'etches ; again 
 beheld the shadow of himself. He passed on, crossed the road ; 
 the street was thronged ; the hubbub of the day was at its 
 height ; yet St. Giles saw nothing but those pinioned men, and 
 the preacher of Christ's word, in tlie name of his merciful Master, 
 solacing simiers to be in a moment strangled by the warrant of a 
 Christian king. He paused, and with his hand before his eyes, 
 leaned against a wall ; and jiiercing words in terrible distinctness 
 fell upon him, — " I am the resurrection and the life." He started, 
 and a few paces from him, in St. Giles's churchyard, he beheld 
 the parish priest. The holy man was reading the burial service 
 over pauper clay ; was sanctifjing ashes to ashes, dust to dust, 
 amid the whii-1 of life — the struggle and the roar of money-clawing 
 London. 
 
 The ceremony went on, the solemn sentences tuned with the 
 music of eternal hopes, fitfully heard through cries of " Chairs to 
 mend," and " Live mackarel." The awful voice of Death seemed 
 scoff'ed, derided, by the reckless bully. Life. The prayer that em- 
 balmed poor human dust for the judgment, seemed as measured 
 gibberish that could never have a meaning for those who hurried 
 to and fro, as though immortality dwelt in theii- sinews. And that 
 staid and serious-looking man, with upturned eyes and sonorous 
 voice, clad in a robe of white, and holding an opened book, — why, 
 what was he 1 Surely, he was plajoug some strange part in a 
 piece of business in which business men could have no interest. 
 The ceremony is not concluded, and now comes an adventurous 
 trader with a dromedary and a monkey on its back, the well- 
 taught pug, with dofied feathered cap, sagaciously soliciting half- 
 pence. And there, opposite the churchyard, the jjrayer of the 
 priest commg brokenly to his ears, is a tradesman smiling at his 
 counter, ringing the coin, and scarcely snuffing the Golgotha at 
 his door, asking what article he shall next have the happiness to 
 show 1 And thus in London highways do Death and Life shoulder 
 each other. And Life heeds not tlie foul, imi^ertineut warning ;
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 173 
 
 but at the worst thinks Death, when so very near, a nuisance. It 
 is made by familiarity a nasty, vulgar, unhealthy thing ; it is too 
 close a neighbour to become a solemnity. 
 
 It has been held to be a wise, deep-thoughted ordinance of the 
 Egyi^tians that at their banquets was served a skeleton, that, in 
 its grim nakedness, it might preach their coming nakedness to aU 
 the revellers : that it might show their future outline of bone, 
 when called to lay aside the fleshly garment, laced and interlaced 
 with so divine a mystery of nerves that, subtle as light, conveys 
 the bliss of being. And so was a skull made a moralist ; and 
 solemn were the mute exhortations falling from its griiming jaws ; 
 profound its comic teaching. For, apart from association, the 
 expression of a bare skull has, to ourselves at least, little ia it 
 serious : nay, there has always seemed to us a quaint cheerfulness 
 in it. The cheek-bones look still puckered with a smile, as though 
 contracted when it flung aside the mask of life, and caught a 
 glimpse of the on-coming glory. 
 
 And the Egyptians ai'e lauded for their dinner skeleton. Indeed, 
 at the first thought, it seems a notable way of teaching sobriety 
 and good manners. Yet, could we come at the truth — could we 
 know the very heart of the banquet, throbbing after an hour or 
 so with hot wine, we should know, past dispute, how giievously 
 the great Preacher Bone had failed in his pur}30se. We should 
 hear of quick-%\'itted Egyirtians making unseemly jokes at his 
 gatmt nakedness ; we should see one rejsrobate idolater of leeks 
 capping death's-head witli an empty bowl, even as a boy ventures 
 a joke upon his sleeping schoolmaster. We should see another — 
 a fine young Theban — spirting wine in the cavernous eyeholes of 
 Death, bidding him look double for the libation. But of these 
 jests we hear nothing ; we only hear of the wisdom of the where- 
 about of the skeleton, and nothing of the aff"ronts that — we would 
 almost swear to the fact — its familiarity with the li-sdng di-ew 
 upon it. 
 
 And therefore — oh, legislators ! — remove city churchyards from 
 the shop-doors of citizens. Your goodly purpose has altogether 
 failed. By huddling the dead with the living, it was doubtless 
 your benign intention to place a lesson continually in the eyes of 
 trading men — to show them how vain and fleeting was even a cent. 
 per cent, profit — to jjrove that, however thumping the balance on 
 the books, Death, with his dirty, grave-yard fingers, might any 
 minute come and wipe it out. The thing has not prospered. How 
 many hackney-coach stands have with the best intention been 
 established near churchyards ! For hours and hom-s the driveiB 
 sit and sit, with one eye upon the grave, and another on the 
 pavement. And yet these men, so open to daily meditation — so
 
 174 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 ap])f>aled to by tomb-stone eloquence — these men are scarcely to be 
 trusted with unweighed bullion. We speak within mea.sure when 
 we say that not above a hundred times have we heard of a hackney- 
 coachman returning sovereigns which — in a moment of vinous 
 enthusiasm — had been unguardedly tendered for shillings. No : 
 we could swear it. Not above a hundred times. 
 
 And still St. Giles stood, listening to the burial service, when he 
 felt something pulling at his coat-skirt. He looked round, and 
 saw his half-brother, the pi-ecocious Jingo, lauded by Tom Blast, 
 at his side. " I say," cried the urchin, with a wink, and pointing 
 towai-ds a spot in the churchyard, " that 's where we put the old 
 'oman." 
 
 " What,— mother ? Where ? " cried St. Giles. 
 
 Jingo picked up a piece of broken tobacco-])ipe from the pave- 
 ment. " Bet you a pound," said the boy, " I '11 hit the place. 
 Why, jist there ; " and unerringly he pitched the fragment on a 
 distant grave. This done, Jijigo nodded in self-approval. 
 
 Witliout a word, St. Giles entered the churchyard, and ap- 
 proached the grave ; Jingo i-unning like a dog at his side. " Poor 
 soul ! poor soul ! " cried St. Giles ; and then, looking earnestly 
 down u^jon the clay, he added, '• after all, it 's a better place than 
 the Lane — a better place." 
 
 " Bless your 'art," said the boy, " that 's what mother said 
 afore she come here. She called me to her, and said she was 
 a-goin' to be 'appy at last — and then there was a man as read to 
 her two or three times out of a book, and would read for all Tom 
 Blast said he 'd get him pumped on for coming to the Lane — well, 
 ■when she talked o' being 'appy, the man said she was a wicked 
 cretur to think o' sich a thing. And then didn't the old 'oman 
 wring her hands, and call Tom Blast sich names — and didn't she 
 hug me like nothiu', and scream out, and ask who 'd take care 
 o' me ? " 
 
 " I '11 take care of you," cried St. Giles, and he placed an arm 
 about the boy's neck. " Be a good child, and I '11 take care of 
 you : I promise it — here I jiromise it ; here, where poor mother 
 lies. And you wall be a good boy, won't you ? " asked St. Giles 
 affectionately, and tetu'S came into his eyes. 
 
 " Oh, w'on't I though ! " cried Jingo, plainly expecting some 
 reward for his ready promise. 
 
 " I know you will — I 'm sure you will," said St. Giles, patting 
 the boy's head ; " and now go home, and you and I '11 meet again 
 afore long. Here 's a shilling for you ; and mind you take no more 
 handkerchei-s." Jingo seized the money — ducked his head up 
 and down — and in a moment disappeared in Hog Lane. " I'll save 
 him from that devil, — as God's in heaven I will," cried St. Giles;
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES, 175 
 
 and as though nerved -with a good purpose, he walked sharply on. 
 He had suddenly found in life a new responsibility, and with it 
 new determination. With this thought he pursued his rapid Avay 
 towards the mansion of St. ,Iames. With trembling hand he 
 struck the knocker : again and again, harder and harder. Still 
 the door remained closed : and then, to the fancy of St. Giles the 
 lion's head looked sneeringly at him, mocking his errand. " Thei-e 's 
 nobody at home," said St. Giles despondingly, and at the same 
 moment the door was opened by a footboy, a most bright mulatto 
 of about fifteen. There was an ease, a self-assurance in the youth, 
 that proved him to have been born for the brilliant livery that 
 adorned him. He seemed to have come into the world, like a 
 parroquet, to disport in gaudy covering. And thus, a very 
 nestling, he had been fledged with the St. James's livery ; for 
 when scarcely six years old, he had been presented as a sort of 
 doll footboy to one of the Marquess's daughters : Uke her pet pug, 
 he was such a curious little wretch — such a pretty little monster. 
 His colour was so bright — his nose so flat — his eyes so sharp — 
 and he had this advantage of the pug, his hair was so woolly. 
 Had he been made of the best Nankin china — and not compounded 
 of Saxon and negro blood — he had scarcely been more precious. 
 StUl, human toy as he was, he bad this di-awback from his 
 humanity : Ralph — such was his name — grew out of the curious , 
 he shot up from the squab Indian image into the lanky, loose- 
 jointed youth. Could he have remained all his life under four 
 feet, he would have continued a treasure ; but he grew, and 
 growing, was lowered from the eminence of his childhood to the 
 flat walk of the servants'-hall. It was so pretty to see him — like 
 an eltin dwarf from some Indian mme — tripping with prayer- 
 book at his young lady's heels : but nature, with her old vidgarily, 
 would have her way, and so, Ralph, the son of Cesar Gum, who 
 was duly married to Kitty Muggs, who in good time duly buried 
 her African lord, — Ralph, we say, was fast spindling into the 
 mere footman. And he had ever had a quick sense of the rights 
 of livery. It was a garb that, placing him in near and dear 
 commrmication with the noble, by consequence elevated him to a 
 height, not measurable by any moral barometer, above common 
 people. He looked from under his gold-laced hat, as ft-om a ladiler, 
 down upon the \ailgar. His mother, the widowed Gum, would in 
 her mild, maternal way remonstrate with her beloved child, on 
 his unchristian pride ; and when in turn rebuked, as she never 
 failed to be, with exorbitant interest, she would comfort hei-self 
 by declaring, " that it was just so with his blessed father, who 
 was gone to a better place. He, too, had such a spirit." Little 
 thought St. Giles, as he stood confronted with that young mulatto
 
 176 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 — at the time with all his thoughts half-buried in a pottle, from 
 which he fished up strawberry after strawberry, conveying the 
 fruit with a judicial smack to his mouth, — little thought St. Giles 
 that he stood before the only child of the negro Cesar who, in 
 Covent Garden watch-house, had borne ■s\-itness against him. As 
 yet St. Giles had ventured no syllable of inquiry, when young 
 Ealph, in his own masterly manner, began the dialogue. 
 
 " I say, if it isn't an unci%-il thing to put to a gentleman, — ^how 
 much might you have give the Marquess for this house ? You 
 couldn't tell us, nohow, could you 1 " and master Ralph sucked a 
 strawberry between his white, paternal teeth. 
 
 " What do you mean, mate ? " asked St. Giles, with a stare. 
 
 Ealph returned an astonished look at the familiarity, and then 
 spat a strawberry-stalk on St. Giles's foot. He then continued 
 " "VMiy, in course you 've bought the house, or else you 'd never 
 have made such a hullabaloo with the knocker. As I said afore, 
 how much might you have give for it ? " 
 
 " I ask your pai-don, I 'm sure," said St. Giles, " I thought at 
 last everj'body was out." 
 
 " Eveiybody but me — for kitchen-maids go for nothing — is. But 
 what did you give for the house, I say 1 " again repeated the 
 witty Ealph, laughing at his omti indomitable humour. 
 
 " Lor, Ealph," cried a female head, hanging over the banister ; 
 " lor, Ealph, why don't you answer the poor man ? " Saving 
 this, the head for a moment disappeared, and then again showed 
 itself on the shoulders of a fat little woman, who bustled dowu 
 into the hall. 
 
 " Now, I tell you what it is," said the youthful footman, glowing 
 very yellow, and holding up his fore-finger at the intruder, " if 
 you don't let me mind my business, you sha'n't come here when 
 they're out at all, — now mind that." 
 
 " Ha ! if only your dear father could hear you, wouldn't it 
 break his heart ! For the seven years we lived together he never 
 said a crooked word to me, and Ealph, you know it. He u-as a 
 man," said the widow in that earnest tone with which widows 
 woiild sometimes fain convey a sense of value of the past 
 invaluable. " He was a man ! " 
 
 "I s'pose he was" — replied the filial Ealph — " j^ou've said so 
 such a many times : all I know is, I know nothing about liim — 
 and I don't want to know nothing." 
 
 " Well, if ever I thought to hear such words come out of that 
 livery ! Don't you exi^ect that something will happen to you ? 
 Know nothing about your own father ! When — only you 're a 
 shade or two lighter, for your dear father wasn't ashamed of what 
 God give him to cover him with — only a shade or two, and you're
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 177 
 
 as like him as one crow 's like another." This Mrs. Gum empha- 
 tically clenched with — " And you know you are." 
 
 Master Ralph Gum turned a deeper and deeper yellow, as his 
 mother sj^oke. His indignation, however, at his avowed similitude 
 to his dejjarted sire, was too large to be voluble through a human 
 mouth. He therefore turned abruptly from his widowed jiarent, 
 and angrily sliouted at St. Giles — " What do you want ? " 
 
 " I want his young lordship," answered St. Giles. " He told 
 me to bring this," and St. Giles presented the card. 
 
 " Well, I can read this plain enough," said Ralph. 
 
 " And if you can," cried Mrs. Gum, " who have you to thank 
 for the blessing but your dear father ? Till his dying day, he 
 couldn't read, sweet fellow ; but he made you a gentleman, and 
 yet you know nothing about him." 
 
 " You shan't come here at all, if you can't behave yourself," 
 cried Master Ralph to his mother, evidently meaning to keep his 
 word. Then turning to St. GUes, he said — " You 'd better take 
 this to Mr. Tangle." 
 
 " Tangle — a — lawyer ? " cried St. Giles, with a quick recollec- 
 tion of that wise man of Newgate. 
 
 " He 's at the Committee at the Cocoa-Tree : I dare say it 's 
 'lection business, and he '11 send you down — if you 're worth tlie 
 money — with the other chaps. I don't know nothing more about 
 it," cried Master Ralph, perceiving that St. Giles was about to 
 make further enquiry — " all I can say to you is, the Cocoa-Tree." 
 
 " T 'm a going a little that way, young man," said Mrs. Gum, 
 " and I '11 show you." 
 
 " And mind what I say," cried Ralph to his mother, closing 
 the door, and speaking with his face almost jammed between it 
 and the postern, " mind what I say ; if you can't behave yourself, 
 you don't come no more here." And then he shut the door. 
 
 " Ha ! he doesn't mean it — not a bit of it," said ]\Irs. Glim, 
 " He 's such a good cretur ; so like his father — only a little more 
 lively." 
 
 " And he 's dead ?" said St. Giles, not knowing well what to say. 
 
 "And I'm alone," sighed Mrs. Gum. "His father was a 
 flower, that cretur was : he 'd a kissed the stones I walk upon. 
 He was too honest for this world. He caught his death — nothing 
 shall ever persuade me out of it — upon principle." 
 
 " After what fashion ? " asked St. Giles. 
 
 " Why you see it was in a hard frost ; and poor soul ! if there 
 was a thing he couldn't 'bide in the world, it was frost. He 
 hated it worser than any snake ; and it was nat'ral, for he was 
 bom in a hot place, where monkeys and cocoa-nuts come from — 
 this is the way to the Cocoa-Tree. Well, it was a hard frost, and
 
 178 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 he was out with the can-iage at a state ball at the Palace. He 
 was m full-dress of com-se — with those di-eadful silk stockings. 
 All the other servants put on their gaiters ; but he wouldn't — he 
 was so partic'Iar to orders. Well, the cold flew to the calves of 
 his legs, and then up into his stomach, and then — oh, young man ! 
 I 've never looked at silk stockings that I hav'n't shivered again. 
 That 's the way to the Cocoa-Tree ! " — And with this, Mrs, Gum, 
 possibly to hide her emotion, suddenly turned a corner, and left 
 St. Giles alone. 
 
 But he needed no pilotage : the Cocoa-Tree was well known to 
 him ; and with his best haste he made his way to its hospitaUty, 
 Arrived, he enquired for INIr. Tangle, and was immediately shown 
 into the presence of that veiy active legalist, who sat at the 
 head of a table with a heap of papers before him. On each side 
 of the table sat a row of thoughtful men, each with a glass at his 
 hand, all convoked to protect the British Constitution, menaced as 
 it was in its most vital part — a part, by the way, seldom agreed 
 upon by those who talk most about it — by a candidate for the 
 representation of the borough of Liquorish ; an intruder upon the 
 property of the Marquess of St. James. The borough, time out of 
 mind, had been the property of the family : to attempt to wrest it 
 from the family gi-asp was httle less felonious than an attack upon 
 the ftimily plate-chest. Twice or thrice there had been murmurs 
 of a threatened contest ; but now, on the retu'ement of Sir George 
 Warmington from the seat, that his young lordship might gi'ace- 
 fully drop himself into it, a plebeian candidate, with an alarming 
 amount of money, had absolutely declared himself. Such audacity 
 had stirred from its depths the veiy purest patriotism of Mr. 
 Tiingle, who lost no time in waiting upon Mr. Foldei" — with whom 
 since the fii-st Sabbath mterview in Eed Lion Square, he had kept 
 up a running acquaintanceship, — and immecUately oflering himself, 
 body and the precious soul the body contained, at the service of 
 the Marquess. JVIi", Folder had just the order of mmd to perceive 
 and value the merits of Tangle ; and the lawyer was instantly 
 appointed as the head and heart of the committee sittmg at the 
 Cocoa-Tree, for his young Lordship's return for — in the words of 
 Tangle — liis own sacred property of Liquorish, 
 
 " Well, my good young man," said Tangle to St, Giles, " you 
 of course are one of the right sort ? You come to give us a vote ? 
 To be sure you do. Well, there 's a post-chaise for you, dinners 
 on the road — hot suppers, and a bottle of generous wine to send 
 you happy to ]>ed. His lordship scorns to give a bribe ; but every 
 honest voter has a right to expect the common necessaries of life." 
 
 " I 've never a vote," said St. Giles, " notliiug of the sort, I 
 wish I had,"
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. I79 
 
 " You wish yoii had, indeed ! " cried Tangle. " None of your 
 impudence, fellow. What brings you here, then 1 " 
 
 " I 've been to his lordshijj's house, and they sent me here. 
 His lordship told me to come to him in London, and give me this 
 card. He told me as how he 'd take me into his service," added 
 St. Giles with a slight sliudder, for as Tangle looked full upon 
 him, he remembered all the horrors of Newgate — all brought to 
 his memory by that legal stare. Years had passed over Tangle, 
 and save that the lines in his face were cut a little deepei", and 
 marked a little blacker, his were the same features — the very same 
 — that frowned on the boy horse-stealer in the condemned cell. 
 
 " "Well, his lordship 's not here," said Tangle ; " and he 's too 
 busy now to attend to such raff as you. Away with you." 
 
 " Stop, stop," cried a low, whistling voice ; and a gentleman 
 with a very white, thistledown kind of hair, a small, withered face, 
 and remarkably little eyes, called back St. Giles. " I suppose, 
 my man," said the aged Mr. Folder, putting on his best possible 
 look of vigour, and endeavouring to make the most of his shrunk 
 anatomy, " I suppose, my fine fellow, you can fight ? Eh ? You 
 look as if you could fight ? " And then the querist chuckled, as 
 though he talked of an enjoyment jjeculiarly adapted to man. 
 
 " Why, yes, sir," said St. Giles, " I can fight a little, I hope, in 
 a good cause." 
 
 " Upon my life, Mr. Folder," said Tangle, " the world 's come 
 to something when such as he is to judge of causes." 
 
 "But he^s a stout fellow — a very stout fellow," whispered 
 Folder to the lawyer ; " and as I 'm credibly informed that the 
 other side have hired an army of ruffians — I even know the very 
 carpenter who has made the bludgeons — why, we mustn't be 
 taken by surprise. I 'm never for violence ; but when our blessed 
 constitution is threatened by a rabble, we can't be too strong." 
 
 Mr. Tangle nodded sagaciously at this, and again addressed 
 St. Giles. " Well, then, fellow, if you 're not above earning an 
 honest bit of bread, we '11 find employment for you. Besides, you 
 may then see his lordship, and he may have an opportunity of 
 knowing what you 're woi-th." 
 
 " I 'U do anjrthing for his lordship, bless him ! " cried St. Giles. 
 
 " There, now, none of your blessings. We 're too old birds to be 
 caught with such chalf as that. Your duty as an honest man wall 
 be to knock down everybody that wears a yellow libaud, and to 
 ask no questions." Such were the instructions of Tangle ; and 
 St. Giles, who had no other hope than to see his lordship, bowed 
 a seeming acquiescence, 
 
 " You may get some refreshment," whiffled Folder, " and so be 
 ready to staii with the next batch. JNIind, however, at least until 
 
 N 2
 
 ISO ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 the day of nouiiiiation, to keep yoiu-self sober ; ou that day, wliy 
 ever\-tiuug 's ad libitiun. When I say ad lilitum, I mean that 
 you will be expected to take the best means to defend our blessed 
 constitution. And when I say the best means — " 
 
 " He knows, Mr. Folder ; he knows," interrupted Tangle. 
 " He '11 drink like a fish, and fight like a cock ; I can tell it by the 
 looks of liim : " and with this compliment the attorney waved 
 St. Giles from the apartment ; a waiter taking possession of him, 
 and showing him to a smaller room wherein were congi-egated about 
 a dozen minstrels, especially hired by Tangle to play away the 
 hearts and voices of the voters of Liquorish. Our blessed consti- 
 tution was to be supported by a big drum, two or three trumpets, 
 as many clarionets, an oboe, a fiddle or two, and a modest triangle. 
 " There was nothing like music to bring folks up to the poll," was 
 the avowal of Tangle. " Fools were always led by the ears. 
 When they heard ' Hearts of oak,' they always thought they had 
 the commodity in theii* own breasts — and never paused at the 
 briberj'^ oath, when ' Britons strike home ' was thundering beside 
 'em. He 'd carried many an election with nothing but music, 
 eating and drinking, and plenty of money. Music was only 
 invented to gammon human nature ; and that was one of tlie 
 reasons women were so fond of it." And animated by this 
 forlorn creed, ]\Ii'. Tangle had ordered the aforesaid minstrels to 
 meet that day at the Cocoa-Tree that they might be duly trans- 
 ported to the borough of Liquorish. There was no doubt that 
 nmsicians might have been engaged on or near the spot ; but there 
 was something tasteful and generous in hiiing harmony at the 
 mart of all luxuries — London. All the minstrels — Apollo is so 
 often half-brotlier to Bacclius — were very di'unk ; and therefore 
 gave an uproarious welcome to St. Giles. Brief, however, was 
 tlie greeting; for in a few minutes the waiter returned with 
 the intelligence tliat " the van was at the door ; and that Mr. 
 1'angle's order was that they should drive ofi" directly ; otherwise 
 they wouldn't he. at Liquorish that blessed night." Hereupon 
 there was a clamorous order for a glass all round ; the minstrels 
 being unanimous in their determination not to stir a foot or strike 
 a note in defence of the glorious constitution without it. Mr. 
 Tangle knew his mercenaries too well to oppose such patriotism ; 
 tlierefore the liquor was brought and swallowed, and the band, 
 with St. Giles among them, climbed into the strange, roomy vehicle 
 at the iloor ; the driver, with the flame of brandy burning in his face, 
 taking the reins. The horses, employed ou the occasion, had evi- 
 dently been degi-aded for the nonce. They were large, sleek, 
 Bjiirited creatures, pi'ematurely removed from a carriage, to whirl 
 a jjlebeian vehicle thiity miles irom London, at the quickest speed.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 181 
 
 There seemed a sad, an ominous contrast between the driver and 
 the beasts. He might continue to hold the reins between his 
 fumbhng fingers ; he might maintain his seat ; the horses might 
 not, contemptuous of the human brute above them, cast off his 
 government. Such were evidently the thoughts of the waiter as 
 he cast an eye from the steeds to the driver, and then laughed as 
 the wickedness of human nature will sometimes laugh at its 
 inward prophecy of mischief. In that leer, the waiter foresaw 
 the driver and the contents of the caravan suddenly weltering 
 like frogs in a ditch. 
 
 " All ready, gemmen ? " hiccupped the driver, tr^dng to look 
 round at his harmonious load. 
 
 " Wait a minute," cried the first clarionet, who was also the 
 leader ; " jest a minute," and then he made his instrument give a 
 horrible scream and grunt, whereupon he cried " all right," and 
 burst into " See the conquering hero comes," his co-mates follow- 
 ing him with all the precision permitted by rough-riding and hard 
 drinking. And so they took their way from the Cocoa-Tree, 
 plajdng beyond Shoreditch an anticipatory strain of triumjih — a 
 glorifying measure that was to herald the conquest of young St. 
 James in the cause of purity and truth. 
 
 " I think we 've given 'em their belly-full now," at length said 
 the hautboy, removing the peace-breaker from his lips. " We 
 needn't play to the green bushes," and the musician looked about 
 him at the opening country. " I say," and he called to the driver, 
 " I do hear that the other side isn't a going to have no music at 
 all ; no flags ; no open houses for indejDendent voters. A good 
 deal he knows about the wants of the people. Bless his in- 
 nocence ! Thinks to get into Parliament without music ! " 
 
 " Well, it is wonderful," observed one of the fiddlers, an old, 
 thin-faced, somnolent-looking man, with the tip of his nose like 
 an old pen dyed with red ink — " it is odd to consider what igno- 
 ramuses they are that think to go into Parliament. Why you can 
 no more make a member without music thn.n biicks without 
 straw ; it is'nt to be done. Speechifying 's very well ; but there 's 
 nothing that stirs the hearts of the people, and makes 'em think 
 o' their rights, like a jolly band." 
 
 " One bang of my drum," observed the humble advocate of that 
 instrument, " sometimes goes more to make a Member of Parlia- 
 ment than all his fine sayings. Bless your souls ! if we could only 
 come to the bottom of the matter, we should find that it was in 
 fact our instruments that very often made the law-makers, and not 
 the folks as vote for 'em : my big drum 's represented in Par- 
 liament, though I dare be sworn there 's not a member that will 
 stoop to own it."
 
 182 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 "And my cLmouet 's represented too," cried the leader, advo- 
 cating liis claim. 
 
 " Yes, and my triangle," exclaimed the player of that three- 
 sided instrument, wholly unconscious of the satiric truth that fell 
 fiora him. , 
 
 " Capital ale here ! " cried the driver, Tvith increasing thickness 
 of speech, as he drew up at an mn-door. It was plain that the 
 county of Essex — or at least that part of it that led from London 
 tu Liquorish — was peculiarly blessed with good ale : for at every 
 inn, the driver pulled up short, and proclaimed the heart-cheering 
 news — " Capital ale here ! " They were the only words he uttereii 
 from the time he had passed Shoreditch-church. Indeed he 
 seemed incapable of any other speech : he seemed a sort of human 
 jiarrot, reared and taught in a brewerj^, endowed with no other 
 syllables than " Capital ale here ! " And still, as we have hinted, 
 the M'ords gi'ew thicker and thicker in his mouth ; too thick to 
 drop from his lijis, and so they rumbled in his jaws, whilst he cast 
 a hopeless look about him, despairing to get them out ; yet at 
 eveiy new hostelry making a sound that plainly meant — " Capital 
 ale here." Happily for him, according to his dim idea of felicity, 
 he mumbled to quick interpreters. Hence, ere half the journey 
 was accomplished, the di'iver seemed possessed of no more intel- 
 ligence than a lump of reeking clay. He twiddled the reins 
 between his fingers, and sometimes opened his eyes, that saw not 
 the backs of the horses they tried to look down upon. But 
 the brutes were intelligent ; they, it appeared, knew the road ; 
 knew, it almost seemed so, the fUthy imbecility of the driver ; and 
 so, with either a pity or contempt for the infirmity of human 
 nature, they took care of their charioteer and liis besotted pas- 
 sengers. True it is, St. Giles at times cast anxious looks about 
 him ; at times, ventured to hint a doubt of the sobi-iety of the 
 diiver, whereupon, he was called a fool, a coward, and a nincom- 
 pooj), by liis companions, who considered his anxiety for the safety 
 of his bones as an extreme ]iiece of conceit, very offensive to the 
 rest of the company. " You won't break sooner than any of us, 
 will you ? " asked the first fiddle. " Besides, you 're too drunk 
 for any harm to come to you." St. Giles was sober as a water- 
 god. " A good deal too drunk ; for if you knew anj-thmg — I say, 
 that was a jolt, Witsn't it 1 "—(for the vehicle had bounced so 
 violently against a milestone, that the shock half-opened the eyes 
 of the driver)—" you'd know that a man who 's properly drunk 
 never comes to no sort of harm. There 's a good angel always 
 living in a bottle ; you 've only to empty it, and the angel takes 
 care of you directly: sees you home, if it's ever so daik, and 
 finds the keyhole for you, if your hand is ever so unsteady. No :
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 183 
 
 it 's only yoiir sueak-up chaps, that are afraid of the glass, that 
 get into trouble, break their bones, and catch rheumatiz, and all 
 thal^ Whereas, if your skm 's as full of liquor as a grape 's full 
 of juice, you may lay yourself down in a ditch, like a Httle baby in 
 his mother's lap, and wake in the morning for all the world like a 
 opening lily." 
 
 The latter part of this sentence was scarcely heard by St. Giles, 
 for the horses had suddenly burst into a gallop ; the vehicle 
 swayed to and fro, flew round a turning of the road, and striking 
 against the projecting roots of a huge tree, threw all its human 
 contents into a green-mantled pond on the other side of the narrow 
 highway, one wheel rolling uidej^endeutly off. St. Giles, unhurt, 
 but drenched to the skin, immediately set about rescuing his all 
 but helpless comj^anions. He tugged and tugged at the inert 
 mass, the driver, and at length succeeded in dragging him from 
 the pond, and setting him against a bank. He groaned, and his 
 lips moved, and then he grunted — " Capital ale here." The first 
 clarionet scrambled from the pool, and seizing his instrument, that 
 had rolled into the mud, immediately struck up " See the con- 
 quering hero comes ! " The first drum, inspired by the melodious 
 courage of his companion, banged away at the j^archment, but 
 alas ! for the first fiddle : the bacchanal good angel, of which 
 he had bvit a minute since so loudly vaunted, had forsaken him 
 at liis worst need ; and that prime Cremona was rescued from 
 water, mud, and duckweed with a broken arm. He was, how- 
 ever, unconscious of the injury ; and before he was well out of the 
 pond, assured St. Giles that if he would only have the kindness 
 and good-fellowship to let him alone, he could sleep where he was 
 like an angel. 
 
 It was about ten o'clock at night, but for the season very dark. 
 St. Giles, from the time that he could see the milestones, knew 
 that he must be near the wished-for borough. It was in vain to 
 talk to his companions. Some were senseless and stupid ; some 
 roaring bravado, and some trying to give vent to the most horrid 
 music. Again and again St. Giles hallooed, but the louder he 
 cried, the stronger the big drum beat — the more demoniacally the 
 clarionet screamed. There was no other way : he would instantly 
 seek the fii-st habitation, that he might return with succour to 
 the wet, the drunk, and the wounded.
 
 184 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVITI. 
 
 St. Giles had iim pretty briskly for some quarter of an hour, 
 when he discovered in the distance — ^glowing amid trees — a speck 
 of light. It was plain, there was a human habitation, though 
 away from the main road. He paused for a moment : should he 
 follow the highway, or strike off in the direction of that taper ? 
 Another moment, and he had leapt the hedge, and was making 
 fast for the beacon. He crossed two or three fields, and then 
 found himself in a windmg green lane : now, as he ran on, he 
 lost the light ; and now again, like lioj^e renewed, it beamed upon 
 him. At length he came full upon the homestead. It was an 
 old cii'cuku' dwelling ; so tlironged about by tree and bush, that it 
 seemed impossible that any light within could manifest itself to 
 the distimt waj'larer. A type this, as it will apjjear, of the heart, 
 of the ma.ster. He affected a solitude from the w' orld : he believed 
 that he was hidden from his fellow-man, and yet the inextinguish- 
 able goodness that glowed withm liim, made him a constant mark 
 for the weary and wretched. For a brief space, St. GUes con- 
 sidereil the cottage. It was plastered with rough-cast ; at the 
 first glance, seemingly a poor, squalid nook. But a closer survey 
 showed it to be a place where the household gods fared not upon 
 black bread and mere watei. The garden patch before it was 
 fiUed with choicest flowers ; not a weed intruded its idle life upon 
 them. It was a place where neatness and comfort seemed to 
 have met in happiest society. St. Giles listened, and heard low 
 voices within. At length, he knocked. 
 
 •' Wlio 's there ? " said the master of the house. " If it 's for 
 the taxes, come in the morning." 
 
 " It 's a traveller," answered St. Giles, " that wants help for a 
 lot of 2)oor souls that 's tumbled in a ditch." 
 
 In a moment the door was opened, and a grey-headed, large- 
 faced, burly man, with a candle in his hand, stood at the thres- 
 hold. He warily placed the light between the speaker and 
 himself, shading it, and with a suspicious glance looked hard 
 upon St. Giles ; whose eager soul was in a moment in his eyes ; 
 and then, trembling from head to foot, he cried, " God be blessed, 
 sir — and is it indeed you 1 " 
 
 " My name, traveller, is Capstick," said the man, bending his 
 brows upon St. Giles, and looking determined to be too much for 
 the stranger at his door ; a new comer, it was very likely, come
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 185 
 
 to trick liim. " My name is Capstick, what may be yours ? Here, 
 Jem, you slug — do you know this pilgrim '] " 
 
 Another moment, and Jem — old Bright Jem, with grey grizzled 
 head, shrunk face, and low bent shouldei's — stood in the door-way. 
 Ere Jem could speak, St. Giles discovered him : " And you, too, 
 here ! Lord, who 'd have hoped it ? " 
 
 " Don't know a feather on him," said Jem, " but he seems to 
 know us, wet as he is." 
 
 " Why, that 's it, you see. A feUow from a horse-pond will 
 know anybody who 's a supper and a bed to give liim. It 's the 
 base part of our base nature." And then the misantlu-ojoe turned 
 to St. Giles. " Well, my wet friend, as you know my name and 
 Jem's, what mark may you cany ia the world 1 What name 
 have you been ruddled with 1 " 
 
 St. Giles paused a moment ; and then stammering said, " You 
 shaU know that by-and-bye." 
 
 " Very well," cried Capstick, " we can wait." Sajdug this, he 
 again stepped back into the cottage, and was about to close the 
 door. 
 
 " Oh, never mind me," cried St. Giles ; " I '11 get on as I can ; 
 all I ask of you is to come and help the poor creturs : some of 
 'em dying with their hurts for what I know." 
 
 " Jem," said Capstick, " we 're fools to do it ; but it 's clear, 
 we were born to be fools. So, get the lantern, that we may go 
 and bury the dead. Do make haste, Jem," urged Capstick with 
 strange misanthropy ; albeit Jem moved about Tvith aU the vigour 
 time had left him. " How you do crawl — though, after all, I 
 don't see why you should n't. What 's people ia a ditch to them 
 who 've a warm bed and a snug roof over 'em ? Then as for 
 d}ing, death 's every man's own business ; quite a private affair, 
 in which, as I see, nobody else has any right to trouble himself. 
 Now, do come along, you old caterjiillar," and Capstick, staff in 
 hand, stept forth, Jem ILmptag after him. 
 
 Whilst Capstick leads the way — a shorter one than that 
 traversed by St. Giles — into the main road, we may explain to 
 the reader the combined causes that have presented the muffin- 
 maker and linkman as little other than eremites on the sku'ts of 
 the borough of Liquorish. Mr. Capstick had turned his mufiius 
 into a sufficient number of guineas for the rest of his days, and 
 therefore determined to retire fi'om Seven Dials to the coimtiy. 
 Mrs. Capstick would never hear of going to be buried aUve from 
 London ; and therefore resolved upon nothing more remote than 
 a suburban whereabout. Hackney, or Pimlico, or Islington, she 
 might be brought to endure ; but no, if she knew herself, nothing 
 should make her go and live, as she pathetically put it, Uke an owl
 
 186 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 in a bush. Capstick met all these objections in his usually lofty 
 way : " she was a foolish woman, but would learn better." This, 
 asjain and again he avowed ; though no man had less faith in the 
 avowal than himself Still, it kept up his dignity contmually to 
 call his wife a foolish woman ; albeit, he was generally compelled 
 to yield to the folly he imperiously condemned. Matters were 
 at this crisis, when suddenly Mrs. Capstick fell sick and died. 
 " She would have been au excellent creature," Capstick said, " il 
 it had not been her misfortune to be a woman. However, poor 
 soul ! she could not help that ; and therefore, why should he 
 blame her 1" Very often, Capstick would so deliver himself, his 
 eyes fiUing with tears, as he tried to twitch his lijis into a cynical 
 smile at all womankind, and at the late Mrs. Capstick in parti- 
 cular. " Still," he would say, " she had her virtues. Every day 
 of her life woidd she walk round every one of his shirt-buttons 
 that no one of them might be missing. He hated all tombstone 
 flourishes, otherwise he would have had that special virtue — he 
 meant the buttons — specially named in her epitaph. One comfort, 
 however, he always had to think of : whatever his love was for 
 lier, he never let her know it. Oh dear no ! It was like showing 
 the weak part of a fortress to all comers : some day or the other 
 'twould be sure to be taken advantage of." 
 
 And the death of Mrs. Capstick — the muffin-maker would never 
 confess that for months he pined like a solitary dove at the loss — 
 left him free to choose his abode. Wliereupon he quitted London, 
 and built himself a house almost buried hi a wood some two miles 
 from Liquorish ; and this house, or lii;t, setting himself up as a 
 sort of Diogenes — kind, butter-hearted impostor ! — he called with 
 a flourish. The Tub ! The satire was lost upon nearly all the 
 inhabitants of Liquorish, many of whom discovered, as they 
 believed, a veiy natural cause for so strange a name. There was 
 no doubt — it was urged by many — that Capstick had, in his day, 
 made large sums of money by smuggling : hence, out of pure 
 gratitude to the source of his fortune, he had called his cottage a 
 Tulj. Indeed, two or three of the shrewder sort dropt mystic 
 hints about the possibility of finding, somehow attached to the 
 Tub, au unlawful still. People — this apothegm clenched the 
 suspicion in the hearts of some — people did not live in a wood for 
 notliiug ! 
 
 Bright Jem had lost hLs cordial, good-natured mate, some four 
 or five years before the death of Mrs. Capstick. He would, in his 
 despair, tell the nmffin-maker that " his poor Susan had somehow 
 carried away liis heart into her grave with her ; he had no mind 
 to do nothing." Sometimes, too, he would borrow a melancholy 
 similitude fi-om the skittle-gi'ound, and shaking his head, would
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 187 
 
 exclaim that " he was a down pin." To this son-ow, the muffin- 
 maker would apply what he thought a sharp philosophy by way 
 of cure. He would mean to drop gall and vinegar into the hurts 
 of his poor and poorer neighbour — for, as Jem would often declare, 
 Susan seemed to have taken away all his luck with her — but he 
 could deal in nought save oil and honey. Capstick flourished, and 
 Bright Jem faded. Great and increasing was the fame of the 
 muffins ; but the link waned, and waned, and Bright Jem, 
 weakened by sickness, almost crippled by the effijcts of cold, 
 would have been passed to the workhouse, as he would often say, 
 to "pick oakum and wait for the grave-digger." This fate, 
 hov/^ever, was warded from him by the stony-hearted misanthroj^e, 
 Capstick ; by the muffin-maker, who, declaring that all men were 
 wolves and tigers, would, at their least need, tend the carnivora, 
 as though they were bruised and wounded lambs. Hear him talk, 
 and he would heap burning ashes on the head of weak humanity. 
 Watch liis doings, and with moistened eyes he would pour a pre- 
 cious ointment there. For years it was the weekly practice of 
 Capstick to visit Jem in his lonely room in Short's Gardens, to 
 enjoy a fling at the world : to find out the bad marks of the 
 monster, or, as he would say, " to count the spots on the leopard's 
 coat." Every Friday, he would come and take his pipe with Jem, 
 that he might call all men wretches without having his wife to 
 contradict him ; when, having eased hi.s bile and laid Jem's 
 weekly pension on the mantelpiece, he would return home with 
 lightened heart to business. " The world 's a bad lot, Jem ; a 
 very bad lot : how it 's been suffered to grow as old as it is, it 's 
 more than I can tell. Like an old block of wood, it 's fit for 
 nothing but burning: God bless you, Jem." And with this 
 opinion, with this benison, would the muflin-maker commonly 
 depart. 
 
 Capstick, however, when his wife died, resolved to carry Bright 
 Jem into the country with him. " You '11 be a good deal of use 
 there, Jem," said the muffin-maker, when he broke the business. 
 
 " Not a morsel in the world," answered the humble linkman. 
 " I 've been used to nothing but London streets. I knows nothmg 
 that lives or grows in the country. Poor dear Susan could never 
 teach me primroses from polyanthuses, though she knowed all 
 about 'em. I 'm a sinner, if I think I ever saw a cock-robin in all 
 my life. What can I do in the country ? " 
 
 " You shall learn to garden, Jem. That 's the grand, the true 
 employment of man," cried the muffin-maker, warming. " Why, 
 here have I been for years an old rascal, grinning, and bowing, 
 and ducking behmd my counter to make money out of two-legged 
 things as false as myself,— and do you call that the dignity of
 
 188 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 life ? Do you call it truth, Jem ? Now, real dignity 's in a real 
 spade ; real truth 's in the earth. She gives us profits — if we 
 only deserve 'em — a hundred and a hundredfold, and there 's no 
 telling lies, no cheating one another to have 'em. They 're a little 
 diifereut, Jem, to the profits we get upon 'Change. The earth, 
 like dear old Eve, is always a mother to us ; whereas when men 
 deal with men, how often do they go to work like so many Cains 
 and Abels, only they use thumping lies instead of clubs. I tell 
 you, Jem, you shall be my gardener." 
 
 " I don't know an iniou from a carrot, afore it 's out o' the 
 ground," said Bright Jem, sho^-ing, as he thought, good cause 
 against the appointment. Capstick, however, overruled the 
 objection, and so, in due season, Jem was housed in the Tub. 
 
 A.nd thus, journeying across the fields to the scene of St. Giles's 
 disaster, have we explained to the reader the why and the 
 wherefore of the sudden ai:>pearance of the muffin-maker and his 
 fi'iend. 
 
 Arrived at the place of accident, not a soul was to be found. 
 The only evidence of the truth of St. Giles's story was discover- 
 able in the overturned caravan, and the parted wheel. The 
 horses as well as passengers had been taken on. Capstick took 
 the lantern from Jem, and looked suspiciously around him. He 
 then held the light to St. Giles, trying to read his face ; and then 
 he shook his head, as though baulked by what the misanthrope 
 would call, the "brute-human hieroglyphs ; the monkey, and owl, 
 and dog, and fox, that lived in every countenance." St. Giles— he 
 wa.s wet as a fish — gave a slight shiver. 
 
 " It isn't above three miles to the Eose," said Capstick. 
 
 " Thank 'ee, sir ; is it straight on, sir ? I can run there in no 
 time, and a run won't do me no harm," said St. Giles. 
 
 " The road 's narrow ; the hedges are high, there 's no moon, 
 and 3^011 can't run very fast with a lantern," observed Capstick. 
 
 " I '11 find my way, sir, I 've no doubt on it— straight on V and 
 St. Giles prepared to start. 
 
 Capstick laid his hand upon St. Giles's arm, and then said aside 
 to Jem — " The poor wretch is wet as water. He may miss his 
 road ; may take a fever ; not that that would much matter, for 
 there 's vagabonds a plenty in the world. Still— there isn't a great 
 deal of you, Jem ; and he 's a slimmish chap — and, if you ar'n't 
 very much afraid of your throat, I think for one night the fellow 
 niiglit turn in with you. We're wrong in doing it," said Capstick 
 emi>liaticallj'. 
 
 " Not at all," said Jem, in a louder note. 
 
 "Well, you sir," cried Capstick to St. Giles, "let's go back 
 again : you '11 find this a nearer road to bed than along the hisrh-
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 189 
 
 way." Saj-iiig tliis, the master of the Tub turned back towards 
 his dwelling-place. " I can walk faster than you, Jem ; so I '11 
 push on ; " and the muffin-maker mended his pace. 
 
 " We live here quite by ourselves, just like a brace o' ermits," 
 said Bright Jem. 
 
 " All alone ! " cried St. Giles, " w^here 's your wdfe, then 1 " 
 
 " My wife ! I don't know how you knoVd I ever had one — 
 my wife, deal- cretur ! is in one of them stars above us," said Jem, 
 " and whichever one it is, this I know, it isn't the worse for her 
 being in it." Jem paused a moment ; and then, somewhat sadly, 
 asked, " How did you know I ever had a wife 1 " 
 
 " Why," replied St. GUes, "you look as if you had ; there 's a 
 sort of married mark upon some people." 
 
 " And so there is ; a sort of weddin'-ring mark, just like the 
 mark of a collar. I didn't know I had it, though ; but here we 
 are," — and Bright Jem paused at the Tub, and Capstick imme- 
 diately came to the door. 
 
 '' After all, I 've been thinking you may lose your way, and as 
 you 're a little wet, why perliaps you 'd better come in, and when 
 "we 've had a pipe or so, we '11 see what 's to be done." Such was 
 the hospitable invitation of Capstick. St. Giles paused a moment ; 
 ■whereupon Capstick caught him by the arm, and ciying — " Don't 
 stay there, wasting the candle," pulled him in. "Now, as we 
 can't have any of your wet rags drowning the place to give us aU 
 cold, you '11 just go in there, and put on what comes to hand." 
 AVl[h this, Capstick pointed to an inner room, which St. GUes 
 obediently entered, and finding there various articles of dress — all 
 of them more than a thought too vast for him — he straightway 
 relieved himself of his well-soaked apparel, Bright Jem assisting 
 at the change. 
 
 " You might jump out on 'em," said Jem ; " but never mind 
 that ; a bad fit 's nothin' to a bad cold : I know that, for 
 I've had colds o' aU sorts, and ought to be allowed to speak 
 on 'em." 
 
 " Jem, get the supper," cried Capstick. " You sometimes eat, 
 I suppose 1 You 're not a cherub, quite ? " and the cynic of the 
 Tub tried to smile very severely at his guest, 
 
 " Thank'ee, sii'," said St. Giles, his heart warming towards his 
 old benefactor ; " I can eat up anything." 
 
 " Bad as our slugs, Jem," observed Capstick ; " and they do 
 crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over 
 a good name. You may kill 'em, it's true ; but there's the slime, 
 Jem ; the slime." 
 
 " Here 's the bread and cheese, and all that 's left o' the 
 gammon o' bacon," remarked Jem, turning from the metaphorical
 
 190 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 to the real. " There 's one comfort, howsumever ; the ale isn't 
 out." And Jem authenticated his speech by speedily producing 
 a large brown jug, crowned, as he said, "with a noble wig o' 
 froth. There isn't a lawyer in all the laud," added Jem, " with a 
 wig like that." 
 
 " No," said Cap-stick, who had by tliis time lighted his pipe ; 
 " nor with anj-thing like it under it." 
 
 St. Giles, having eaten, and tested the merits of the ale below 
 the wig — which to his taste covered nothing false or vapid — 
 looked around him with a look of large content. The hospitable 
 C}Tiic caught the glance, and despite of himself, smiled benignly. 
 
 " If you please, sir," said St. GUes, who could have fallen at 
 Capstick's feet, " I should like to tell you who I am." 
 
 " Not to-night," said Capstick, " I don't want to hear it. We 're 
 eai'ly people here, and the cock always calls us out of bed. Take 
 another horn of ale ; or one, or two, or three, and then suppose 
 you go to rest." 
 
 St. Giles filled the horn ; and then looking at Capstick in a way 
 that made him turn round and i-ound in his chau*, for there was 
 an earnestness in the man that he could not, by his own theory 
 of human wickedness, account for, St. Giles cried, " God bless 
 you, sir ! " 
 
 " Tlijuik'ee, — that can do nobody any harm, whoever says it, 
 and whoever it 's said to. The same to you, and good night," and 
 Capstick rose to retire to his sleep. As he was leaving the room, 
 he paused at the door, and said in a very loud voice, " YoiTve 
 loaded my pistols, of course, Jem ? " 
 
 " Pistols ! " cried Jem, with all his face all wonder. 
 
 " For," said Capstick, coughing, " I know the heart of man ; 
 and in a lonely place like this, pistols — double-loaded — ar'n't 
 sometimes the worst things to have against it. Good night," 
 and shaking St. GUes by the hand, Capstick stalked from the 
 room looking tremendous sagacity. 
 
 " Shall I tell you who I am ? " asked St. Giles, placing his hand 
 on Jem's knee. 
 
 " Not to-night," said Jem. " It 's the only thing that my dear 
 Susan and me ever quarrelled about — not that we ever quarrelled 
 — she was too good a soul for that — but I never could be curious. 
 Now, somehow, women are so. If there 's only a mouse-hole in 
 the house, it 's a relief to their mind to know where it is. Lor ! 
 when we talk of quarrelling ! When she was alive, I always 
 thought she begun it— not, as I say, we ever quarrelled — but now 
 she 's gone, it 's me that seems the brute." 
 
 " And the wives of both of you is dead 1 " said St. Giles. 
 
 " Both in heaven," said Jem, with beautiful confidence. " Mrs
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 191 
 
 Capstick used to keej) herself a good deal above Susan wlien she 
 was here ; but, poor thing ! I dare say she 's found out her mis- 
 take now." 
 
 " That 's a place, depend upon it," said St. Giles, " where we 
 make all these matters quite straight." 
 
 " No doubt on it," answered Jem ; " but after all, it 's a pity we 
 don't make 'em a Httle straighter here. 'Twould bring heaven a 
 little nearer this world, wouldn't it ] " 
 
 " Well," cried St. Giles, " 't will be all right at last." 
 
 " In course it will," said Jem. " Nevertheless, my good feller 
 — for I think you are a good feller — why should we wait for the 
 last to begin it ? Will you have any more ale 1 It isn't often a 
 stranger comes here." 
 
 " Not a drop : I 'm full ; and my heart 's fuller than all my 
 body. Let 's go to bed," said St. Giles ; and immediately Jem 
 rose, and showed him to theu* chamber. 
 
 Hours passed, and St. Giles could not sleep. All the scenes of 
 his long life — for how does misery lengthen life, making grey- 
 headed men of mere maturity, compelling childhood, that should 
 have beautiful visions, foreshadowing beautiful truths around it 
 — to keep a day-book of the wrongs committed on it ! — all these 
 scenes passed before the wanderer. Such a nature knows the 
 amount of life only by the balance of injury against it. And 
 such — need we say so to the reader 1 — was St. Giles. Hence, 
 young as he was, he was hoary in the hard experience of a 
 sordM world. He lay, and counted year by year, nay, week by 
 week, of his life — as first lighted by memory — and was melted by 
 gratitude, by wonder, at the accident that had brought him 
 beneath the protection of those who, in all his after vice, and 
 after misery, had still made in him a belief in goodness ; in 
 the world's charity ; in the inextinguishable kindness of the 
 human heart. All his cares — all his anxieties for the future — 
 seemed to pass away in the great assurance of his present 
 fortune. And so he lay sleepless, bewildered with happiness. At 
 length he slejit. 
 
 The sun shone reproachfully into his room, as he was 
 aroused by Bright Jem. " I say," said Jem, " will you come up, 
 or wiU you take another pull at ween the sheets 1 It 's nicer in 
 the garden, if you can only think so." 
 
 " To be sure," said St. Giles, " I 'm with you in a minute." 
 Hurrying on his clothes— he found them already dried and jjlaced 
 by his bed — he soon joined Jem in the garden. 
 
 " I can't do much of the rough work," said Jem, as he feebly 
 managed his spade ; " but it 's wonderful how I 've taken to the 
 business for all that. Wlien I thmk o' the years and years J
 
 192 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 lived iu Short's Gardens, never knowing wliicli side o' the world 
 the sun got up — never seeing him get up — never hearing a bird 
 whistle except in a cage — thinking there was hardly an}i;hing upon 
 the earth but bricklayers' and carpenters' work, — ^well, I do feel 
 it a blessing in my old age, that I can see the trees of a summer 
 morning waving about me. I do feel happy with all things, 
 seeing them to be so bright and beautiful, and brimming over, as 
 I may say, with God's goodness." 
 
 " That 's true, Jem — very true," said St. Giles ; " and, I 'm glad 
 to see it, you look happy." 
 
 " As a butterfly," cried Jem. " And, Lord love you ! when 1 
 somctunes thmk what I was in London ; when I think o' the poor 
 folks that 's there now — the poor creturs that 's as fine as may- 
 bugs for a year or so, and then tumble, as I may say, in the mud, 
 and get trod on by anybody, tiU they die and are no more thought 
 on than pisoned rats, — well, I am thankful that I 've been brought 
 into this place to feel myself, as I may say, somewhat cleaned from 
 London mud, and my heart opened by the sweet and pretty things 
 about me." 
 
 " And you didn't know nothing of gardening, Jem, when you 
 first come 1 " said St. Giles. 
 
 " I tell you, not a bit. But you 've no thought on't how soon 
 a man with the will in him, learns. I shall never forget what 
 'Ms. Capstick said to me, when we first come, and I did n't think I 
 could take to it. ' Jem,' says he to me, * a garden is a beautiful 
 book, writ by the finger of God ; every flower and every leaf 's a 
 letter ; you 've only to learn 'em — and he 's a poor dunce that 
 can't, if he will, do that — to learn 'em, and join 'em, and then to 
 go on reading and reading, and you '11 find yourself carried away 
 from the earth to the skies by the beautiful story you 're going 
 through.' " 
 
 " Mr. Capstick ! He 's a kind, humane cretur," said St. Giles. 
 
 " He 's not a man," said Jem with emphasis ; " he 's a lump o' 
 honey that would pass itself ofl" for bitter allys. A lump o' honey ! 
 I often say the bees made him. Yes," and Jem returned to his 
 garden— "you don't know what beautiful thoughts— for they 're 
 nothing short — grow out o' the ground, and seem to talk to a man. 
 And then there 's some flowers, they always seem to me like over- 
 dutiful children : tend 'em ever so little, and they come up, and 
 flourish, and show, as I may say, their bright and happy fiices to 
 you. Now, look here," and Jem pointed to a flower at his foot. 
 " I sowed this last year— jist flung it in the mould— and you 'd 
 har<lly believe it, it's come up agin by itself. You wouldn't think 
 "'^^^'i"— '"I'ld Jem looked suddenly professorial— " you woukbi't 
 think it was a Pimlico s])ecissimo tulijmm hulbum ? "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 193 
 
 " What 's that in English 1 " asked St. Giles. 
 
 "Ain't got no other name, as I know of; but there is no 
 doubt it 's a tulup. I didn't thinlc I could do it," said Jem, with 
 the smallest touch of self-complacency, " but I know the Latin 
 names of half the flowers you see." 
 
 " Well, they don't smell no sweeter for that, do they ? " cried 
 St. Giles. 
 
 Bright Jem paused a moment ; and then, with a half-serious 
 face, answered, " I don't know that they don't." 
 
 St. GUes felt no disposition to ai-gue the point ; therefore 
 suddenly changed his groimd. " Isn't Mr. Capstick late ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Late ! he 's never late," cried Bright Jem. " He 's left the 
 Tub these two hours. Gone fbr a walk." 
 
 " The Tub ! AVhat Tub 1 " asked St. Giles. 
 
 " Wliy, the house. It 's called the Tub, after a tub that some 
 wise man — as INIr. Capstick tells me he was — Uved in a many 
 thousand years ago. Mr. Capstick swears it was a vinegar tub." 
 
 " Well, that 's droll," said St. Giles. " Call a house a tub ? " 
 
 " Why not ? But if you 've anything to say against it, here 
 comes the master." And as Bright Jem spoke, the early misan- 
 thrope entered the garden. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Mr. Capstick, however, came not alone. A pace or two behind 
 him followed an old man, whose kind, famUiar greeting of Bright 
 Jem showed him to be no stranger at the hermitage. "Well, 
 James," said the visitor, " and how is aU your blooming family?" 
 Kingcup and he looked benignantly at the shrubs and flowers. 
 
 "Why, thank 'ee, sir, as you see," said Bright Jem, smiling 
 paternally, and with his spade tenderly patting a lump of earth, 
 as though he loved it. " My family 's jist hke any other chil- 
 dren ; some back'ard, some for'ard. Some will run up, and branch 
 out like this iSnaj^sis digger — " 
 
 " I perceive," said the visitor, with Ms best gravity— "it is the 
 common mustard." 
 
 " Jist so," aflfirmed Jem very stolidly, " and some will gi'ow 
 jist as you trim 'em, like this buckshouse semj>erwirings" 
 
 " Very true ; the box-plant is obedient," said the new-comer, 
 with continued deference to Jem's scholarship. "The box is 
 obedient." 
 
 o
 
 194 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " The box, or, as we call it, the luckshouse sempervjirings, is 
 a good deal like a 'oman," said Jem, very confidently. 
 
 Capstick trumpeted a loud, short cough ; his frequent manner, 
 when a.stonished or offended by any human assertion. 
 
 "Like a 'oman," repeated Jem, at once understanding the 
 objection of his patron. " And I '11 prove it. You 've only got to 
 trim it into a shape at first, and what a little trouble makes it 
 always keep to it ! " 
 
 " There may be something in the simile," said Capstick, with 
 his best malignity ; " for I have seen the tree cut into a peacock." 
 
 " "Well, that was all the choice o' the gardener. You 'U ovm. it, 
 Mr. Capstick ; it might have been cut into a dove ? " cried Jem. 
 
 " It might, originally," answered Capstick : " but I know the 
 nature of the thing. 'Twould have been certain to branch into a 
 peacock. To be sure, there 's this to be said for the gardener, 
 poor fool ! though the thing should grow with a tail as long as a 
 kite, because be once thought it a dove, he 'd think it a dove 
 for ever." 
 
 " It couldn't be — impossible," said Jem. 
 
 " "^liy, look there," cried Capstick, pointing to a yew fantas- 
 tically mutilated, " look at that dragon." 
 
 " Dragon ! " cried Jem, " it 's a angel, with its outsjjread 
 wings. I cut it myself; it 's my own angel." 
 
 " Happy, fond humanity ! " said Capstick, turning and lajdng 
 his hand upon the visitor's shoulder. " How many a dragon to 
 all the world beside, seems a blessed angel to its owner ! Who 
 woidd disturb so comforting a faith ? " And then he added to 
 Jem, " It is an angel. 'Tis a pity he hasn't a tmmpet." 
 
 " It 's a gi'owin," said Jem ; " it 's there, though nobody but 
 myself can see it." 
 
 " 'Tis sometimes so with the trumpets of men," observed 
 Capstick. " And now we 'U to breakfast." 
 
 " And you '11 own," said Jem, determined upon conquest, 
 " that the luckshouse semper wirings is like the 'oman specees ? 
 To be sure it is. Look at it even in a border ; and doesn't it 
 remind you of a quiet, tidy little cretur that keeps her house so 
 nice and clean, and lets nothing dirty in it ? You '11 agree — " 
 
 " Is the breakfa.st ready ? " asked Capstick. 
 
 "It is," answered Jem, "all but the eggs. The fowls have 
 been very good to us, though ; there 's twenty on 'em." 
 
 ■" The breakfast ready ! Then the beast that is raging within 
 me," said Capstick, " will own to anything. Twenty eggs ! 'Tis 
 wonderful how hunger sharpens anthmetic. It is but five a-piece," 
 and the misanthrope for the first time tm-ned to St. Giles ; and 
 then straightway passed into the cottage. A breakfast, solid and
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 195 
 
 various, lay upon the board. " There 's no whet to the appetite," 
 said Capstick, "hke early dew. Nothing for the stomach like 
 grass and field-flowers, taken with a fasting eye at five in the 
 morning. 'Twas Adam's own salad, and that 's why he lived to 
 nine hundred and thirty." 
 
 "Think you," said the visitor, chipping an egg-shell, "think 
 you that Adam, before the fall, ate eggs ?" 
 
 "I can't say," said Capstick; "but recollecting the things I 
 have read, the question would make a very jiretty book. 'Tis a 
 pity the matter wasn't stirred two or three hundred years ago. 
 How many thousand throats might have been cut upon it ! How 
 many men and women roasted hke live oysters ! For the wisdom 
 of humanity, 'tis a great miss. How popes might have thun- 
 dered about it ! What Te Dennis have been chanted ; what 
 maledictions — and all with the melted-butter voice of a Christian 
 — pronounced ! The world has had a great loss — a very great 
 loss." And Capstick sighed. 
 
 " I can hardly see that," says Jem. " It seems to me that this 
 blessed world will never want something to quarrel about, so long 
 as there's two straws upon it." 
 
 " Why, there have been the Battles of the Straws," observed 
 Capstick, " although for certain purposes they 've been called after 
 other names." And then, for a time, the breakfast was silently 
 continued ; when suddenly Capstick cried out, " Beaat that I 
 am ! I have forgotten Velvet ! " 
 
 " Velvet ! Who is he % " asked the visitor. 
 
 " An excellent fellow, Master Kingcup," said Capstick : " a 
 worthy creature after my own heart. We became acquainted last 
 frost ; it was a road-side meeting, and I brought him here to the 
 Tub. You would hardly think it ; but though I saved him from 
 a wintry death, and have comforted liim like my own flesh and 
 blood — " 
 
 " He isn't a bit like it," cried Jem. 
 
 "Like my own flesh and blood," repeated Capstick, with a 
 reproving look, "he has neither bitten nor slandered me, nor 
 lifted my latch to midnight thieves, nor in fact done anything that 
 a friend you have benefited should do." At these words, St. 
 Giles, forgetful of the misanthropic drolling of his host, shifted 
 somewhat uneasily in his seat. He thought of the mufiins 
 bestowed upon his boyhood, and of the discomfiture he had after- 
 wards inflicted on his benefactor. " Here, Velvet— Velvet," cried 
 Capstick ; and Bright Jem sat with a grave smile enjoying the 
 expectation of Mr. Kingcup. " With all the coaxuig bestowed 
 upon hmi, 'tis such a humble soul ! " said Capstick. " He never 
 puts himself forward — never. I '11 wager ye, now, one of these 
 
 O ii
 
 196 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 egg-shells," and Capstick rose and looked about him, "that I 
 shall find him quietly cm-led up in a comer. I knew it — there 
 he is." With this, Capstick took two steps from his chair, 
 stooped, and in a moment returning to his seat, placed a hedgehog 
 on the table. 
 
 " Humph ! " said Kingcup, " 'tis an odd creature for a bosom 
 friend." 
 
 " Give me all bosom friends like him," ci-ied Capstick. " For 
 then there 'd be no deceit in 'em : you 'd see the worst of 'em at 
 the beginning. Now, look at this fine honest fellow. What 
 plain, straightforward truths he bears about him ! You see at 
 once that he is a li\'ing pincushion with the pins' points upwards, 
 and instantly you treat him after his open nature. You know 
 he 's not to be played at ball with : you take in with a glance all 
 that Ms exterior signifies, and ought to love him for his frankness. 
 Poor wretch ! 'tis a thousand and a thousand times the ruin of 
 him. He has, it is true, an outside of thorns — ^heaven made him 
 with them — ^but a heart of honey. A meek, patient thing ! And 
 yet, because of his covering, the world casts all sorts of slanders 
 upon him ; accuses him of wickedness he could not, if he would, 
 commit. And so he is kicked and cudgelled, and made the 
 craellest sport of ; his persecutors all the while thinking them- 
 selves the best of people for their worst of treatment. He bears 
 a plain exterior ; he shows so many pricking truths to the world, 
 that the world, in revenge, couples every outside point with an 
 interior devil. He is made a martyr for this iniquity — he hides 
 nothing. Poor Velvet ! " and Capstick very gently stroked the 
 hedgehog, and profiered it a shce of apple and a piece of bread. 
 
 " 'Tis a pity," said Kingcup, " that all hedgehogs ar'n't trans- 
 lated after your fashion." 
 
 " What a better world 'twovild make of it ! " answered the 
 C3mic, " But no, sir, no ; that 's the sort of thing the world 
 loves," and Capstick pointed to a handsome tortoiseshell cat, 
 stretched at her fullest length upon the hearth. " What a meek, 
 cosy face she has ; a placid, quiet sort of grandmother look — may 
 all grandmothers forgive me ! Then, to see her lap milk, why 
 you 'd think a drop of blood of any sort would poison her. The 
 wretch ! 'twas only last week, she killed and ate one of my doves, 
 and afterwards sat wiping her whiskers with her left paw, as 
 comfortably as any dowager at a tea-party. I nursed her before 
 she had any eyes to look at her benefactor, and she has sat and 
 purred upon my knee, as though she knew all she owed me, and 
 was trying to pay the debt with her best singing. And for all 
 this, look here — this is what she did only yesterday," and Capstick 
 showed three long fine scratches on his right hand.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 197 
 
 " That 's nothing," said Mr. Kingcup. " You know that cats 
 will scratch." 
 
 " To be sure I do," replied Caj^stick ; " and all the world 
 knows it ; but the world don't think the worse of 'em for it, and 
 for this reason ; they can, when they hke, so well hide theii' claws. 
 Now, poor little Velvet here — poor vermin martyr ! — he can't 
 disguise what he has ; and so he 's hunted and worried for being, 
 as I may say, plain-spoken ; when jjuss is petted and may sleep 
 all day long at the fire because in faith she's so glossy, and looks 
 so innocent. And all the while, has she not mm-derous teeth and 
 talons 1 " 
 
 " And so I hope," cried Kangcup, " ends your sermon on 
 hedgehogs. Let us talK of more serious matters." 
 
 " Ay, if properly thought of, you can find them," said Capstick. 
 " For my part, little Velvet here carries a text for sei'ious matter, 
 as you have it, in every jarickle. Look at him." 
 
 But the philosopher was interrupted in his theme by a knock 
 at the door, which, ere an invitation to enter could be delivered, 
 was opened, and Mr. Tangle, Mr. Folder, and three of the inha- 
 bitants of Liquorish — voters for that immaculate borough — 
 cz-owded themselves into the small apartment. Mr. Capstick rose 
 in his best dignity. He seemed suddenly to divine the cause of 
 the abrupt visit, and prepared himself to meet it accordingly. Bright 
 Jem stai'ed perplexedly in the face of Tangle, as though picking 
 out an old acquaintance firom his features ; whilst St. Giles shrank 
 imseen into a corner, not caring to confront the lawyer and agent. 
 
 " Mr. Capstick, good morning, sir. We knew your early habits 
 —nothing like them, sir, as your face declares — and therefore, we 
 were up I may say by cock-crow, to do ourselves the honour of 
 calling upon you." Thus spoke Tangle. 
 
 " We also know, Mr. Capstick, your attachment to our blessed 
 con — con — " but here Mr. Folder was seized with an obstinate 
 cough. He, nevertheless, whilst fighting against it, motioned with 
 his right hand, as much as to say, you understand perfectly well 
 what I mean. 
 
 " And we likewise know'd," obsei-ved an independent freeholder, 
 name unknown, " how you hates the yellow party." 
 
 "His lordship, Mr. Capstick, will personally do himself the 
 great dehght of waiting upon you. In the meantime, I, his humble 
 friend, Mr. Tangle, of Eed Lion Square — " 
 
 Here Capstick, looking dead in the face of the lawyer, gave a 
 long, loud whistle. He then said, in a low voice of suppressed 
 astonishment,—" And so it is ! Bless my soul ! Well, no doubt, 
 Providence is very good. Still who 'd have thought you 'd have 
 lasted to this time 1 "
 
 198 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Here Tangle seized the hand of Capstick, who suffered his palm 
 to lay like a dead fish in the hand of that very fervent man. 
 " Surely — yes, it must be— surely we have met before ? Where 
 could it have been 1 " 
 
 " Newgate," answered Capstick, as though proud of the place. 
 This frankness, however, somewhat puzzled the criminal lawyer. 
 He knew not what the amount of Capstick's obligations might be 
 to hira ; could not, on the instant, recollect whether the tenant of 
 the Tub, the freeholder of Liquorish, had been a housebreaker, a 
 highwayman, or simple pickpocket. Mr. Tangle's personal ac- 
 quaintanceship with so many men, thus variously inclined, had 
 been so gi-eat, it was impossible for him to recollect the benefits, 
 that, for certain inconsiderable fees, he had from time to time 
 conferred. Thus, in his uncertainty, he merely said, " Bless me ! 
 Newgate ! " smiling blandly, as though he spoke of Araby the 
 Happy, or the Fortunate Isles. 
 
 " Certainly, Newgate," repeated Capstick. " I wonder you 
 should forget the case." 
 
 " Wliy, the fact is, Mr. Capstick, I have a sort of dim recol- 
 lection that — but the truth is, when I leave London, I always 
 hke to leave Newgate behind me. Whatever our small affair 
 was — " 
 
 " Nothing but a little matter of horse- stealing," said Capstick, 
 with an ingenuousness that even astonished Tangle, whilst Mr. 
 Folder and the three inhabitants of Liquorish looked very blank 
 indeed. It was but for a moment, for they sank the horse-stealer, 
 as they deemed Capstick, in the freeholder, and smiled as vigorously 
 as before. 
 
 " Now, i recollect very well," said Tangle, " perfectly weU. It 
 was a case of conspiracy against you. I remember, Mr. Capstick, 
 the affecting compliment the Judge paid you when you quitted 
 the dock — the cheers that rang through the court — and the very 
 handsome supper we had on the night of your acquittal. It was 
 a black case, sir ; a very black case. Nevertheless, it is a sweet 
 satisfaction to recollect that we indicted the witnesses, and that 
 one of 'em, proved guilty of perjury, was nearly killed in the 
 pilloiy. I felt the case so strongly, that I remember it — ay, as 
 though it was but yesterday — I remember that I gave my clerks 
 a holiday to see the fellow punished, telling them at the same time 
 that they might do as they liked." 
 
 " Humph ! " said Capstick, " you don't keep your memory in 
 quite as good order as the Newgate Calendar. There was no 
 acquittal in the case I talk of ; none at all. Sentence was passed, 
 and execution ordered." 
 
 Tangle looked silently but intently in the face of Capstick,
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 199 
 
 as though meutally inquiring, '' v/hich horse-stealer he could 
 be?" 
 
 "Execution ordered," — repeated Capstick — "but it wasn't to 
 be. Instead of hanging, there was transportation for life." 
 
 " And so there was — I recollect perfectly well. I am always 
 glad to welcome back an errmg man to the paths of virtue," said 
 Tangle. " Of course you have obtained your pardon 1 " 
 
 " Pardon ! Oh dear no — not at all," said Cajjstick. 
 
 " Why — bless me ! " — gasped Mr. Folder — " you don't mean to 
 say, fellow — you hav'u't the effrontery to declare it to the faces of 
 honest men, that you are an escaped transpoit ? " 
 
 Capstick made no answer, but smiled resignedly. The inference, 
 however, was too much for bright Jem, who cried out — " Wliy, m 
 course not ; and as for talking about honest faces, I should think 
 them as couldn't see the honestest that is, here " — and Jem laid 
 his hand affectionately on Capstick's shoulder — " ought to jout on 
 their spectacles." 
 
 " Be quiet, Jem," said Capstick, mildly. 
 
 " I can't ; it would make that dumb cretur speak if it could," 
 said Jem, pointing to the pet hedgehog, " to hear sich rubbish. 
 You ought to recollect, Mr. Tangle, all about it : for wasn't you 
 well paid for doin' next-door to nothin' ? The bright guineas 
 Mr. Capstick give you to take the part o' that poor little 
 child — and ater all, didn't you leave him to be hanged like a 
 dog 1 " 
 
 Tangle's face broke into excessive radiance. " Bless my heart 
 — bless my heart ! " he cried, and was again about to seize the 
 hand of Capstick, when the cynic suddenly lifted the hedgehog 
 fi-om the table, giving a marked preference to that object. 
 Mr. Tangle was of a too generous natui-e to be offended by such 
 partiality — he had too much true humility. Therefore, in no way 
 confused, he turned to Mr. Folder, saying— " T think, sii', if there 
 were any doubt of our cause, this would be a good omen for it." 
 Mr. Folder smiled and assented, though in evident ignorance of 
 Tangle's meaning. " To think that the first man we should have 
 canvassed, shoujd have been this good — I will say it— this righteous 
 person 1 You recollect Mr. Capstick ; of course, you recollect 
 Mr. Capstick ? " 
 
 Mr. Folder, feeling, from the lawyer's manner, that he ought to 
 recollect our muffin-maker, shuffled forward, and with all alacrity 
 prepared to take his hand : but the misanthrope, leering at that 
 affable old man, continued to pat his hedgehog. 
 
 " You remember the case of that wretched boy," said Tangle, 
 "that bom bad thing, young St. Giles, who stole his lordship's 
 pony 1 " Mr. Folder was immediately impressed— we might say
 
 200 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 oppressed — with a remembraDce of the case. " And of course, 
 you remember the benevolence of this excellent man, who " — 
 
 " Tol de rol lol, tol lol lol lol," sang Capstick, with his best 
 energy. 
 
 " But he 's a true Christian, and you perceive will hear nothing 
 about it," said Tangle. " I '11 say no more, sir ; you have your 
 reward — there, sir, there" — and Tangle pointed his forefinger 
 towards that part of Capstick's anatomy where in men, as he 
 had heard, resided the heart. " Nevertheless, sir, for that 
 young St. Giles — ^hallo ! my friend," cried Tangle, for the first 
 time observing the owner of that name, who, agitated by what 
 he had heard, and fiirther ten-ified by the sudden recognition 
 of Tangle, was pale and trembling — " hallo ! what brought you 
 here ? " 
 
 " Do you know the young man 1 " asked Capstick, 
 
 " Know him, sir ! I should think I did. He 's one of our men, 
 hired to shout for us," said Tangle. 
 
 "To fight for us, too," added Mr, Folder, "if need be, in 
 defence of our blessed constitution." 
 
 " "Well, friend," said Capstick to St. Giles, " your clothes are 
 dry, and I hope your belly 's full. That way to the right leads to 
 the Rose." 
 
 Capstick's manner told St. Giles to be gone. It was no time 
 for explanation ; therefore, determining to return in the evening 
 to the hermitage, and make himself known to his benefactor, 
 St. Giles moved towards the door. " God bless you, sir," he said 
 "for all the good you've done to me." With these words he 
 crossed the thi-eshold, and was in a moment out of sight. 
 
 " What," cried Tangle, struck by the blessing of St. Giles upon 
 Capstick, " what, sir, at your old kindness again 1 " 
 
 " There was no kindness at all in the matter," said Jem ; " he 
 was spilt in a pond, and come here with a wet skin." 
 
 " Oh, I see ! The accident that happened to the band. Poor 
 devils ! " cried Tangle, " 'twas a mercy none of them were 
 drowned, for the time 's getting close, and, Mr. Capstick, you who 
 know life, know that an election without music, why it 's like a 
 contest without — " 
 
 " Money," added Capstick, with a grim smile. 
 
 " Exactly so. But I perceive in the hospitality you have vouch- 
 safed to his lordship's servant, your devotion to his cause. Ha, sir ! 
 England has need of such men, now. A few such as he would 
 put us to rights, su-, in no time ; for all the times want, sir, is the 
 strong arm— nothmg like the strong arm. However, to the imme- 
 diate purpose of our visit ; as I say, his lordship will himself call 
 upon you. In the meantime "—and Tangle's face looked hke old
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 201 
 
 parchment in the sun — " in the meantime, I trust we may count 
 upon your vote and interest ? " 
 
 Capstick cast his eyes upon the ground, then upwards, as though 
 suddenly rapt by calculation. He then asked, " Is his lordship 
 fond of hedgehogs 1 " 
 
 " I had the happiness and the honovu'," piped Folder, " of open- 
 ing his youthful mind ; and knowing, as I do, how attentively he 
 was wont to Hsten to my exhortations of not only considering the 
 wants of the lower orders, but of especially feeling consideration 
 towards the lower animal kingdom, I think I can confidently say 
 — though I never heard his lordship declare his preference — ^that 
 he is decidedly fond of hedgehogs." 
 
 " I am very happy to hear it," said Capstick, " 'tis a great thing 
 to know." 
 
 " You don't feel disposed — should his lordship take a fancy to 
 the creature — to sell that hedgehog 1 " asked Tangle. 
 
 " How could I refuse his lordship anj'thing ? " answered Cap- 
 stick. " It 's an odd thing : but you 've heai'd of what they call 
 the transmigration of souls 1 " 
 
 " Of course," answered the scholar. Folder. 
 
 " Well, then, it 's di'oll enough ; and I never thought it. But 
 until the election is over, I feel that my soid is in this hedge- 
 hog." 
 
 Tangle put his forefinger to his nose, aud said — " Good ! I 
 understand you. A man of the world, Mr. Capstick — a man who 
 knows life." Whereupon Tangle, ere Capstick was aware of it, 
 caught him by the hand, squeezing it imtil its knuckles cracked 
 again. " God bless you ! We may depend upon all your interest 1 
 Good bye." 
 
 The canvassing party then quitted the cottage. Mr. Tangle 
 walked on with Mi-. Folder ; and was no sooner in the lane that 
 led to the main road, where they had left their chaise, than he 
 indulged his pent-up wi\ath with the fi-eest explosion. "Now, 
 sir, that 's one of the scoundrels that make the world what 
 it is ! " 
 
 " Shocking ! " said Mr. Folder. 
 
 " That 's one of the men who pollute the pm-e source of par- 
 liamentary representation." 
 
 " It 's dreadful," remarked Folder. 
 
 " Without such vagabonds, a seat in the house would be cheap 
 enough. But isn't it di-eadful to think what a gentleman must 
 disburse to buy such scum ! " 
 
 " Notwithstanding," urged Mr. Folder, "we must protect our 
 blessed constitution. And if the other party will ofl"er money for 
 the commodity, we mustn't stop at any price to outbid 'em ! "
 
 202 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " I know tliat, Mr. Folder ; I kuov/ what is due to our true 
 interests. And the noble house of St. James has not forgotten 
 that. The box of gold at the Olive Branch will testify to the 
 patriotism of that house. Nevertheless, as a Christian it shocks 
 me— as a Christian, I say— but here 's the coach. Fellow, drive 
 back to the Olive Branch." Whereupon the canvassing party 
 returned to their head-quarters of the pure and independent 
 borough. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 As yet the noble candidate of the house of St. James had not 
 presented himself to the voters of Liquorish. To say the truth, 
 his lordship had not that reverence for those small pegs of the 
 glorious machine of the constitution — the freeholders — that, in 
 his virgin address to his constituency, he deemed it only decent to 
 assume. Perliaps, indeed, he thought the said machine might do 
 all the better without them. But this heresy had been so deeply 
 cut into the bark of his youthful mind, that it grew and enlarged 
 with it. He had been taught to look upon a voter of Liquorish as 
 a sort of two-legged hound, the property of his noble house ; no 
 less its goods, because the creature did not wear a collar round 
 his neck. No : fortunately, men are so made, that though seem- 
 ing free, their souls may now and then be made fast to an owner, 
 who can buy the manacles at the Mint : wonderful chains ; in- 
 visible to the world ; of tiner temper than any hammered at fairy 
 smithies. It was this good, wholesome prejudice — as IVIi'. Folder 
 called it — that imparted to young St. James the serenes! sense of 
 security : the voters of Liquorish were the live stock of his house : 
 their souls stamped, like the Marquess's sheep, with his own noble 
 mark. Hence, our youthful lord had delayed until the latest 
 moment the drudgery of personal canvass. Hence, had he post- 
 poned the practical waggery of soHciting a vote where no vote 
 could be refused. Nevertheless, guided by the patriotic experience 
 of his noble father, he would present himself to the people. The 
 tuae, the place, had been selected with the happiest sense of pro- 
 priety. Young St. James, the guest of Doctor Gi lead — the humble, 
 zealous college-friend of the iviarquess — would meekly exhibit 
 himself in the doctor's pew at the parish church : the doctor 
 liimself, on that eventful occasion, preaching an appropriate dis- 
 course. Doubtless, the doctor felt that oracles to be respected must
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 203 
 
 be vocal only at long intervals ; hence, Doctor Gilead preached but 
 rarely to his simple flock. His youthful curate — a spiritual shep- 
 herd boy — was all-sufficient to lead them to the water-courses 
 and the pasture : it was only now and then that the elder pastor 
 would shake before them a mouthful or so of sweet herbs, culled 
 from the dainty garden of his own theology. Doctor Gilead was 
 a learned man ; a pious man. Neither his coachman, his butler, 
 nor either of his three footmen, doubted- his wisdom or his ortho- 
 doxy. He was a man, too, of practical patience. Thrice had he 
 expected a bishopric ; and thrice had the mitre vanished from the 
 tips of his fingers. "Whereupon, he meekly folded his hands, and 
 smiling down the gout that each time with burning nijipers 
 seized upon him, he thanked heaven for his felicitous escajje. 
 Excellent man ! He could no more hide the humility raging 
 within him, than he could have disguised the small-pox. It would 
 break out. He had once preached before George the Third ; and 
 then from his pulpit, as from the Mountain, did he see the Land 
 of Promise, the House of Lords. StiU, the milk and honey were 
 untasted ; and still, with patient, smiling lips, he praised the 
 providence that would have it so. 
 
 Such was the owner of Lazarus Hall, the rectory ; an abode 
 especially prepared for the reception of young St. James, who, two 
 nights at least, would bless the roof-tree of his father's humble 
 friend. The house was rich and odorous as nest of phoenix. 
 Yet was there no golden display ; no velvet hangings ; no flaunting 
 tapestries ; but luxury m every shape, took the guise of simi^licity, 
 and made every corner of the house a cosy nook for swau-down 
 Christianity. Then everything was so radiantly clean, it seemed 
 no pai-t of this dusty earth, but fresh from some brighter planet. 
 Had Doctor Gilead been arrayed from head to heel in episcopal 
 lawn, there was nought within the Hall of Lazarus to smudge it. 
 The very flies, from habit, would have respected it. Saints and 
 hermits would not have dared to sit upon the chair-covers. 
 
 It was Saturday, about five in the afternoon. Doctor Gilead sat 
 in his library, garnished about -with his wife and three daughters. 
 The doctor was black and glossy as a newly-bathed raven. As for 
 the ladies, they might have been taken as specimens of Brobdignag 
 china : so creamy and motionless were their faces, so prim and 
 well-defined their flowing gowns. Not a word was said ; not a 
 sound was heard, save that the doctor's watch ticked feverishly in 
 his fob,and a big, blunderuig blue fly kept bouncing and battering its 
 head against a wudow-pane, doubtless puzzled to know why, with 
 all so very clear before it, it could not get out. And now the doctor 
 looked reproachfully at the noisy insect ; and now subsided to his 
 customary meekness. Once or twice, he strangled a sigh at his
 
 204 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 very lips. Haply — ^but who shall sound the depths of man's 
 silent soul ? — haply he thought of the turbot macerating in the 
 kettle, haply of the haunch scorching on the spit. Say what we 
 wUl, it tries the spirit of man, to think serenely of his boiled and 
 roast, and of the late-coming guest perilling them both. Doctor 
 Gilead breathed heavUy ; then, taking his watch from his fob, he 
 said with a smile of ghastly resignation, " It 's getting rather 
 late." 
 
 And what said the doctor's wife ? Why precisely what every 
 maiTied daughter of Eve would say. She, in the naturalest manner, 
 observed — " I shouldn't wonder if he doesn't come at all." The 
 daughters — meek things ! — said nothing ; but they looked down 
 and about them at their pretty gowns, and slightly bit their lips, 
 and slightly sighed. 
 
 "I don't think, my dear," said Mrs. Gilead, "it 's any use 
 waiting for his lordship, now. Hadn't they better serve the 
 dinner ? " 
 
 Now, had the doctor assented to this, Mrs. Gilead would have 
 been pathetically eloquent on the iuhospitality of the measure. 
 She had no such meaning ; all she wanted was the discourse of 
 her husband. She talked to make him talk. In the like way 
 that, when a pump is dry, men pour water into it to set it flowing. 
 "The dinner will be totally spoilt, my dear," added Mrs. Gilead, 
 smiling as though she communicated sweetest intelligence. The 
 doctor spoke not, but suffered an abdominal shudder. " In fact, 
 my dear," continued the wife, " now, we ought rather to hope that 
 his lordship will not come. There will be nothing fit to set before 
 him — nothing whatever." It was strange — she did not mean it — 
 yet did Mrs. Gilead talk with a certain gust, as though she talked 
 of a special treat : to have nothing fit for his lordship seemed to 
 be the veiy thing desirable. "What did you say, my dear?" 
 asked Mrs. Gilead. 
 
 The doctor had not uttered a syllable. However, again he looked 
 at his watch, and then said, " It is very late." We can find no 
 other parallel to this heroic calmness save in the life of St. Law- 
 rence ; who when turned, like a half-done steak, upon his gridiron, 
 merely observed to an acquaintance who chanced to be near,—" It 
 is very warm." In both cases, cookmg was the source of pain, 
 and the test of resignation : for Dr. Gilead thought of his 
 haunch as if it had been a part of him. And still the doctor sat, 
 looking fiercely patient. Mrs. Gilead, the partner of his bosom, 
 knew well what that bosom felt, and therefore in her own feminine 
 way remarked, " Now I certainly give his lordship up." 
 
 It was a great pity that Mrs. Gilead had not spoken thus before, 
 or surely the same effect would have followed the syllables. For
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 205 
 
 no sooner had she uttered them than there was a whiii of wheels 
 and suddenly a carriage in a cloud of dust stopt at Lazarus Hall. 
 Mrs. Gilead jumped ; her daughters gave a sharp, short, joyful 
 scream ; whilst the doctor himself — but, reader, did you ever in 
 broad day mark the night-lamp of man-midwife ? It is dully, 
 darkly red. The sun suiks, night comes ; and that dark 
 glass burns like a ruby, liquid with glowing light. Such was 
 Doctor Gilead's countenance ; such the change ; now sulky 
 coloured, and now flaming with joy. A moment, and he was at 
 the carriage-door ; another, and young St. James — the son of his 
 patron and friend — stood, with both hands seized by the grasping, 
 throbbing palms of the afi"ectionate doctor. The doctor was in 
 spasms of deUght : Mrs. Gilead, full of smiles, opened and folded 
 her face Uke a fan : and the young ladies, before so statue-like, 
 that had they sat in the open air, the birds had perched upon 
 them, swam about and arched their necks like cygnets, taking a 
 May-morning bath. And now we jump the dinner-talk, si^arkling 
 and brilliant, as a mountabank jumj^s thi-ough fireworks, and 
 shift the scene. 
 
 We leave the whole household to their dreams. Let Doctor 
 Gilead think himself a bishop ; let him in his slumbers rehearse 
 his first parliamentaiy speech — let his wife dream of her gown 
 for court — let each of the yovmg ladies see and feel herself a 
 blushing, stammering bride at church — let St. James dream, — he 
 cannot help it — of poor Clarissa. It is Saturday night. Labour 
 has flung down his working tools, and sleeps a deep and happy 
 sleep ; for the next day is a holy breathing-time — a day of rest — 
 Sunday. 
 
 It may be remembered that the band and minor merce- 
 naries of St. James were posted at the Eose, a hostehy of 
 modest character compared to the dignified pretensions of the 
 OliTC Branch, made still more important by the judgment of 
 Mr. Tangle, who had selected that tavern as the head-quarters of 
 the noble candidate. The Eose, in the agent's own words, did 
 very well for the rabble always necessary on such occasions ; but 
 for himself, he could not at all feel himself a gentleman in any 
 meaner place than the Olive Branch. Indeed, now and then he 
 was compelled to remember the national and patriotic importance 
 of the cause in which he was engaged, to reconcile him heartily to 
 the inconvenience of even that abiding-place. " There was no real 
 life off the stones of London ; but then the condition of the country 
 demanded some sacrifice of every man : why, then, should he com- 
 plain ? No : he would stick to the constitution whilst a plank of it 
 held together. If the ship— he meant the constitution— was doomed 
 to go down, why, he would give three cheers, and go down with it."
 
 206 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 It was Sunday morning, and breakfast being over, the two 
 patriots — full of uieat and drink and the good of their country — 
 sank back in theii- chairs, and looked serenely in each other's face. 
 
 " We shall have a fine congregation to-day ; all the fashion and. 
 respectabihty of the neighbourhood, no doubt 1 " 
 
 " They can't do less," remarked Mr. Tangle, " 'twill be only a 
 proper compliment to his lordship." 
 
 " Nevertheless," observed the ancient tutor, speaking slowly, 
 gravely, "I am a little disappointed. I did think that on his 
 lordsliip's arrival, they would at least have rung the church bells. 
 J^or was there even a bonfire." 
 
 " Pardon me ; I have my scruples : all men have, or should 
 have. Touching the church bells, I must confess I do not think 
 they ought ever to be employed in any uses that are secular. I 
 have my prejudices," continued Tangle, with the air of a man 
 very proud of the commodity, " and chui-ch bells are one. Bonfires 
 are altogether another matter." 
 
 " AjkI fireworks," added JTolder. 
 
 " And fireworks," assented Tangle. " Though I said nothing 
 at the time, I must own with you, that the absence of so small a 
 mark of respect as a bonfire on the arrival of liis lordship, speaks 
 very many volumes against the peoi>le. A few years ago, and 
 there 'd been a blaze on every hill. Not a schoolboy but would 
 have had his cap and pockets stuffed with crackers. Now, painful 
 as it is to a man who loves the constitution, still the truth cannot 
 be disguised, there was not a single squib — not a single squib," 
 and Tangle repeated the words with pathetic emphasis. 
 
 '■' I heard none," said Mr. Folder, with the air of a man who, 
 nevertheless, forlornly hopes that he may be mistaken. 
 
 " Oh no ! We must not deceive ourselves. We must look the 
 truth full in the face, ugly as the truth may be ; it 's the only way 
 to browbeat it. I learnt that maxim, Mr. Folder, from practice 
 in the courts of law. There, it only wants a brassy look and a 
 big voice, to make an ugly-looking truth seem a shameful impostor. 
 Nothing, sir, like learning to boldly face truth, if you want to get 
 the best of it. And so, sir, though the omission of the bonfires 
 and the fireworks did pain me— how could it be otherwise ?— 
 nevertheless, I feel all the stronger in our cause for knowing the 
 revolutionary principles that, as I have more than once observed, 
 are now arrayed agamst all that is great and titled in the 
 country ! " 
 
 "Don't you think, Mr. Tangle," said Folder, "that we had 
 better visit our toilets, to be ready for church 1 We can then 
 walk gently over the fields." 
 
 " Walk ! " echoed Tangle, looking glumly.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 207 
 
 " Certainly. On tlie present occasion, it will look better to 
 the people ; more condescending ; more like themselves. His 
 lordship, depend upon it, will not ride lo-day. No : I think 
 my principles will bear a little better fruit;" and Folder smiled 
 securely. 
 
 " Of course not : I had forgotten : to be sure not ; " answered 
 Tangle. " Undoubtedly, we walk — undoubtedly." 
 
 This point resolved, the gentlemen retired to their adjoining 
 chambers to attire themselves for their devotions. The villao-e 
 church on a high hill, its base girted vnth magnificent trees, 
 was seen from either window ; a simple, rustic, snow-white 
 building shining in the sun, and standing clearly, purely out from 
 the deep blue summer heaven. " A charming view, this," said 
 Tangle as, having arrayed himself, he was about to quit the room, 
 when his companion appeared in the passage. 
 
 " A beautiful landscape ! " said Folder, entering the chamber. 
 "I was thinking so, as I looked from my own window. How 
 very nicely the church there shows itself upon the hill ! " 
 
 " Quite right — nothing but proper ; " observed Tangle, with a 
 sudden touch of solemnity. I 'd have eveiy church ujjon a liill ; 
 I would, indeed, sir. And for this reason ; when upon a hill, 
 everybody can see it. ^Tien upon a hill, it seems to stand like a 
 monitor, an adviser to every body. It preaches, as I may say, 
 from a high pulpit to the world below ; and so, you will perceive, 
 it 's apt to make men pause in their sinful, shabby courses. Many 
 a time — t don't mind confessing so much to you, Mr. Folder — but 
 many a time, that is, sometimes, when I 've felt my soul a httle 
 slack, for the best of us can't always be braced up like drums — 
 well, when, as I say, I 've been a Httle slack, the very sight of a 
 church has pulled me up again, and made me think of virtue just 
 as I did before." 
 
 " Nobody can dispute it," remarked Mr. Folder. " A church, 
 as somebody has observed, is sermons in stones." 
 
 " My opinion to a letter," observed Tangle ; " though it 's odd 
 that anybody should have thought the same as myself. Come 
 along. Stay. When I come here, I always look once to see if 
 all be right." Whereupon Mr. Tangle approached a closet, un- 
 locked the door, and pointing to an iron-bound box, observed — 
 "All's safe. All new, Mr. Folder, all sparkling and bummg 
 from the Mint, What a beautiful substance gold is only to look 
 at," cried Tangle with enthusiasm ; at the same moment, unlockmg 
 the box and lifting the lid. " There 's a blaze ! " he cried, with 
 a voluptuous smacking of the mouth. " How they tAvinkle ! '"' he 
 added : whereupon the parliamentary agent clutched a handful 
 of bright guineas, and poured them from hand to hand, his eye
 
 208 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 catching yellow lustre from tlie golden shower. And thus for 
 some brief minute or two did Tangle play with minted gold. 
 
 "We are told that the snake-charmers of the East are wont to 
 ensnare the rejitiles with dulcet music. The snake Apollo plays a 
 melody upon some magic pipe ; whereupon torpid snakes coiled in 
 holes and cnumies gradually untwast themselves, and feel their 
 blood quicken, and their scales rustle, and they glide and Undu- 
 late towards the sound, — readily as school-gii'ls run to a ball. 
 Great is the voice of gold ! What a range, too, it has ! Now, 
 breathing the profoundest notes of persuasion — deep and earnest 
 as a hermit's homily — and now, carrying away the heart and 
 senses with its light and laughing trills, — delicious, fascinating as 
 the voice of bacchante. Gold, too, is the earth's great ventrilo- 
 quist ; speaking from and to the belly of immortal man, and 
 enslaving and juggling him with its many voices. 
 
 And gold worked its vocal wonders in Tangle's bed-chamber. 
 For no sooner did it sound, than like the pipe of the charmer, it 
 drew forth a little human reptile — a gutter-snake — a noxious 
 creature, hatched in a London lane to sting the world. Ay, it 
 was even so. No sooner, we say, did Tangle rattle the gold, than 
 a little ragged head was thi'ust from beneath the bed's foot ; a 
 head, with eyes bright and snake-like ; sparkling the more, the 
 more the metal chinked. That little head — what a world of 
 wicked knowledge was packed within it ! — was the property of 
 St. Giles's half-brother, and it was said, of Tom Blast's whole 
 son, young Jingo, the hero of the pocket-handkerchief; the 
 petted genius of Hog- Lane. How that adroit youngling had 
 gained the eminence of Tangle's bed-chamber, we will not pause 
 to explain ! Of that in due season. 
 
 Our whole business is for the present with Tangle and his com- 
 panion. As the old wai--horse pricks his ears at the murderous 
 music of the trumpet — as some retii-ed and ere while sharp attorney, 
 reading some successful juggle juggled in the name of justice, feels 
 his heart trickle as it ran red ink, and di-eams himself again in 
 court — so did the sound of the gold, as it fell from hand to hand, 
 awaken in the soul of Tangle all its metallic strength. Nay, his 
 soul for a moment left him, and ducked and dived and took its fill 
 of Hqnid pleasure in that golden river— that Pactolus embanked 
 in a box — like Triton wallowing in the foamy sea. He felt 
 he wjis in his true element ; and eloquence flowed from his 
 lips, free as a silver thread of ri\-ulet from some old granite- 
 heai-ted rock. 
 
 " Wonderful invention, gold coin, sir ! Wonderful thing ! If 
 there 's anj-thiug, sir, that shows man to be the creature that he 
 is, — it 's this. Scholars, when they want to raise man above the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 209 
 
 monkey — heaven forgive the atheists — call him a laughing animal 
 a tool-making animal, a cooking animal. Sir, they 've all missed 
 the true description ; they should call him a coining animal. I 've 
 thought of the matter much, Mr. Folder ; and this " — and Tangle 
 rattled the coin — " this is the true weapon against the atheists, 
 sir — and nearly all scholars are every bit the same as atheists — 
 just as toadstools are very near to mushrooms. No, sir, no ; 
 they may call men what they like, — but I see proofs of the im- 
 mortality of the soul in this, sir. No unbelief — I 'm sure of it 
 Mr. Foldei- — no imbelief can stand against this," and Tangle 
 again laid his hand upon the gold. 
 
 " The theory is ingenious — perhaps true," said Folder. 
 
 " A glorious invention, coining, sir," again cried Tangle, ex- 
 panding with his subject. " Now, look here ; these guineas are, 
 I may say, nothing more than the representatives of the voters of 
 Liquorish. Here we have 'em ! Here I take 'em up with my 
 hand, any number of 'em, body and soul." Whereupon, Tangle 
 scooped up the guineas in liis palm and poured them down again, 
 young Jingo still looking fi"om beneath the bed, and grinning, and 
 twitching his lips as the music continued. " Here they are — 
 men, women, and children — all 23acked close ; all snug. Sir, a 
 man who carries these, carries heaps of his fellow-creatures with 
 him. A tremendous art, sir, coining. They talk about the mven- 
 tion of printing : why, what was coumig but printing, — that is, 
 the better part of printing ; the soul, I may say of it, without 
 its wickedness ? There' s no dangerous notions in these, sir ; no 
 false ideas ; no stuif to dizzy the heads of fools ; making them 
 think themselves as good as their betters ; no treason, sir ; but 
 all plain and above board — plain and above board." And again. 
 Tangle took ujd the coin, and dropt it — and took it up, and di'opt 
 it again, his heart-strings vibrating to the music. 
 
 And the church bell rang out its summons to the world. And, 
 for some moments, the eloquent man heard it not ; he only listened 
 to his church bells — the rmgiug that sounded of his heaven. StiE 
 he plays with the gold : still the church bell sounds. 
 
 Toll — toll — chink — chink — toll — chink — toll — chink ! 
 
 " Is not that the church bell ? " at length asked Mr. Folder. 
 
 " Bless me ! so it is. I 'd forgotten — nothmg secular to-day ; " 
 and Tangle closed the box ; locked it : closed the closet-door ; 
 locked it too. " Stop a minute," he observed. He then went to 
 his trunk, and took therefrom a large prayer-book, bound in 
 morocco, scarlet as blood, and daubed with gold. " Never ti-avel, 
 Mr. Folder, without this," said Tangle, dropping his eyeUds, and 
 tenderly pressing the book with his fmgers,— " never, su\ Now, 
 
 P
 
 210 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 if you please." Folder stept fi-om the room, and Tangle vigorously 
 locked the door ; tried it once, twice, and putting the key in his 
 pocket, descended the stairs. 
 
 It was a lovely day ; there seemed a Sabbath peace on all 
 thin"-s. The di'udged horse stood meek and passive in the field, 
 patiently eyeing the passer-by, as though it felt secure of one day's 
 holiday ; the cows, with their large, kind looks, lay unmoved upon 
 the grass ; all things seemed taking rest beneath the brooding 
 wings of heaven. 
 
 We have cUmbed the hill — have gained the churchyard ; the 
 dust of the living dust of generations. The bell is swinging still ; 
 and turning on eveiy side, fi'om distant hamlets we see men, 
 women, and childi-en — age with its staiF, and babyhood warm at the 
 breast — all coming upward — upwai'd — to the church. Still they 
 climb, and still from twenty opposite paths they come, to strengthen 
 and rejoice their souls in one common centre. By bigotry's good 
 leave, a fore-shadowing of that tremendous Sabbath of the universe, 
 when all men from all paths shall meet in Paradise. 
 
 Long ere the bell had ceased to summon the congregation, the 
 church was filled. There were, however, two causes for this 
 Christian alaci-ity ; although, it is our belief that few even to 
 themselves acknowledged either. Nevertheless, it was plain from 
 the eager, half-anxious looks of the people, that they expected 
 something beyond the usual Sabbath comforting : that they had 
 come to see some interesting novelty, as well as to hear the cus- 
 tomaiy promise of good tidings. Suddenly the i-ustic beadle — he 
 has but little external glory to mark his function — gives a short 
 significant cough, and hurries towai'ds the door. All heads turn 
 with him, and in a few moments, there is a low murmur, a hush- 
 ing sound of surprise and satisfaction, as the handsome candidate, 
 the young Lord St. James, with ^Irs. Gilead and her two daughters, 
 enter the church, and ushered by the beadle, glide to the 
 family pew. 
 
 The church, we say, was thronged. A beautiful sight, doubt- 
 less, to behold in that small village temple, men of all conditions 
 gathered together to confess their common infirmities, to supplicate 
 for common blessings : to appeaj- for a time, as in the vestibule of 
 eternity, in common adoration of the Eternal ; all distinctions and 
 disguises of earth cast aside, and all in nakedness of soul bending 
 before God. A beautiful sight ! And yet, the devil pride will 
 follow some folks to church, to play unsightly pranks even before 
 the altar. He will not be left at the church door, even for a poor 
 two hours : but with hypocritical demureness moves up the aisle, 
 and enters a pew, all the better to mutter deep devotion. Look 
 down the middle aisle. It is filled with the common people— with
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 211 
 
 God's commonest earth : farming men, labourers, artisans : the 
 drudges of the world, who are nevertheless told by the good man 
 in the pulpit that they have, every one within them, an immortal 
 angel. They are assured that all wealth is vanity : they are pas- 
 sionately desired to look upon pride and arrogance as deadly sius ; 
 and with these lovely precepts touching their heart-strings, they 
 look on each side and see ladies and gentleman — called by the 
 clergyman their fellow-creatures — shut up in pews, set apart in 
 closets ; as, though in the presence of their Maker, and whilst 
 denouncing themselves miserable sinners, tliey would vindicate 
 their right of money, and buy of heaven itself the privilege of first 
 consideration. Poverty and humbleness of station may sit upon 
 the middle benches : but wealth and what is mouthed for respect- 
 ability must have cribs apart for themselves : must be considered 
 Christian jewels to be kept in velvet boxes ; lest they should catch 
 the disease of lowliness by contact with the vulgar. Surely there 
 are other masquerades than masquerades in halls and play-houses. 
 For are there not Sabbath maskings, with naked faces for masks I 
 How many a man has himself rolled to church, as though, hke 
 EUjah, he would go even to heaven in a carriage ? 
 
 The church was" full. Faces, famihar to the reader, were there. 
 Capstick and Bright Jem sat on the middle benches ; whilst St. 
 GUes, at the extreme end of the church, fixed in a corner, had 
 anxiously watched for the appearance of St. James ; and when he 
 again beheld him, aj^peared to give fervent thanks for the blessing. 
 Mr. KLingcup with about twenty red- faced little boys, — Kingcup, 
 be it known, was a schoolmaster — sat in the gallery. Mr. Tangle 
 and Mr. Folder were, of course, provided with comfortable seats 
 in a most comfortable pew. 
 
 Doctor GUead preached the sermon. Possibly the doctor himself 
 was ignorant of the bias, nevertheless he was a party parson. Hence 
 — he could not help it — he selected a text from which he evolved 
 the social necessity of the many trusting the few. We may not 
 transcribe to our profane page the sacred text and solemn discourse 
 delivered on the occasion. All we may do, is to assure the reader 
 that the excellent doctor preached with his best earnestness. 
 Again he bade his hearers live in the days of the patriarchs ; 
 again he conjured them to put away conceit, and faith in then- oyni 
 weak judgments, and disobedience to their betters happily ap- 
 pomted to guide and protect them. (Here— all unconsciously— 
 the doctor turned towards St. James's pew, and looked benignly 
 down upon his lordship.) It was plaia that the doctor thought 
 himself a shepherd of the patriarchal times ; and it was no less 
 plain that he thought all his hearers merely sheep. He made a 
 deep impression upon m;mv. At least two old dames — farmers' 
 
 P 2
 
 212 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 wives in red cloaks — wept ; whilst half a dozen grey heads were 
 seen to nod ai)pro\'ingly. Capstick, it was evident, had a cold ; 
 hence, twice he coughed so loudly, that both the beadle and 
 Bright Jem looked anxiously at him, whilst two or three 
 others seemed to say, " peojjle with such a cold should not come 
 to church." 
 
 It was, in sooth, no wonder that Doctor Gilead melted his 
 hearers. His words were so soft, so flowing ; they fell like sum- 
 mer honey-dew. Then his asj^ect was so calm — so very comfort- 
 able. He had the cure of, we know not how many thousand souls. 
 He had souls in Oxfordshu-e — souls in Norfolk — souls in Middlesex 
 — nay, souls in at least half-a-dozen counties : good Mother 
 Church had so bountifully endowed her pet son ; and yet there 
 was not a wrinkle in his cheek to tell the anxiety of so tremendous 
 a responsibility. Had the thousands of souls been so many 
 thousand chickens, Doctor Gilead could not have looked more 
 self-complacent under his charge. 
 
 But the service is over. The small organ peals its farewell notes. 
 The organ, be it known, given by the house of St. James for a 
 political purpose ; thus adroitly blending the music of party with 
 the music of religion. What a world's harmony ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 "He's grown a fine young man," said Bright Jem, whose talk 
 was of St. James. 
 
 " Why, he 's tall enough for a member of Parliament," said 
 Mr. Capstick. 
 
 " He 's a good un, too, I know it," said Jem. " I 'm sure, if 
 he didn't look as meek and as humble, and wasn't as attentive to 
 the discourse ! And it was a nice sermon, wasn't it ? Perhaps a 
 little too nmch o' putting people over people's heads ; but still it 
 was comfortable; tlunigh now and then to be sure, the doctor did, 
 as I think, take a little too much upon himself How he did give 
 it to 'em who he said were out of the palings of the Church ! How 
 he did dress 'vm to be sure ! And how, upon his own authority, 
 he said they 'd suffer." 
 
 " James," said Capstick — for so he dignified Jem when wishing 
 to be solenm— " James, do you recollect the words, ' And God 
 said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ?'" 
 
 " I should think I did," said Jem, unconsciously pulling off 
 his hat.
 
 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 213 
 
 " Ha ! that 's beautiful and consoling, isn't it ? And what a 
 fine creature is Man, so long as he always has these words before 
 his eyes, and so tries to do nothmg but what shall be some way 
 worthy of his likeness ! To do this, James, is to make this world 
 a pleasant place — and to have everybody happy about us. ' And 
 God said, Let us make man in our image ! ' This is beautiful : but 
 it 's sad, it 's melancholy work, Jem, when Man says, ' Let us make 
 God in our image ! '" 
 
 " I beg yoiu- pardon," said Jem, " it 's utterly unpossible. 
 'Tisn't to be done, no how." 
 
 " Jem, it 's been done for thousands of years ; it 's being done 
 eveiy day." Jem stared. " Yes, Jem ; for when man, in 
 spiritual matters, persecutes man — when in the name of religion, 
 and as he says, vindicatiug God, he commits violence and cruelty 
 upon his feUow-creatures, then does he in his o^vn ignorance make 
 for a time his Maker after his own erring and revengeful nature — 
 then does he make God in his own image ! Look at the burnings 
 and roastings of poor human flesh — its hangings and quarterings, 
 its imprisonment and exile in the name of religion. What are all 
 these, but that man does all this wickedness in the name of 
 God ; that is, he thinks God is pleased with what pleases his own 
 \'ile, vindictive nature ; and as I take it — and it can't be denied 
 — after such feshion it is, that man makes God after his own 
 image. ]Many folks — poor souls — think this the best religion. 
 Jem, it 's nothing more nor less than worst blasphemy." 
 
 Saying this, IVIr. Cap.stick rose from the grave-stone, where- 
 upon in summer time he was wont to sit for half-an-hour or so 
 after the service, talking with his old companion and enjoying the 
 lovely prospect below and around him. " Now, Jem, to dinner ;" 
 and Capstick was proceeding in laudable pursuit of that object of 
 man's daily cares, when he paused and pointed towai-ds St. GUes, 
 who was loitering in the chui-chyaixl. " Jem, isn't that our wet 
 friend % " 
 
 "In course it is," said Jem. '-Didn't you see him in the 
 church % There 's a strangeness about him, but for aU that I 
 don't know that I don't like him." 
 
 " I don't know that I do," said the misanthrope. " But it 's 
 plam that he 's been dodgmg hereabout after us." "With this, 
 Capstick advanced towards St. Giles. " Glad to see you here," 
 he said. " Eeading the tombstones, eh ? Ha ! they 're books 
 that now and then we all ought to read, seeing that one day we 
 shall all have our names in 'em." 
 
 "All a-s can afford 'em," said Jem, with a literahiess that 
 sometimes tried the temper of his patron. 
 
 " I don't care for stones," answered Capstick. " Show me a bit
 
 214 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 of green tin-f ; why, sometimes I can fancy wi-itten in the grass as 
 nice an epitaph as was ever chip])ed by stone-cutter." 
 
 " I wanted, sir, to see you," said St. Giles to Capstick. " I left 
 j'ou in a manner so sudden. I wanted to say something." 
 
 " Speak out," cried Capstick. " A man can't speak the truth 
 — whether it be sweet or sour — in a better place." 
 
 Still St. Giles hesitated. Looking full at Capstick, at length 
 he asked with an earnest voice, — " And you don't know me, su- ? " 
 Capstick, after a fall stare, shook his head. " You ought, sir ; 
 indeed, you ought ; for you did me a deal of good. I 've a secret 
 about me, that if known woidd hang me : but I 'm safe in telling 
 you." 
 
 " I don't know that," said Capstick. " I wouldn't answer for 
 myself at all. It might be my duty to hang you : as an honest 
 and respectable man, as the world goes, I might consider it a 
 praiseworthy thing to strangle you. Mind what you 're about," 
 cried the misanthrope, moving gradually away. — "I'm rather 
 given to hanging ; I am indeed, young man." 
 
 " I 'd trust a thousand lives with you, sir," said St. GUes, 
 approaching him. " And so, sir, you must know" — 
 
 " Well 1 What 1 " cried Capstick, alarmed at the terrible news 
 about to be revealed. " I shall hang you ; but if you will, 
 speak — speak." 
 
 St. Giles looked round ; then suddenly, as though death-struck, 
 turned ghastly pale. He stammered out — "Not now, sir; 
 another time," and walked swiftly from the churchyard. 
 
 "Jem," said Capstick, "we shall hear of burglary, perhaps 
 murder, before to-morrow. That 's a desperate fellow, Jem." 
 
 " Not a bit on it," answered Jem. " Poor soul ! he looks as 
 if he was deeper in trouble than in wickedness." In truth, this 
 was Capstick's own opinion, albeit he chose not so to deliver it. 
 He had to keep up a character for suspicion and misanthropy, 
 and therefore would see, as he called them, hanging lines in every 
 other human countenance. 
 
 However, leaving the pair to pursue their way to the Tub, we 
 may at once narrate to the reader the cause that startled St. Giles 
 from his purpose, making liim slink " like a guilty thing away." 
 When, in a preceding chapter, St. Giles quitted Hog Lane, he 
 Mvas, it may be remembered, followed to the burial-ground by his 
 half-brother. It was the hope of St. Giles that he had taken final 
 leave of his old destroyer, Tom Blast. However, that master of 
 miquity would not have it so. Hence, he commanded tlie ready 
 imp Jingo stealthily to follow St. Giles— to watch wheresoever he 
 might go, and straightway retiu-n with the news. Jingo faith- 
 fully performed the biddmg. At the Cocoa Tree Tom learnt the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 215 
 
 whole story of the election. He also picked up the grateful 
 intelligence that the Yellow party had need of fighting patriots ; 
 and though Tom's character was more of Ulysses than Achilles, 
 he nevertheless scrui^led not to take the wages of a warrior in 
 the cause of purity of election. And then, ardent in the cause, it 
 appeared to him that the talents of his son — as on occasion he 
 ingenuously declared Jingo to be — ^would potently assist the noble 
 struggle. " Tlie boy piped Hke any nightingal, and would sing 
 'em all to sticks in ballads." Whereupon, young Jingo received 
 an appointment as minstrel to the cause ; and with his father was 
 dispatched straight to Liquorish. 
 
 Now the vehicle that contained Tom Blast and his singing-boy, 
 also can'ied some dozen other humble Yellows. The merits of the 
 opposing candidates were discussed with that freedom which is 
 one of the happy privileges of our constitution. "Whereupon it 
 came out in discourse that the agent for the Blues had taken with 
 him a chest filled with gold ; more than enough to bribe every 
 honest man in the kingdom. This news sank into the heart of 
 Blast like water in sand. AU the remainder of the way, he 
 thought of that chest of gold devoted to corrupt honest men, and 
 thought how sweet, how justifiable it would be could he save 
 honesty from such temptation by making the pelf his own. St. 
 Giles was of the Blue party : somewhat, no doubt of it, in the 
 confidence of the agent of St. James. It was only to hang on to 
 St. Giles, to work upon the terrors of the transport, to obtain a 
 potent ally in the felony. Already, Blast saw himself the master 
 of a golden treasure ; and perhaps his fii'st luck might so come 
 back to him, things might so be managed, that St. Giles alone 
 might be left to pay the penalty. It was plain that chance 
 had intended the chicken-hearted fool the gull for wiser fellows, 
 and Tom was determined not to forego his privilege. 
 
 Arrived at Liquorish, Tom in vain sought St. Giles. Never- 
 theless, he had made all use of the boy. The urchin bemg shown 
 the abode of Tangle, himg about the house, until he discovered 
 the sleeping-room of that sagacious man. Such discovery was 
 soon made, Mr. Tangle appearing at the wmdow of his bed- 
 chamber. Tangle was a cautious man : it was his reputation — his 
 pride. It has been seen with what especial care he locked the closet 
 —locked the chest that contained his gold— locked the chambc- 
 door: but — by one of those accidents with which Beelzebub 
 delights himself to cheat his best friends— Mr. Tangle forgot, 
 when he descended to breakfast, to close his chamber wmdow. 
 This tremendous error was not unobserved by Jingo and his 
 paternal tutor, both being on the watch for accidents. The win- 
 dow, we say, was open ; and chance seemed to offer a glorious
 
 216 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 means of success ; for an old vine, growing at the wall, offered to 
 the agile limbs of Jingo a most accommodating ladder. He 
 -watched his moment. It was early Sunday morning ; and nobody 
 was in the street. In a couple of minutes the boy had mounted 
 the topmost branch of the vine, was in at the window, and in a 
 second was under the bed of Tangle. Here he lay a few minutes, 
 taking breath : he then stole forth, and approaching the case- 
 ment, announced by signs to his anxious father in the street, that 
 all was right. Whereupon, his parent, with few but significant 
 gestures, repUed to the boy. We are fortunately enabled to anti- 
 cipate to the reader the meaning of this pantomime. It was, that 
 Jingo should keep close until night ; and then perform a feat 
 that would gild him -with renown. Jingo felt the importance of 
 the part put upon him by his adventurous yet careful father : for 
 Tom Blast had provided the boy with apples and biscuits in his 
 pockets, that he might solace and sustain himself the while he 
 lay in wait. And Jingo showed himself worthy of his early 
 training. True it is, that Molly the maid — having for a short 
 time begged the key of Mr. Tangle — entered the chamber, yet 
 Jingo, braced for the occasion, silently munched his biscuit 
 and trembled not. Molly made the bed, singing a rustic ditty 
 the while, and Jingo, cosy and quiet, rather enjoyed the melody 
 than feared the singer. Could Mr. Blast have known the com- 
 posed heroism of his child, he would have felt in all its fulness, 
 the paternal pride ! He, however, continued his search for 
 St. Giles. At length he gathered at the Rose, that his friend — as 
 he had denominated him — had gone to church. He had caused 
 some merriment among the band and others by such eccentricity 
 — nevertheless, he had gone to his devotions. Blast cared not to 
 follow hmi inside the edifice, but lingered about the churchyard, 
 watching the congregation depart. Already he saw St. Giles 
 approach ; but seeing him about to accost Capstick, shrank behind 
 a tomb-stone : and thus it was, whilst watching from this posi- 
 tion, that he was recognised by the quick eye of St. Giles, who 
 fled as from a wild beast. 
 
 We have now to return to Tangle and Folder. To their 
 astonishment and delight they had, even at the church porch, 
 been invited to dine at Lazarus Hall. There was a condescen- 
 sion, an urbanity, about dear Doctor Gilead, that was not to be 
 refused ; and the doctor's carriage bemg sent to the Olive Branch, 
 the happy couple departed for the rectory. The dinner was mag- 
 nificent. Of this we feel assured ; for Tangle on his progress 
 back to the inn, at least fifty times declared as much. "What 
 wme too ! " he cried—" the man, sir, who can give wiue like that 
 ought to be a bishop— a bishop, sii- ; certainly, a bishop." Tliis
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 217 
 
 opinion Mr. Tangle emphasised by again and again slapping the 
 knee of Mr. Folder, who in vaiu endeavoured to moderate Tangle's 
 admiration, by feebly answering — " My dear sir," — " My very 
 dear sir," — but it availed not. 
 
 It was evident fi-om the condition of Mr. Tangle that he did not 
 place wine among secular things : otherwise he had not on such a 
 day meddled so busily with the rector's port. For Mr. Tangle was a 
 particularly sober man. It was the boast of Mrs. Tangle that he 
 had never been seen intoxicated : a boast that has with it a certain 
 equivocation. But — it is a truism — every man has his weak 
 moments. Had he not, what an awful jjerson would he be — ^how 
 set apart, how distantly removed from his fellow-men — fi-ail, daily 
 sinners i No ; it is because great men have their weaknesses, 
 that we may assert our common nature with them. We should 
 be abashed, indeed utterly confounded, by their heads of glittering 
 metal, did we not espy their little toes of clay, that reconcile us 
 by the assurance, that they have about them our father Adam's 
 common loam . Hence, our reverence may be softened into love. 
 Common weakness breeds common atfection. 
 
 But — we owe the palliation to Tangle — sure we are, had the 
 patriot not been so strong, the man would not have been so 
 di'unk. He had been so animated, so rapt by the prospect of 
 Lord St. James's success, so inexpressibly indignant towards the 
 corrupt and villanous machinations of the Yellows, that when he 
 wanted words, as he so very often did, to express the intensity of 
 his feelings, he invariably applied himself to his wine-glass. At 
 a veiy early hour of the evening, he had got di'imk out of pure 
 admiration of the English Constitution. Nor, let the truth be 
 said, was Mr. Folder innocent of liquor. But, he had this saving 
 clause for himself, — if he was drunk, he was drunk hke a gentle- 
 man. That is, he neither sang, nor roared, nor slapt his comrade 
 on his knee or shoulder ; but sat silently winking his eyes like an 
 owl in the sun, and now and then performing a slight cough, as it 
 appeared to him to set right his dignity. 
 
 What change of climate often is to a sick man, change of 
 house is to a drunken one. He feels the stronger for the removal, 
 and therefore drinks again. It was thus with Mr. Tangle. Hence, 
 when safely seated in the Ohve Branch, he declai-ed that he 
 must have " one glass more — only one " — the glass, that shows 
 the tippler "many more." Briefly — for why should we linger 
 with the bacchanaU— Mr. Tangle was led by the Boots and 
 Chambermaid to his bed-room, Mr. Folder, with a hard struggle 
 for seeming sobriety, carrying a candle which in liis unsteady 
 hand let fall anointing di-ops of tallow on the head of the vinous 
 and patriotic lawyer. Ai'rived at the top of the stairs, Tangle
 
 218 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 insisted upon being left to his own guidance. Did they want to 
 insult him 1 Did they think him drunk ? He knew the way to 
 liis own room ; and would have no spies upon his doings. A dim 
 sense of the treasure in his dormitory seemed to steal upon him, 
 and make him of a sudden savagely resolute. He tried at three 
 or four doors, insisting that each was his proper door ; and then 
 gradually giving it up as in no way belonging to him. Then he 
 burst into a loud laugh, and declared it was droll — devilish 
 droll. "This reminds me of another inn I once slept at," 
 he cried—" another tavern, where all the doors always changed 
 places after twelve o'clock." At length, he was half-shuffled, 
 half-guided into his own apartment ; where, forbidding any 
 one on pain of death to follow him, he was left alone. He 
 cautiously locked the door, and taking therefrom the key, proceeded 
 with devious steps to place it under Ids pillow. He then stag- 
 gered to the door of the closet that contained his treasure ; 
 and grinned, and pawed and stroked it up and down as though 
 he was caressing some animate thing. By the dim twinkling of 
 tlie rushlight, young Jingo, his head protruded from the bed's 
 foot — like the head of a tortoise from beneath its shell — watched 
 the drunkard ; and, it must be owned, felt something like a sense 
 of contempt for his condition. It was plain the urchin 
 thought the glory of the robbery greatly lessened by the helpless 
 state of the victim to be robbed. The boy, in the vivacity of 
 youthful blood, had expected to see the gentleman gagged at 
 least and tied to the bed-post ; and now he would be made to 
 render up his gold patiently as a sheep its wool. Leaving the 
 closet. Tangle approached the bed, and still smiling at his won- 
 drous ciuming, placed his watch under tlie mattress. He next 
 drew from his waistcoat a small pair of pistols which, having eyed 
 with a look of maudlin tenderness, and addressed as his dear pre- 
 servers, he attempted to place in the watch-pocket at the head of 
 the bed. Unfortunately, they slipped from his fingers, fell at the 
 bed-side, and were instantly secured by young Jingo. Tangle 
 paused ; stooped ,: fumbled about the floor, then with a grunt of 
 resignation, gave up the search. " He shouldn't want 'em — no ; 
 he knew he shouldn't want 'ern." At length Mr. Tangle found 
 himself between the sheets. His head fell Mke a lump of dead 
 clay upon the pillow ; and in two or three minutes, he v/as sunk 
 fathoms deep in drunken oblivdon. 
 
 Jingo — hopeful child ! — had a quick eye for business. Mr. 
 Tangle had divested himself of his wardrobe at the bedside ; 
 and it was a pretty sight, it would in sooth have warmed the 
 jiaternal bosom of Tom Blast, could he have beheld Jingo seize 
 garment by garment, and with unerring sagacity, i nstantly apply
 
 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 219 
 
 himself to eA^ery pocket. Purse, handkerchief, pocket-book — nay, 
 even a curious old steel tobacco-stopper, a Tangle heir-loom — was 
 quickly in the possession of young Jingo. And so, ending the 
 present chapter, we leave them — Tangle in his bed dreaming of 
 triumph ; and Jingo under it, really tasting the delicious fruits of 
 plunder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Jingo was bom for greatness. He had in his character the great 
 element of a great general, a great statesman ; marvellous self- 
 possession. Meaner boys would have been in a flutter of impa- 
 tience ; not so with the pupil of Tom Blast. Hence, he sat under 
 the bed, with critical ear, listening to the hard breathing of the 
 drunken man, who soon began to snore with such discordant 
 vehemence that Jingo feared the sleeper might awaken his bottle 
 Mend, Mr. Folder. (Jingo knew it not ; but his testimony would 
 have been very valuable to IVIrs. Tangle : for the snoring of her 
 husband was one of the disquietudes of that all-suffering woman ; 
 the rather, too, that the man constantly denied his tendency to the 
 habit. He never snored. Nobody ever does.) 
 
 With knowing, delicate ear, the child continued to listen to the 
 stertorous agent. At length, the boy crept from beneath the bed, 
 and treading lightly as a fairy at a bridal couch, he made his way 
 to the window. Now, had anybody attempted to open it for any 
 honest purpose — had Molly, the maid, for instance, sought to 
 raise it merely to give her opinion of the moon and the night 
 to any rustic astronomer below — it is very certain, that the -window 
 would have stack, or jarred, or rattled ; it was too old and crazy 
 to be made a comfortable confidant in any such foolish busi- 
 ness. Ten to one, but it had awakened the mistress of the Olive 
 Branch, who would ine%itably have nudged the master. And now 
 ■ — a robbery was to be done — a most tremendous robbery, perhaps, 
 to be further solemnised by homicide — for who should say that 
 the Parcse who wove the red tape of the life of Tangle, attorney- 
 at-law, were not about to snip it : who shall say that so awful a 
 crisis did not at that moment impend ? — and yet silently went 
 the window up ; easily, smoothly, as though gi-eased by some 
 witch ; yes, smeared with fat " from murderer's gibbet." Thus 
 does the devil so oft make wickedness so very easy to the meanest 
 imderstandiug.
 
 220 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Two or three minutes passed, not more, and Tom Blast thrust 
 his head .ind one of his legs into the chamber. There was a gi-im 
 smile upon his face, a murderous simper at his mouth, a brassy 
 brightness in his eyes, that showed him to be upon a labour of love. 
 No soldier ever scaled a wall — to receive it may be a bullet or a 
 bayonet, with the after-leaf of laurel that the Gazette punctually 
 lets fall upon his grave — no hero, we say, his nerves strung by 
 shouts, his heart beating to the beating drums, his blood boiling 
 at slaughter heat, his whole soul breathing tire and gunpowder, 
 and all to gloriously slay and sack, and burn — no such adven- 
 turous plumed biped ever looked more grimly beautiful than did 
 that low-thoughted burglar, that leprous-minded thief. Strange 
 and mournful this to think of ! For what was there good or noble 
 to make his muscles u'on 1 What holy flame of patriotism raged 
 in his heart, refining its grossness — what laurel could he hope for, 
 wet with a nation's tears — nations always weeping when the 
 private soldier falls ? He had none of these exalting elements to 
 sublimate him, for a time, into an immortal imp of glory. His 
 motive was gold : brutalising gold. His enemy, if he came to 
 close quarters, a weak, wine-soddened old man. His fate, if he 
 should fad, no laurel wreath, but suffocating rope. And yet, 
 alas, for the conceit of poor humanity ! Thomas Blast, prepared 
 for robbery, and it might be, bloodshed, looked as hon-ibly ani- 
 mated, as ferociously happy, as though he had mounted some 
 IncUan rampart, then and there graciously commissioned to 
 slay man, woman, and child ; to pillage and to burn, and all 
 for glory — all for the everlasting fame — of who shall count how 
 many years, or months, or daysl How very different the picture 
 — the fate of the two men ! And then, again, there is no Old 
 Bailey (at least in this world) for the mighty men of the bully 
 burglar, Mars ! 
 
 Whilst writing this piece of villany, as, should it perchance 
 find its way into any barrack, it will be called, we have not kept 
 Tom Blast astride upon the wmdow-sill. Oh no ! he has busi- 
 ness to perform— stern, worldly business, as he deems it— and 
 he has entered the chamber ; and with much composure, a 
 placidity which it has been seen he has transmitted to his son, 
 he gazes at the sleeping, hard-breathing Tangle. Mr. Blast was 
 not a man, in any way, above his profession. He never neglected, 
 however petty they might be, any of the details of his art. This 
 feeling of precision was, possibly, born with him ; any way, 
 long custom had brought the principle, or whatever it was, as 
 near to perfection as may be allowed to any achievement of 
 fallible humanity. Had destiny put Blast in the respectable 
 position of the attorney in the bed, sure we are, it would have
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 221 
 
 been the same with him. Certain we are he would have been 
 as particular with his inkhorn, his parchment, his ferret, as he 
 now was with his equipments of dark lantern, crowbar, and rope. 
 
 For some moments, Blast, by the aid of his lantern, looked 
 meditatingly upon Tangle. Possibly he felt such a deep sense of 
 security that he liked to dally with his subject, to coquet with 
 robbery, to gently sport with sin, to give it a sweeter flavour. 
 For this is a trick of humanity : in evidence of which, we could 
 and we would quote rosy examples : but no ; we will not treat 
 the reader — in this history we have never yet done so — as though 
 his bosom was stuffed, doll-like, -with, bran : we believe that he 
 has a heart beating within it, and to that interpreter, we write, 
 as we should say, many things in short-hand : sometimes we may 
 lose by it ; nevertheless, we disdain to spell every passion with its 
 every letter. 
 
 " He 'd never be stole for his beauty, would he. Jingo ? " asked 
 Blast, in a loud whisper, blandly smiling. 
 
 " And whatever beauty he has, he shuts it up when he goes to 
 sleep," replied the chUd, " Oh, isn't he drunk !" the boy added, 
 with considerable zest. 
 
 " He is," said Blast, who still looked contemplative. Then 
 shading the lantern, to catch the best view of Tangle's face, he 
 continued — " What a horrible pictur ! He looks as if he 'd come 
 from Indy in a cask of spii'its, and was jest laid out, afore he was 
 to be buried. Jingo, my boy," — and the paternal hand was 
 gently laid upon the boy's head — " Jingo, your poor father may 
 have his faults, like other men ; I can't say he mayn't ; no ; but 
 he isn't a drunkard, Jingo ; else he hadn't got on the little he 
 has in the world — he hadn't, indeed. And so, take warning by 
 what you see — by what you see," and Blast stretching his arm 
 towards the sleeper, said this in a low voice — touchingly, pater- 
 nally. " And now, Jingo," asked the man of business, " where 's 
 the shiners ? " 
 
 A thoughtless reader may deem it strange, unnatural, that a 
 man about to perpetrate gibbet-v.^ork should thus coolly delay, 
 and after his own fashion, moraUse. But then such reader must 
 ponder on the effect of long habit. In his first battle— though 
 common history says nothing of it — Julius Caesar, not from 
 cowardice, but from a strange inward perturbation, bled at the 
 nose : similar accidents may have happened to other heroes when 
 they have drawn what with an odd gallantry is called their maiden 
 sword. Still the reader may not yet comprehend the composure 
 of Tom Blast. The more his loss. But then, probably, the reader 
 has never been a housebreaker. 
 
 Return we to our colloquy. " Jingo, where 's the shiners 1 "
 
 222 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " There ! " said the boy, pointing to the closet : " and see," he 
 whispered, with a proud look, at the time producing Tangle's 
 pistols — " see, I 've got his pops ! " 
 
 This touch of early prudence and sagacity was too much for 
 a father's heai't, Tom felt himself melted, as with undisguised 
 tenderness he said, taking an oath to the fact — " Well, you are a 
 bloomer, you are ! " 
 
 At this moment, Tangle rolled upon his side, gabbling some- 
 thing in his sleep. On the instant. Jingo was at the couch, with 
 both his pistols presented at the sleeper's head. The eyes of the 
 little wretch glittered like a snake's — his lips were compressed — 
 his eyebrows knit — his nostiils swelling. At a thought, he looked 
 an imp of murder. 
 
 " There 's a beauty," said the encouraging Blast, " don't let 
 him wag ; if he should " — it was needless for Blast to finish the 
 injunction ; a ten-ible griD, and a nod from Jingo, showed that he 
 clearly understood the fatherly wish. 
 
 " This is the closet, eh 1 " said Blast, with a very contemptuous 
 look at the frail partition between him and El Dorado. Then 
 Blast took a small crowbar from his pocket ; a remarkably neat, 
 portable instrument. For some seconds he stood twirliqg it in 
 his hand with the composed air of a professor. Had he been a 
 fashionable fiddler, he could not have fondled his alchemic 
 Cremona more tenderly, more lovingly. 
 
 One moment he looks at the door. Ha ! that was the touch of 
 a master ! How it -was done, we know not. By what sleight, 
 what dexterity of hand, we cimnot guess, but in a few seconds, 
 the door yielding to the instrument, opens with a dull, sudden 
 sound ; and Tom Blast sim^eys Tangle's chest of gold. Blast's son 
 and heir still presenting two pistols at Tangle's di-unken head. 
 
 At the opening of the door, Jmgo looked round and laughed. 
 Before, his eyes were bent upon the sleeping man ; and it was 
 plam, from the working of the boy's face, that he was fighting 
 Avith some horrid thought— some damnable temptation. There 
 was he with death in his two little hands ; there was he with a 
 tenible curiosity growing in his features : his lips trembled, and 
 he shifted uneasily on his feet ; he breathed hard ; he glanced, 
 for an instant, down the muzzle of each pistol. There was the 
 man— sleepmg— still alive, though seethed in drink, and looking 
 like death. There he was — the dreaming man with his dreaming 
 murderer. For should the devil— and the boy felt him at Ms side 
 —should the demon only jog his elbow, crook his finger— and how 
 odd, how strange, how very curious it would be, to see that, 
 sleeping face, with a flash, asleep in death ; to catch the look— 
 the brief one look— as the soul shot into dai'kuess !
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 223 
 
 But Tom Blast suddenly burst the door, and the boy laughed 
 and trembled. He thought it very strange — very odd — he could 
 have wept. 
 
 " All right," said Tom, " we 're lords for life ! " He then 
 laid hands upon the box — paused — and looked suddenly blank. 
 Wayward, obstinate Plutus ! The god wouid not be lifted — no, 
 in his heavy cUvinity, he would not be made to budge. Again 
 and again Tom Blast essayed to stir the god — to take him 
 in his loving arms, and, hugging him to his breast, to bear him 
 to some sweet solitude, and make him all his own. Provoking, 
 was it not, that that which added to the treasure, added to the 
 difficulty 1 Tom could have cui-sed the patriotism of the voters 
 of Liquorish, that — the immovable box declared it — bore so high 
 a price. He had no belief that their virtue could have been so 
 very valuable to themselves. Tom, however, would not be 
 baffled. No ; a voice issued from the box, that, like the voice oi 
 jeering beauty, at once piqued and animated him. And now he 
 was resolved. His sinews might crack — his Adam's clay might 
 be flawed beneath the load — nevertheless, be would lift it. 
 
 " Jingo," whispered Tom, " don't move a foot. The damned 
 box " — in this way does imgi-ateful man too often treat his super- 
 flux of wealth ! — " can't be lowered out of window ; 'twould go 
 smash. I '11 creep down and unbolt the door, and then " — Blast 
 had said enough ; Jingo nodded Ids perfect comprehension of his 
 father's plan ; and the robber, silently as a shadow glides along 
 the floor, passed from the room. Jingo was alone — alone, with 
 his murderous toys — for to him they were very playthings — and 
 the sleeping sot. Again, did strange thoughts tingle in that 
 mistaught httle brain ; again did a devilish spirit of mischief 
 begin to possess him ; when his paternal monitor returned, with 
 a lightened, a pleased look. 
 
 It was, doubtless, a charming sight — a spectacle hugely enjoyed 
 by the few select spectators — to behold Hercules make his final 
 muscular preparation for the achievement of any one of his 
 labours. The majesty of will— that moral regahty of man- 
 must have so beamed and flashed around his brows, that even the 
 gods may have looked from the windows of heaven, pleased with 
 a royalty that seemed a shadow of their own. And so be of 
 good heart, ye many sons of Hercules, fighting, wrestling with 
 the monsters of adverse fate— be of good faith, though ye combat 
 in the soUtude of a desert ; nevertheless, believe it, if ye fight 
 courageously, there are kind looks from heaven always beaming 
 on you. 
 
 We incline to the belief that Tom Blast had never heard of 
 Hercules ; or if indeed he had, the name was so associated with
 
 224 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 the PilliU's, that if he ever considered the matter at all, he may 
 perchance have thought Hercules some very famous tapster, and 
 that certain London hosteh'ies known as Hercules' Pillars merely 
 eternised his reputation. We forget, too, the name of the anti- 
 quai-y who wrote a very thick book, proving that the pillars set 
 up by Hercules — vulgarly supposed to commemorate his labours 
 — were no other than a very classic public-house, wherein, after 
 his last day's work, he drained his cool tankard. Be this as it 
 may, Blast wa^s in no way strengthened by the thought of the 
 reforming Hercules, when he prepared himself to lift upon tis 
 shoulder that bitter sweet — that " heavy lightness, serious vanity" 
 — that sustaining, crushing weight of gold. Nevertheless, the 
 preparation of Blast was worthy of the best scoundrel hero of the 
 world's old age and weakness. He looked at the box with flash- 
 ing resolution — set his teeth — fixed his feet — and put forth his 
 arms, as though he would root up an oak. 
 
 And now shout, ye imps ! Scream, ye devilkins — for it is 
 done ! The gold is on the thief's shoulder ! His knees quiver 
 beneath the sudden wealth — his chest labours — his face grows 
 purple as grapes — and the veins in his gibbet brow start thick 
 and black with blood, — yet a proud smile plays about his iron 
 mouth, and he looks a Newgate hero ! 
 
 Breathing hard, in hoarse whispers, the robber gives directions 
 to the boy — "Jmgo — good fellow — don't stir — only a minute — 
 only a minute — when I'm clear off— then — you know." And 
 with this broken counsel. Blast, his strength strained to the 
 utmost, turned to the door — and staggered from the room. Young 
 Jingo's face darkened, and now he glanced towards the window, 
 to secure himself a retreat, now he listened to catch the sounds 
 of his father's footsteps. To trip— to stumble but an inch— and 
 what a crashing summons to the whole household would burst 
 from that fallen heap of gold ! Still Jingo listened, and still he 
 felt re-a.ssured ! The robber made silent and successful progress. It 
 was a^ difficult passage— that narrow, crooked staircase ; and as 
 the thief accommodated his burthen to its winding way, thoughts 
 of mortality would come uito the thief's brain ; for he marvelled 
 how when anybody died— and it was an old, old house— they 
 carried the coffin down that confined, sinuous path ! But gold— 
 heai-t-strengthening gold— is on his shoulders, and he bears up 
 with Atlantean will, the whilst he moves along noiselessly as the 
 hare limps on the greensward. He has crossed the threshold- 
 closed the door behind him— he is in the wide world, with his 
 lortune on his shoulders. Wliither shall he go 1 
 
 Direct, assist him, ye good genii that, all unseen, favour and 
 strengthen the mere money-maker ; the man, who only eats, and
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 225 
 
 drinks, and takes Ms temperate rest, that lie may be keener at a 
 bargain, slaarj^er for profit. How many, — save that their o-olden 
 burdens are lawful gains ; that is, obtained by no gross violation 
 of the statute — are, like Tom Blast, puzzled, confounded, by the 
 very treasure they have toiled for 1 Wliat a hard, ungrateful 
 weight, their monstrous wealth ! Somehow, with all the bless- 
 ings mingled with it, they cannot exti'act heart's ease from it. 
 They sweat and toil under the load, when — though they know not 
 how to secure the happiness — they would fain sit themselves down 
 on some green, pleasant spot, and enjoy their long-toUed-for 
 delight. No, it may not be. The spirit — the sole possessing 
 spirit that, day and night, made them subdue all gentler, softer 
 influences, to the one exhausting pui'pose, wealth — the spirit is 
 stiU their despot, and rules them as tyrannously when in cloth of 
 gold, as when in frieze. They have worked — sweated for the 
 precious load ; and, when obtained, it is hung about with fears. 
 How many have crawled, brute-hke, on all-foui's through dirty, 
 winding ways to wealth, with the sweet unction at theii- souls 
 that, arrived at the glorious bom-ne, they would then walk very 
 erect ; woidd cleanse themselves of the inevitable defilements of 
 the road : would, in sooth, become very sweet men indeed. Well, 
 they have reached the slnine ; they have learned the true " Open 
 Sesame ! " — they are rich, jsast aU their morning dreams of 
 wealth — ^but somehow, there is the trick of old habit, — they 
 cannot well stand upright ; and their hands have been so dirtied, 
 feeling their way to Plutus, it seems to them a foolish task to try 
 to whiten and purify them. This, however, they can do. They 
 can, somehow, blind the world : yes, they can put on very white 
 gloves. 
 
 Take fi-om Tom Blast the spot of felony, and — as he staggers 
 onward in darkness and uncertainty, almost crushed with his 
 weight of wealth, — knowing not where to find repose — he is no 
 other than your monstrously rich man, who has exchanged his 
 heart at the Mint for coined pieces. 
 
 Fatigued, perplexed with rising fears, the robber goes on his 
 unknown way. He strikes wide from the village — goes down 
 lanes, crosses fields. And then he pauses ; and casting his load 
 upon the earth, he sits upon it, takes ofi" his hat, and wipes the 
 streaming sweat from his brow, a myiiad of unthought-of stars 
 looking down upon his felon head. 
 
 Yes ; he has taken the good resolution. He wiU henceforth be 
 an honest, respectable man. Let fate be only so kind as to assure 
 him his present spoil, and he will wash his hands of all such work 
 for the rest of his days. He will, he thinks, leave London, 
 Yes ; he will discipline his soul to forego the sweet allurements, 
 
 Q
 
 226 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 the magic wiles of that city of Comus. He will go into the 
 couutiy, and be very good to the poor. He will change his name. 
 With such change, he cjiunot but slough much of the bad repu- 
 tion that the pj-ejudice of society has fixed upon him. He will 
 become a country gentleman. He >\ill give away a bullock and 
 blankets at Christmas. He will go regularly to church. Yes ; 
 he wQl show that he can be truly religious ; for he will have a 
 pew as fine, if not finer, than any pew he had peeped into 
 yesterday. If fate for this once, this last time, be only kind to 
 him ! This virtuous determination so befooled the felon, that he 
 felt his heart ojiened ; felt all his nature softened to receive the 
 best and kindliest impressions. Though, in his various crooked 
 ways, Tom Blast had gulled many, many men, yet had he never 
 so completely duped any man, as, at that moment, Tom duped 
 Tom. He felt himself mightil}^ comforted. He looked around 
 him at the hedges, the trees ; as though carefully noting their 
 particular whereabout. He rose blithely, with some new resolu- 
 tion. With renewed strength he swung the box upon his 
 shoulder, and in a few minutes he had hidden it. He woidd 
 come back at a proper season, and with jjroper means, to take 
 sure possession of it. 
 
 Eetuni we to Tangle's chamber. Oh, innocent sleep ! There 
 was the paiUamentaiy agent — tlie man "with the golden key to 
 open the door of St. Stephen's to young St. James — there was 
 he, still in port-wine slumbers — still sunk in the ruby sea ! 
 Beautiful was the morning ! The nuuble air frolicked in at the 
 open window, for the mercurial Jingo had not closed it when he 
 departed with Tangle's treasm-es. The glorious sun rose blushing 
 at the ways of slothful man. The sparrows, tenants of the 
 eaves, flew from distant fields, many a one proving, by the early 
 worm that writhed about its bill, the tnithfulness of proverb loi'e. 
 And still the attorney slept ! Sleep on, poor innocence ! Thou 
 knowest not the gashes cut in thy pocket : thou knowest not how 
 that is bleeding mortal di-ops of coined blood ; for how much 
 seeming gold is there, that, looked upon aright, is aught other 
 substance 1 Sleep on. 
 
 And Tangle sleeps and dreams. A delicious vision creases 
 and wrinkles his yellow face like folds in parchment. Yes ; 
 Tangle dreams ! And we know the particular di-eam, and — sweet 
 is the privilege !— we may and will tell it. Somnus did not 
 kindly send to the lawyer a visionary courier to apprise him of 
 his loss ; and so to break the affliction to liis sleep that, waking, 
 he might perliaps the better endure it. Oh no ! there would have 
 Ijeen no spoi-t m that. Contrast is the soul of whim ; and Somnus 
 waa inclined to a joke with the attorney.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JaMES. 227 
 
 Whereupon, Tangle dreamt that he was on his death- bed ; and 
 nevertheless, bed to him had never been so delicious. He knew 
 his hour was come : a smiling angel, all efiulgence, had told 
 him so. And Tangle, calling up a decent look of regret at his 
 wife and children, standing about him, told them to be comforted, 
 as he was going immediately to heaven. This he knew ; and it 
 showed their ignorance to look any doubt of the matter. That 
 chest of gold — the gold once taken to pay the electors of Liquor- 
 ish — was, after the manner of dreams, somehow his own i^roperty. 
 Ajid therefore, he ordered the chest to be placed on the foot of 
 his bed, and oj^ened. The lid was raised ; and oh, what a glory ! 
 It was filled to the edge with bright, bright guineas, all bearing 
 the benevolent face — ii wonderful likeness ; hi fact, as every face 
 on gold is, a speaking lil\eness, for it talks every tongue — ot 
 George the Thii'd ! When Tangle saw them he smiled a smile — • 
 .■ly, could we have followed it — to the very roots of his heai-t. 
 " I am going to heaven," said he ; "I have toiled all my 
 life for that goodly end ; I have scraped and scrajaed those 
 blessed things together, knowing that if I had enough of them 
 to bear my weight, they Avould carry me straight to Para- 
 dise. No, my dear wife, my darling children, think not my brain 
 is wandering ; think me not light-headed ; for at this solemn 
 time, this awful moment, I only hope to consummate the great 
 object of my life. I have made money in this world, that, by its 
 means, I might make sure of heaven in the next. And they " — 
 and Tangle again pointed to the guineas — " those bright celestials 
 will carry me there ! " And now comes the wonderful part of 
 the dream. When Tangle had ceased speaking, every guinea 
 rose, as upon tiny wings from the box; and, like a swai'm of 
 bees, filled the death-chamber with a humming soimd. And 
 then gradually every King George the Third face upon the 
 guinea grew and rounded into a cherub head of glittering gold, 
 the wings extending and expanding. And who shall count the 
 number of the cherubim glorifying the chamber with then- 
 efiiilgence, and making it resound with their tremendous music ! 
 A short time, and then Tangle dreamt that the cherubim were 
 beaiing him from his bed — all lifting, all supporting him, all 
 tending him in his upward flight. And then again he smiled at 
 his worldly wisdom, for he felt that every guinea he had made — 
 no matter how, upon earth — was become an angel, helj)iug him 
 to heaven. And still in his dream — smiling and smiling, he went 
 up — np — up ! 
 
 Now, if any cavilling reader disputes the authenticity of this 
 dream— if, pushing it aside, he calls it extravag:mt and ridiculous, 
 we are, without fui-ther preparatioii, ready to prove it a very
 
 228 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 reasonable and likely dream ; a dream that is no other than a 
 •visionary embodiment of the waking thoughts of many a man, 
 who hoards and hoards, as though eveiy bit of gold was, as the 
 lawyers have it, seizin of Paradise. When (and it does some- 
 times happen,) a high dignitary of the Church dies with a coffer of 
 some hundred and forty thousand pounds, who shall say that the 
 good man has not hoarded them, in the belief that every pound 
 will sei-ve liim as an angel to help him to bliss 1 He knows he 
 cannot take them to heaven ; but, with a wisdom unknown to 
 much of the ignorant laity, he evidently beUeves that they can 
 carry him there. Hence, even Church avarice, properly con- 
 sidered, may be excellent reUgion ; hence, a crawling, cater- 
 pillar miser may only crawl to soar the higher — a triumphant 
 Psyche ! 
 
 And still Tangle, in his dream, was ascending to the stars. 
 — Was ever man brought back to this earth with so terrible a 
 shock? 
 
 " Hallo ! Bless me ! My good friend ! Well, you have a con- 
 stitution ! Sleep with the window open ! " 
 
 Such were the exclamations of Mr. Folder, up and arrayed for 
 an early walk. Though by no means unwell from the last night — 
 certainly not, for he was never soberer in his life — he thought he 
 would take a ramble in the fields just to dissipate a Httle dulness, 
 a slight heaviness he felt ; and being of a companionable nature, 
 he thought he would hold out to Mr. Tangle the advantage of 
 society. Whereupon, Mr. Folder tried the attorney's door, and, 
 finding it unlocked, with the pleasant freedom of a friend he 
 entered the chamber. The opened window struck htm with asto- 
 nishment. The election was not over, and Mr. Tangle might 
 catch his death. Again Folder gave voice to his anxiety. " My 
 dear sir,— Mr. Tangle— the window "— 
 
 ^^ " Ten thousand cherubs," said Tangle, still in the clouds,— 
 " ten thousand, and not one less. I knew I had ten thousand ; 
 and all good : not a pocket-piece among 'em. Cherubs ! " 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " said Folder, " he 's in some sweet dream : 
 and with the window open. WeU, if I could dream at aU under 
 such circumstances, I should certamly dream T was in a saw-miU 
 with a saw going through every joint of my body. And, what 's 
 more, I should wake and find it all true. Mi-. Tangle ! " 
 
 With other exclamations— with stdl more strenuous pulling— 
 Mr. Folder saw that he was about to achieve success. There were 
 undeniable sjTnptoms of Mr. Tangle's gradual retm-n to a con- 
 sciousness of the £ s. d. of this world. Gradually, cherub by 
 cherub was letting him down easily to this muddy earth. The 
 attorney stretched out his legs like a spider-flung up his arms
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 229 
 
 — and with a tremendous yawn opened his mouth so wide, that 
 Mr. Folder — but he was not a man oi higli courage — might 
 perhaps have seen that attorney's very bowels. Tangle unclosed 
 his stiffly-opening eyelids. It was plain there was a mist — pos- 
 sibly a cloud, as from burnt claret — passing before his orbs : for 
 it was some moments before the face of Mr. Folder loomed through 
 the vapour. At length. Tangle — with every vein in his head 
 beating away as though it would not beat in such fashion much 
 longer ; no, it must burst — at length Ta:~igle, resolving to be most 
 courageously jolly, laughed and cried put — " Well, what 's the 
 matter ? " 
 
 "Why, my dear friend," said Foldo^, "as to-day is a busy 
 day, I thought we could not be too fresk for work : and so, as we 
 were a httle late, I may say, too, a littlo wild last night " — 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ; not a bit. I never felt better : never, in all my 
 life. I always know when I'm safe, and drink accordingly. Never 
 was yet deceived, sir ; never. There 's no port in the world I 'd 
 trust like the port you get from certain gentlemen of the 
 cloth : they 're men above deceit, sir ; above deceit." 
 
 " Nevertheless, I do think a walk in the fields — just a turn 
 before breakfast " — 
 
 " No," said Tangle, turning upon his side, evidently set upon 
 another nap : " no ; I like buttercups and daisies, and all that 
 sort of thing — breath of cows, and so forth — ^but not upon an empty 
 stomach." 
 
 " Well, to be sure," said Folder, "you economise. You get your 
 air and sleep together." 
 
 " What do you mean 1 " grunted Tangle. 
 
 "Why, you sleep with jour window open, don't you ? " asked 
 Folder. 
 
 " Never," replied Tangle. 
 
 " No : then who has opened it for you ? " 
 
 Mr. Tangle raised himself in his bed. We will not put down 
 the oath which to the astonishment of Folder, Tangle thundered 
 forth, when he saw his casement open to the winds. Suddenly 
 he leapt from the bed ; and as suddenly Mr. Folder quitted the 
 chamber. 
 
 " Eobbery ! Murder ! " cried Tangle, with amazing lungs. 
 
 Now, we have never known this confusion of terms in any way 
 accounted for. True it is, Mr. Tangle saw, as he believed, the 
 clearest evidence of robbery ; but there was no di-op, no speck 
 of blood, to afford the slightest hint of homicide. Wlierefore, 
 then, should he, falling into a common error of humanity, couple 
 murder with theft ? Why, is it, we ask, that infirm man, sud- 
 denly awakened to a loss of pell, so often connects with the
 
 230 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 misfortune, the loss of life 1 Are purse-strings and heart-strings 
 so ine\itably interwoven ? We merely let fall this subject for 
 the elucidation of the metaphysician ; and so pursue our story. 
 
 " Robbery ! Murder ! " yelled Tangle, dancing in his sliirt 
 about the room, like a frantic Indian. Mr. Folder, at the door, 
 took up the cry, and in a few minutes, landlord and landlady, 
 chambermaid, waiter, and boots, with half-a-dozen tenants of the 
 Olive Branch, were at Tangle's door. " A minute — only a minute," 
 cried Tangle, as they wer^about to enter — " Not dressed yet — the 
 murderous thieves — nearly naked — the scoundrel malefactors 
 — guineas, guineas — g0J,ie — gone — where 's my stockings?" 
 Ver}' distressing to a soil of sympathy was the condition of 
 Mr. Tangle. As he hui;ted about the floor for his scattered 
 articles of dress, his face — he could not help it — was turned 
 towards the empty closet, as though in his despair he thought some 
 good fairy might replace the treasure there, even while he looked. 
 — Thus, looking one way, and seeking his raiment in divers 
 others, he brought his head two or three times in roughest com- 
 panionship with the bed-posts. At length, very sternly rebuked 
 by one of these monitors, he made a desperate effort at tran- 
 quillity. He ceased to look towards the closet. Setting his teeth, 
 and breathing like a walrus, he drew on his stockings. He then 
 encased his lower members in their customary covering ; and then 
 the turned-out pockets once more smit his bruised soul. He dropt 
 upon the bed, and sent forth one long, deep, piteous gi'oan. 
 " The murderous Aallains ! Even my 'bacco-stopper ! " he cried : 
 and then his eyelids quivered ; but he repressed the weakness, 
 and did not weep. " Somebody shall swing for this — somebody ! " 
 he said ; and this sweet, sustaining thought seemed for a time 
 mightily to comfort him. And thus, the attorney continued to 
 dress himself, his hand trembling about every button-hole ; whilst 
 the crowd at his chamber-door exchanged sundry speculations as 
 to the mode and extent of the robbery, the landlord loudly 
 exclaiming- that nothing of the sort had ever been known in 
 his house : a statement emphatically confirmed by his dutiful 
 helpmate. 
 
 " And now," cried Tangle, tying the while his neckcloth like a 
 hay-wisp ; " and now, ladies and gentlemen, you may come in." 
 Instantly the cliamber was thronged. " Look here— look here," he 
 Baidj waving his hand towards the emj^ty closet as a tremendous 
 show—" this is a pretty sight, I thuik, for a respectable house ! " 
 
 "Wliat's the matter, sir?" said the landlord. "Have you 
 lost anything ? " 
 
 " Lost anything ! " exclaimed Tangle ; " only a box of gold ! 
 Yes — I — I won't say how many guineas."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 231 
 
 There was something touchmg, awful, iu this iutelligeuce ; for 
 every one of the hearers, in some way or the other, called upon 
 Heaven to bless him or her, as the case might be ; everybody also 
 declaring, that he or she had never heard of such a thing. 
 
 " But, sir," said the landlord, very provokmgly, " are you sure 
 there 's no mistake — was it there when you went to bed l " 
 
 To this impertinent, insulting, unfeeling question. Tangle made 
 no verbal answer. He merely looked daggerwise iu the face of 
 the querist, and laughed scornfully, hysterically. He might as 
 well have laughed iu the dead face of a dead-wall, for the landloi'd 
 continued : 
 
 " Because you know, sir, and this gentleman " — he meant Folder 
 — " and Molly Chambermaid, and boots, and my wife, all know 
 that you was a little the worse or the better for liquor, as you may 
 think it, when you come home from Lazarus Hall. You must 
 feel that, sir ; I 'm sure you do feel it." 
 
 " I tell you what, landlord," said Tangle. " I tell you what, 
 sir ; this insolence shall not serve your turn — not at all. You 
 shall not rob me of my reputation to cover the robbery of my 
 money." 
 
 " / rob you ! / rob you ! " cried the landlord, advancing 
 towards Tangle, and followed by his wife, the maid, and boots, 
 
 all taking part in the music " Me rob you ! Master rob 
 
 you ! " 
 
 " Look there ! I take you all to witness," cried Tangle, running 
 to the bed, plucking away the pillows, and showmg a key — " the 
 key of the closet ; of that very closet. Now, had I forgotten 
 myself for a moment as a gentleman or a man of business, is it 
 likely that I should have been so particular with that key?" 
 
 " They must have come iu at the winder," said the boots, gaping 
 at the open casement. 
 
 "Hallo! my fine fellow," cried the too subtle Tangle; "you 
 seem to Icnow something about it ? " 
 
 " Acause," answered the unshaken boots, " acause this gentle- 
 man said he found the winder open." 
 
 The landlord approached the closet, looked about it as though 
 possibly the box might still be in some corner; then scratched his 
 head ; then with his thumb and finger felt the bolt of the lock, 
 and then sagaciously observed ; " He was an old hand as did this. 
 All the marks on it, sir ; all the marks on it." 
 
 " A great consolation," answered Tangle, with a ghastly gruL 
 "Well, Mr. Landlord, seeing yourself in this condition— what 
 do you propose 1 " And the looks of the landlord answered— 
 Nothing. 
 
 "You see, sir," at length the Ohve Branch made answer,
 
 2.32 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " you see, sir, this is 'lection time. Now, there isn't a honester 
 place in the world — though I was born in it, I must say it, — than 
 Liquorish. But at 'lection time, all sorts of villains come about 
 
 us, as you must know. I don't see what you can do Yes ; 
 
 you can send the bellman round -wdth a reward for the thief — 
 and"— 
 
 " Pooh, pooh, foolish man ! " cried Folder, who then di^ev/ 
 Tangle aside. "Don't you see, my dear sir, how such a step 
 would damage us 1 Don't you see how it would serve the other 
 party ] Imagine ! ' Lost, a box of guineas from the Olive Branch ! ' 
 Consider ; what squibs they 'd fire at us. They 'd swear, — that 
 is, they would insinuate, — that we had brought down the gold to 
 bribe the electors." 
 
 " That never struck me," answered Tangle ; " 'tis more than 
 likely. Heaven help us ! What 's to be done ? Five-and-thirty 
 yeai's have I been in i^ractice ; and never — ^never before such a 
 blow. Stript, sir — stript," he said, in a tone of maudlin sorrow — 
 " stript even of my 'bacco stopper." 
 
 At this moment, Doctor Gilead's carriage drove up to the door, 
 and the footman entered the Olive Branch, bearing a letter for 
 Mr. Folder. This arrival, coupled with the silence of Tangle, 
 caused the landlord, landlady, boots, and chambermaid to quit the 
 room ; and they were speedily followed by others, some of whom 
 said, " What a pity ! " some, " How very odd ! " and some, " It 
 was very mysterious ; but dovibtless time would show." 
 
 " My dear friend," said Folder, having read the missive, '' it is 
 a summons from his lordship, who observes that we may as well 
 blend breakfast with business. We 've no time to lose." 
 
 Tangle looked blankly at the floor — blankly at the ceiling. He 
 then waiUngly observed, " That such a calamity should happen to 
 mc ! To me, above all men in the world ! How can I ever face 
 his lordship ! " 
 
 " My good friend, it 's not so bad. The loss, heavy as it is." 
 said Folder, with a smile, " can't be ruin." 
 
 " You 're a kind comforter, Mr. Folder ; indeed you are," said 
 Tangle, trying hard at a smile on his own account. 
 
 " For you 're a rich man, Mr. Tangle ; a very rich man, and 
 can make up the loss without " — 
 
 " / make up the loss, Mr. Folder ! / make— pardon me, my 
 dear sir, you really speak in total ignorance of such matters. 
 No, the gold being his lordship's— for his lordship's special use 
 — if an accident has unfortunately happened to it — why, of 
 course " — 
 
 "Well," replied Folder, catching the drift of Tangle, "that 
 you can settle with his lordship himself. In the mean time.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 233 
 
 we had better jDrepare for our visit. I sha'n't be five minutes 
 
 but you — you need a little preparation. Don't you sliave this 
 morning 1 " 
 
 '■' Not for millions would I attempt it, Mr. Folder. In my state 
 of mind, not for millions. I couldn't do it, sir — I couldn't so 
 provoke fate. I tell you what I '11 do — I 'U walk on : in my 
 present condition, I 'd rather walk. I shall find a barber in the 
 village, and — I shall be at the Hall as soon as you — teU his lord- 
 ship quite as soon as you." 
 
 And Tangle, with a wandering eye, and imsteady hand, sought 
 and took his hat. He then ran from the chamber, and Mr. Folder 
 retired to his own apartment. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 The borough of Liquorish possessed two barbei's — only two. 
 Happily, however, the number was sufficient to admit of deadly 
 rivahy ; for let this truth never be forgotten — two can hate as 
 well as twenty. Now, the hatred of Easp and Flay welled up 
 from their love of the same thing, the British Constitution. 
 Mr. Easp loved that elastic object with a tender and reverential 
 love ; he always approached its consideration with a fluttering, 
 a sweet concern. The British Constitution was the apple of 
 his eye — the core of his heart. He loved it beyond any other 
 thing appertaining to this loveable earth. His wife — meek, in- 
 jured woman ! — has often considered herself slighted and despised 
 by the libertine preference. " A married man with a family," 
 Mrs. Easp would sometimes patiently observe, and sometimes not, 
 " shouldn't trouble his head with such nonsense." Occasionally, 
 too, she would very much like to know what the Constitution, as 
 they called it, had ever done for the poor ? And when Easp— 
 in moments of ale — has expressed himself perfectly wilhug, nay, 
 rather anxious, to lose his head for the Constitution, his wife has 
 only placidly remarked, " that it was more than he 'd ever think 
 of doing for her." 
 
 Now, Flay loved the Constitution after a difi"erent fashion. It 
 was a pretty object— very pretty, indeed ; very desirable, very 
 essential for the happmess, or at least for the enjoyment of man. 
 Flay loved the Constitution with a sort of oriental love ; it was 
 the passion of the Great Turk for some fair, stag-eyed slave ; the 
 afi"ection of one who is the master, the owner, of the creature of his 
 delights— the trading possessor of the lovely goods ; and therefore,
 
 234 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 when it shall so please him, at perfect freedom to sell or truck, 
 or bow-string, or put in a sack or in any other way to turn the 
 penny with, or dispose of the idol of his adoration. Yes : Flay 
 thought the Constitution, like the flesh-and-blood pearl of a harem, 
 might now be devoui-ingly loved, and now be advantageously 
 bartered. AVhere the man, li\-ing in the twilight obscurity ot 
 Liquorish, leai'ued such principles, we know not. Certain it is, 
 they were very far beyond his social condition. 
 
 We have now to task the indulgence of the reader to endeavour 
 to remember that Mr. Tangle, dizzy and tremulous, quitted the 
 Olive Branch, summoned to Lazarus Hall by his lordship. The 
 wine still sang in his ears, and the e\dl spuits that men swallow 
 as angels in their cups over night, beat in Tangle's beating heart, 
 and twitched his nerves, and seemed to turn his eyes into burning- 
 glasses, as he found himself in the street. And then came the 
 loss of the gold upon his brain — came with a crash, stupifying, 
 stunning, as though the metal itself had fallen upon that divine 
 web- work of nerves — wherein Tangle's soul, spider-like, lurked 
 for human flies — and smitten him out of life. And then his 
 stomach seemed to hold within it one possessing nausea ; and he 
 looked at the rosy children about him — the red-faced, laughing 
 neighbours, and wondered w^hat they were made of. 
 
 Nevertheless one thought like a star shone brightly through 
 this fog of soul, for the said soul was much obscured by the wine- 
 mists from the stomach — the thought of the barber. Tangle must 
 be shaved. It had been one of the principles of his existence — 
 one of the bundle of determinations with which he had set out on 
 the pilgrimage of life — or rather, this principle he had taken up 
 at the twenty-mile stage — to suffer no man to take him by the 
 nose save hunself In the vanity of his philosophy, he had belie ved 
 that no possible blow of fortune could have rendered his hand 
 unsteady at the morning razor ; and now, with the loss of the gold 
 upon him, he shuddered at the thought of the sacrificial steel. In 
 the disorder of his soul and the sickness of his stomach, he saw 
 himself shaving ; and saw a very numerous family of imps laugliing 
 and winking m the glass— and pointing their fingers at his throat 
 — ojid then grinning hard again — and nodding, and smacking 
 their forked tongues, as revelling in the hope of a delicious 
 tragedy. And Tangle — for we choose to give the whole truth — 
 Tangle did for a moment sympathise \vith these murder-hinting 
 demons. It was weak — it was wicked ; but in another moment, 
 the idea was sternly banished. For Tangle remembered that his 
 life was insured ; and how every dreadful it would be, should he 
 leave the world in a way to forfeit the policy! With these 
 thoughts. Ml-. Tangle entered the shop of Easp. He entered and
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 235 
 
 shrunk back. " Come in, sir," cried the hospitable barber. '' Here 
 Tim, finish this gentleman." Saying this, Easp instantly quitted 
 the beard he was about to reap, for the chin of the new-comer. 
 Tangle looked about him, and felt himself a Uttle woundeil, some- 
 what disgi-aced by the meanness, the rustic poverty of the shop. 
 He looked too at the man lathered to the eyes — the man consigned 
 to Tim, Easp's little boy, who quickly mounted a stool, that he 
 might the better possess himself of the nose of the customer. 
 Now, albeit the features of the man were very thickly masked by 
 soap-suds, it was the instant con-viction of Tangle that he saw 
 coarse, dirty lineaments beneath ; and thereupon his jiride started 
 at the thought of losing his beard in such comj^any. Had Tangle 
 felt himself the prosjierous man of yesterday, certainly he would 
 as soon have offered his neck to the axe, as his chin to the self- 
 same brush that had lathered the beard of that very vulgar man ; 
 but adversity had chastised pride, and after a natural twinge or 
 two. Tangle sank resignedly on the wooden chair, and with an all 
 but smothered sigh, gave himself up to the bai'ber. Certamly, he 
 had never been shaved in such comjsauy ; but then — the thought 
 was a great support to his independent spirit — nobody would 
 know it. 
 
 (Nobody would know it ! How much insult, injury — how many 
 hard words, fierce threats — nay, how many tweakings of the nose 
 might be borne by some forgiving souls, if — nobody would know 
 it ! "VVTiat a balm, a salve, a plaster to the private hurt of a sort, 
 of hero may the hero find in the delicious truth that — nobody 
 knows it ! The nose does not burn, for nobody saw it pulled ! 
 It is the eye of the world looking on, that, like the concentrated 
 rays of the sun, scorches it ; blisters it ; lights up such a fire 
 within it, that nothing poorer than human blood can quench it ! 
 ■And all because everybody knows it ! ) 
 
 Tangle was reconciled to his humiliation — for it was nothing 
 less to be handled in such a shop and by such a barber — by the 
 belief that the world would remain in ignorance of the de- 
 grading fact. And much, indeed, at the moment, did Tangle owe 
 to ignorance. He knew that he was a crushed, despoiled, de- 
 graded being : he knew that with the box of gold he had lost his 
 sense of self-respect. Compared to the Tangle of yesterday, he 
 was no better than a Hottentot ; for he liad lost his better part. 
 This he knew : but, ignorant sufferer, he did not know that the 
 man seated in lathered companionship beside him was the mid- 
 night burglar, the robber of his more than peace, the felonious 
 Tom Blast. Now, Mr. Blast himself immediately recognised the 
 parliamentary agent; but feeling that he had the advantage 
 of having looked upon him when Tangle could not return the
 
 236 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 attention, the robber gazed very composedly through his lather : 
 nay more, he was so tickled by the sudden advent of Tangle that, 
 in the gaiety of his soul, he chuckled. 
 
 " If you please, sii', if you laugh," said little Tim, " I must 
 cut you." 
 
 " The child has a hand as light as a butterfly" — said the barber 
 father to Blast — " but the boy 's right ; he must cut you if you 
 laugh. Steady, Tim." 
 
 " All right," cried Blast, from his sonorous chest ; and he 
 stiffened the cords of his visage. 
 
 " Very odd, sir " — said Easp, vigorously lathering Tangle, as 
 though he was white-washing a dead wall — " veiy odd, sir ; when 
 a man's being shaved, what a little will make him laugh. — Never 
 heard it properly accounted for, sir, did you 1 " 
 
 Tangle spoke not ; but shivered out a long sigh, evidently pro- 
 vocative of the mir thful Blast, for little Tim again cried, — " If 
 you please, sir, I must cut you." 
 
 " Don't blame the chUd, sir* ; that 's all. Steady, Tim " — said 
 the barber, who again addressed himself to Tangle. " Glad to 
 find there 's no laugh in you, sir." Tangle made no answer ; but 
 again sighed as with the ague. 
 
 " There ! I know'd I should cut you ! " cried Tim, as Blast 
 winced, and the blood came from his cheek. " I know'd I should 
 do it." 
 
 The barber turned from Tangle to take a view of the mischief 
 done upon Blast, gravely observing, as he eyed the blood — " Not 
 the child's fault, sir. Never cut before in his life ; never." 
 
 " Well, it 's no use a stifling it," cried Blast ; and gently putting 
 Tim aside, he flung himself back in the chair, and roared a laugh, 
 all the louder and the deeper for its long rejiression. Tangle 
 looked round. Most strange, nay, most insulting was it to him — 
 to him with the load of afiiiction weighing on his brain — that 
 any man should laugh so vehemently, so brutally. On his way 
 to the barber's, Tangle had felt a little hurt that even the birds 
 should chirp and twitter ; that the flowers m the gardens should 
 look so happy in their brightness ! The very fineness of the day 
 seemed imkmd to him ; nevertheless he tried to bear it like a 
 man. But to have his solemn thoughts, deep as they were in a 
 lost money-chest, outraged by the vulgar merriment of a very 
 ^Tilgar man, — it was cruel, barbarous ; sui-ely he had done nothing 
 to deserve it. 
 
 " It 's very odd," said Tangle, speaking both angrily, and 
 sorrowfully, " very odd that a gentleman can't be quietly shaved 
 without people " — 
 
 "Ax your pardon," said Blast. "Hope the barber's not
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 237 
 
 nicked you ; but I couldn't help it. You know what a little will 
 make a man laugh sometimes. All right now I 've got rid of it. 
 Go on, Httle shaver. I '11 keep a cheek as stiff as a mile-stone " 
 And Mr. Blast resolved to control his merriment, sorely tempted 
 as it was by the proximity of the melancholy man he had phm- 
 dered. It was a most capital joke, a most pi-ovoking piece of fun, 
 yet would the thief be serious. For some seconds not a sound 
 was heard, save the mowing of beards. 
 
 " Well, Measter Easp, here be a rumpus ! here be a blow for 
 the Blues ! here be luck for the Yellows ! Ho ! ho ! ho ! There 
 never was sich a mess. I ha 'nt laughed so much since they put 
 the tinker in the stocks ! Sich a glory ! " This amiouncement, 
 brokenly uttered through roars of laughter, was delivered by 
 Skittle, the cobbler of Liquoiish, who, exploding with the intelli- 
 gence, burst into the shop. 
 
 " What 's the matter ? " asked the barber, so alive to the luck 
 of the Yellows, of which party he felt himself a very shining 
 particle, that he paused in his shaving ; holding twixt finger and 
 thumb the nose of Tangle. " Luck for our side, Bob ! What 
 is it ? " 
 
 " Wliy you must know that the Blues — jest hke 'em — brought 
 down a box of golden guineas. You know, hi course, what for 1 " 
 observed the cobbler, severely winking one eye. 
 
 "I should think I did," answered Easp, and he stropped his 
 razor on his hand very imjiatiently. " That 's the way they 
 serve the Constitution. That's how they'd sell and buy the 
 British Lion, for all the world like veal. Well, a box of guineas ! 
 I should hke to catch 'em oifertug me any, that 's all," cried 
 Easp : and with a grin of indignation, he again strojjped his 
 blade. 
 
 " My good man," said Tangle, very meekly, for he was over 
 come, brokenhearted by the mirth of the cobbler, — " my good 
 man, will you proceed and finish me 1 " 
 
 " Wouldn't trust myself, sir, till I 've heard all about the Blues. 
 You don't know my feelmgs," said Easp. "I should sUce you, 
 sure as pork. Go on. Bob. Ha ! ha ! Down with the Blues ! " 
 And still Tangle sat half-shaven and wholly miserable, listening 
 to the blithe story of the cobbler, whose notes of exultation struck 
 hke steel into the flesh of the outraged agent. Was ever man so 
 tried 1 He could not bounce fi'om his chair, and with half his 
 beard upon him sally forth into the street. No ; he was doomed 
 by decency to sit and hear the history of his wretchedness and 
 the brutal mirth it occasioned. The cobbler and barber roared 
 with laughter ; little Tun smirked and giggled, and Tom Blast, 
 with his eyes leering towards the agonised Tangle, showed that
 
 238 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 the sweetest and deepest satisfaction filled the bosom of the thief. 
 His felon soul hugged itself in vast enjoyment of the fun ! 
 
 " Well, you must know that the Olive Branch was broke open 
 last night," said the cobbler, " and the box of guineas brought to 
 the borough — we know what for " — and Skittle put his forefinger 
 to his nose. 
 
 " I should rather think we did," responded Easp, returning the 
 digital signal. " Rather." 
 
 " The bos of guineas carried off ; all took wing like yoimg 
 goldfinches. The landlord says, and his wife says, she 's siu'e of 
 it, too, that it 's the devil has done it." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " shouted Tom Blast, mightily enjoying the 
 false accusation. " Poor de\'il ! " 
 
 " I don't wonder at your laughing," said the barber, gravely. 
 " It wasn't no devil ; the devil 's a better judge than to carry 
 away gold of that sort ; it would do his work all the better left 
 behind. And is there no suspicion of who 's stole it 1 " Here 
 Blast and Tangle listened attentively, but assuredly with a 
 different sort of curiosity. 
 
 " Wliy, that 's the worst of it," answered the cobbler; "they've 
 tried hard to suspect everybody, but somehow they can make no 
 hand on it." 
 
 Hereupon the barber wrinkled his brow, and thoughtfully and 
 tenderly with his fingers cwiddled at the end of his nose, as 
 though he had the secret there, if it could only be coaxed out. 
 " I tell you what it is ; 'tisn't seldom I 'm wi'ong — I know the 
 thief." 
 
 " You ! " exclaimed Tangle ; and " You ! ** was at the lip of 
 Blast ; but that cautious man smothered the impatienb word wdth 
 a sort of gnmt that passed for nothing. 
 
 " He '11 never be found out ; oh no, he 's too cunning for that," 
 said the barber ; " but I shouldn't wonder if the fellow that had 
 the keeping of the money isn't him that stole it." 
 
 " Was there ever such an infamous ! " — exclaimed Tangle, 
 when he was suddenly stopped by the peremptory coolness 
 of the barber ; who, tapping him on the shoulder, observed 
 — " Bless you ! it 's a thing done every day. Nothmg more 
 likely." 
 
 "Nothing," said Blast, in his deepest bass, and his eye 
 twinkled enjoyingly. 
 
 " Am I to stay here half-sliaved all day ? " cried the goaded 
 Tangle. " Fellow, finish me ! " 
 
 '' Tell you, couldn't trust myself till we hear the rights of the 
 guinea.s," said the patriotic barber. " They was brought here to 
 violate the Constitution, and whomsoever 's got em^ I 'm glad
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 239 
 
 they 're gone. Though mind, I 'd take a bet that him that 's lost 
 'em knows best where theyVe to be found." 
 
 " Ha ! Master Barber/' cried Blast in a loud tone of compU- 
 ment, " it 's plain you know life." 
 
 " Why, I Ve seen a few 'lections at Liquorish," said Easp, 
 " and this T will say — the Blues, if they know'd him, would rob 
 their own father. I might, in my time, have had my hat full of 
 guineas " — 
 
 " I shouldn't brag of that, if I was you, Mr. Easp " — said the 
 barber's wife, suddenly descending to a cupboard in the shop, for 
 some domestic purpose — " I shouldn't brag of that, and you to 
 keep me and your children as you do." 
 
 " "Women have no love of country," said the barber in a soft 
 voice as his wife departed. 
 
 "Don't understand a bit on it," said the cobbler. "There's 
 my old Margery Daw at home — she says that women have enough 
 to do to love their husbands." 
 
 " And that 's hard work sometimes," said the barber. " I 'm 
 afeard it is." 
 
 " Am I to be shaved to-day 1 " roared Tangle, the lather ch-ied 
 to a plaster on his face. 
 
 " I tell you what it is, sir," said the barber. " You 're half 
 shaved as clean as any baby : now shaving 's a penny : well, if 
 3'ou can't wait, you 're welcome to the ha'poith you 've had for 
 nothing. A ha'penny sir," and the barber looked loftily about 
 him, " a ha'penny won't ruin me." 
 
 " I 'm in no 'urry," observed tlie accommodating Blast. " Your 
 little boy can finish the gentleman — I '11 wait." 
 
 " Thank you — veiy kind — come along, boy," cried Tangle, and 
 Tim moved his stool beside the lawyer. " Now you '11 be very 
 particulai' ; and mind, don't cut." 
 
 " Then don't shake, sir, if you please," said Tim ; for Tangle, 
 agitated by what he had heard, by the delay he had been com- 
 pelled to suffer, trembled as the boy touched him, Hke a jelly. 
 And as he trembled, the barber leered suspiciously, dii-ecting the 
 cobbler's looks to the shaking gentleman ; and Tom Blast very 
 soon made one of the party of inspection, communicating by 
 most eloquent glances, the strongest doubts and suspicions of 
 the individual then impatiently undergoing the discipline of the 
 razor. 
 
 " If the thief 's caught, I suppose he '11 be hanged," said the 
 cobbler, staring at Tangle. 
 
 " Heaven is merciful ! I hope so— heartily hope so," exclaimed 
 Tangle vivaciously, earnestly ; at the same time jumping up, his 
 shaving completed. " I hope so : I 'd go fifty miles to see it—
 
 •J40 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 fifty miles. Give me change." Sa^-ing tliLs, and tying his neck- 
 cloth, Tangle laid do^^'n sixpence. " Make haste." 
 
 Yen- leisurely, and as with a soul by no means to be dazzled 
 ]>y sixpences, the barber took up the tester. He then approached 
 the bottom of the staircase ascended by his helpmate, and with 
 measured syllables inquired, " Eliza Jane, love, have you change 
 for sixpence i " 
 
 And tliis gentle query was answered by another, running thus : 
 '• Have I change for the Bank of England ? " 
 
 " It never happened so before, sir," said Easp, feeling the six- 
 pence, " but we hav'n't a copper hal^enny in the house. The 
 child, sir, shall run out for change. Won't be ten minutes ; 
 nothing beats him at an errand." 
 
 Tangle looked savagely about him. He could not wait : he 
 would not be thought to give the sixpence. He therefore observed, 
 very emphatically, " Very well, barber ; I '11 call again," and 
 hurried away. 
 
 " Don't you know him ? " cried the cobbler, " he 's one of the 
 Blues." 
 
 " "Well, if T didn't think he was one of them thick-skinned lot 
 while I was shaving him," said Rasp ; who then turned to Blast. 
 " He knows something of them guineas, eh, sir, I 'm bound for it ? " 
 
 " 'Xactly," answered Blast. " They 're a pretty set — them 
 Blues. I 'm a Yellow." 
 
 " I 'd know that, sir " — observed the barber as he finished the 
 undone work of Tim — " I 'd know that, sir, by the tenderness of 
 your face. Now for that old Blue, a man might as well shave a 
 brass knocker. I can tell a man's principles by his skin, I can." 
 
 " Not a doubt on it," averred Mr. Blast, very sonorously ; who 
 then rose from his chair, and proceeded into a comer to consult a 
 fragment of glass, nailed to the wall. WhUst thus courageously 
 Hui-veying hia face, his back turned to the door, another customer 
 entered the shop, and without a syllable, seating himsell) awaited 
 the weapon of Rasp. 
 
 " Heard of the robbery, sir ? " asked the barber. " Ha ! ha ! 
 ha ! Rare work, sir. What I call fun." 
 
 " What robber,' 1 " cried the stranger, and immediately Blaat 
 turned at the sound, and knew that it was St. Giles who spoke. 
 Silently, the burglar giinned huge satisfaction. 
 
 " Thousands of guineas stole la.st night, nothing less. I wish 
 you and I had 'em, sir, that 's all, for they come here to do 
 B«jelzebub's work, sir ; to be laid out in perjury, and all that ; to 
 buy the honest souls of honest men like mackerel. Therefore," 
 concluded the barber, " I say I wish you and I had 'em. Don't 
 you ? "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 241 
 
 Hereupon Blast quitted the mirror, and the while serenely 
 tying his neckcloth, stood face to face with St. Ciiles, chuckling 
 and echoing the barijer — " Don't you wish you had 'em 1 " 
 
 " If you jump in that way," cried Itasp to St. (jiiles, " I Avon't 
 answer for your nose." 
 
 " And you hav'n't heard notliin' on it, eh, sir?" said Blast, in 
 his light, waggish manner. " Well, I should ha' thought you'd 
 ha' known all about it." 
 
 "Why ?" stammered St. GUos, for he felt that he nuist make 
 some answer. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," said Blast ; " some people have sich a 
 knowin' look, that 's all. Tlicy 're born with it. An 'praps you 
 wouldn't like to have the guineas stole from the lilues, — if tlioy 
 are stole. But as you say, Mr. Barber, I don't believe it. Bless 
 your heart, it 's my 'pinion a Blue would swear anytliing." 
 
 " You won't have a drop of ale this morning 1 " asked the 
 cobbler — that sympathetic Yellow being mightily touched by the 
 large-heartednesa of Blast. " Jest a drop ? " 
 
 " 'Tis a little early," said the very temperate Blast, "but I 
 can't refuse a Yellow nothin'." And to the astonishment and 
 relief of St. Giles, his tormentor followed the inviting cobltler from 
 the shop. Uneasily sat St. Giles whilst Rasp performed his func- 
 tion ; brief and wandering were the replies made bjr his customer 
 to the barber, very eloquent on the roV)bery, and especially grate- 
 ful to Providence for the calamity. " Whomsoever has t<aken the 
 guineas^always supposing tliey are taken — has done a service to 
 the country," said Basp "For my part, and I don't care who 
 knows it, I hope they '11 live long and die hapj^y with 'cm. Pretty 
 fellows they must be ! Come to sell the Constitution ; to rob 
 us of our rights ; and then sing out about thieves ! Wliat do 
 you say, si'- i " cried the barber, liberating his customer from his 
 uneasy chair. 
 
 " JiLst so," said St. Giles, " I shouldn't wonder : to l)e sure." 
 
 " Why you look," said Rasp, marking the absent air of St. 
 Giles, "you look as if you was lookinjj a hundred miles away. 
 You can't tell us what you see, can you 1 " 
 
 Now, St. Giles, had he been in communicative moo<l, might 
 have interested the barber, making him a partaker of the vision 
 that would reveal itself to his customer. St. Giles jilainly beheld 
 Tom Bhist with the stolen guineas. PFad he watched liim stag- 
 gering beneath the pillage, he had not been bett(;r assured of the 
 evil doing. Again, he had marked the tliiefs face ; it wore the 
 smug, lackered look of a fortunate scoundrel : the light as of the 
 stolen guineas flickered in his eyes, and his lips were puckered 
 with inaudiljle whistling. St. Giles took little heed of the talkative 
 
 U
 
 242 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 barber, but laying down the price of his yesterday's beard, quitted 
 the shop. Anxiously, fearfully, he looked about him from the 
 door. He stood, like a lost traveller fearful of the sudden leap of 
 some wild beast. Blast was not hi the street : he now avoided 
 St. GUes ; new evidence that the old niffian wa^ the robber. 
 St. Giles hastily struck into the fields, that ^vith less chance of 
 interi-uption, he might ponder on the present difficulty. He was 
 only known to young St. James as the vagabond of a prison ; 
 and, therefore, open to the hea\-ier suspicion. If aiTested, — how 
 to account for himself 1 Should he at once boldly seek the young 
 lord ? — for as yet he had not seen him. Or should he at once 
 turn his steps towards London ? 
 
 His heart sank, and the sickness of death fell upon him, as 
 ^ain he saw liimself beset by inexdtable peril. Was it not folly, 
 sheer, brute-like stupidity, in a doomed wretch like him, to yearn 
 for innocent days, for honest bread ? Was it not gross impudence 
 in hira to hope it — in him, so formed and cast upon the world to 
 be its wrong, its niiseiy, and disgrace ? Why not go back to 
 London, dash into guilt, and when the time came, die gallantly on 
 the tree ] Why not clap hands with Blast, and become with him, 
 a human animal of prey ? Such were the confused, the wretched 
 thoughts that possessed St. Giles, as with feet of lead he crossed 
 the fields. Divinely beautiful was the day ! The heavens smiled 
 peace and hope upon the earth, brimming with things of tenderness 
 and beauty. The outcast paused at the wdnding river. Did his 
 eye feed delightedly upon its brightness — was his ear solaced by 
 its sound ? No : he looked with a wild curiosity, as though he 
 would look below — and he heard tongues talking from the stream 
 — tongues calUng him to rest. 
 
 " Ain't lost nothing ? " cried a voice ; and St. Giles, aroused, to 
 his delight beheld Bright Jem. 
 
 " No ; nothing," said St. Giles. " I was thinking though that 
 I might lose somethmg, and be all the richer for the loss. But 
 the thought 's gone, now you 're come." 
 
 Jem looked hke a man who catches half a meaning, and cares 
 not to pursue the other half. So he said — " I thought, mayhap, 
 when you left us in the churchyard, you 'd have come over to the 
 Tub. Master Capstick said he knew you wouldn't, but I know 
 he was sorry you didn't." 
 
 " I tell you what it is," said St. Giles, " I hadn't the heart." 
 
 "That 's the very reason you ought to ha' come to us. Master 
 Capstick 's got heart enough for half-a-dozen." 
 
 " God bless him ! " cried St. Giles. 
 
 " I '11 jine you in that, whenever you say it. But I can see by 
 the look of you— why, your face is full on it— I can see, you 've
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 243 
 
 something to say. I 'm afeard the world hasn't been aa careful 
 of you as if you 'd been an image of gold, eh 1 Come, lad " — and 
 Jem laid his hand gently upon St. Giles's shoulder, and spoke 
 tenderly as a woman — " Come, lad, let 's know all about it." 
 
 " You shall know all — you shall," and St. Giles seized Jem's 
 hand, and with moistening eyes and choaking throat — it was such 
 a happinesj? to see such looks and hear such words — shook the 
 hand eagerly, tremblingly. 
 
 " There, now, good lad, take your time," cried Jem. " I 'm 
 going to Master Kingcup, the schoolmaster ; not above two mile 
 away. And so we 'U gossip as we trudge. Jest over that style, 
 and " — and Jem paused, with his looks directed towards a stunted 
 oak some bow-shot from him. " I say " — he cried, pointing to a 
 boy sleeping in the arms of the tree — " I say, that 's a London 
 bird, 2)erched there — I 'm sure on it." 
 
 Instantly St. Giles recognised his half-brother, the precocious 
 Jingo. " You 're going to the good gentleman, you say, the 
 schoolmaster ?" cried St. Giles, animated as by a sudden flash of 
 thought. " I 've a notion — I '11 tell you all about it — we '11 take 
 that boy vnih. us. Hallo ! come down here ! " cried St. Giles to 
 the sleeper. 
 
 " What for 1 " said Jingo, stretching himself and ya^vning. 
 " You 're no constable, and I sha'n't." 
 
 " He knows what a constable is, dejiend on 't," said Jem, 
 shaking his head. 
 
 " Weil, I 'm a coming," said the philosophic Jingo, observing 
 that St. Giles was about to ascend — " I 'm a coming." And in a 
 moment, the urchin dropt like an ape from branch to branch and 
 feU to the earth. As he fell, a guinea roUed from his pocket. 
 
 " Where did you get this ? " exclaimed St. Giles, picking up 
 the coin. 
 
 Whereupon little Jingo bowed his arms, and in his shrillest 
 treble, answered — " Found it." 
 
 CHAPTEK XXIV. 
 
 The candidate for Liquorish has, it may be thought, been too 
 long neglected in our attention to his agents, and their meaner 
 creatures. Seemingly we have been unmindful of his lordship, 
 but in reality not so. We felt more than satisfied that we had 
 placed him, like a treasure in a temple, at Lazarus Hall. For 
 
 R 2
 
 244 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 there was Doctor Gilead, the good genius of lai'der and cellar, 
 bi<T, perspiring with anxiety to assuage, by the most recondite and 
 costly means, the hunger and thirst of his exalted guest. Had it 
 been possible to purchase a live unicorn, its haunch would have 
 smoked before young St. James ; the sole phoenix would have 
 been roasted in its spiceiy, and dished in its plumes ; and 
 GanjTnede might have had any price of Doctor Gilead for pecu- 
 lated nectar. In the fulness of the Doctor's hospitality there 
 Im-ked a gi-ief that no new animal — no yet imheai'd-of tipple could 
 be compassed. He must therefore — at last he was resigned to it 
 — make the best of the good things of the eai-th such as they 
 were ; he, by the way, possessing the very best for the experiment. 
 Mrs. Gilead, too, had her anxiety ; though, it pains us to confess 
 it, her husband — it is too common a fault, crime we should rather 
 say — did not respond with all his heartstrings to the vibrating 
 chords of his partner. But how rare is it to find a wedded man 
 with a proper sjTnpatliy for tlie distresses of his wife ! The 
 elements may have suddenly conspired to spoil her bonnet — she 
 may have broken her dearest bit of china — the cat may have 
 iTin off with her gold-fish — and at that verj^ moment, above all 
 others, her husband will insult her with his philosophy. And so 
 it was with the anxieties of IVIrs. Gilead. She felt that, whilst 
 young St. James lay pillowed under her roof, she was answerable 
 for the sweetness, the soundness of his shimbers ; nay, almost 
 for the pleasantness of his dreams. She was wakeful herself 
 in her tenderness for the repose of her guest. " I do hope his 
 lordship will sleep," she said, 'twice and thrice to her wedded 
 master. 
 
 " Bless the woman ! " cried the Doctor, at the time perplexed 
 with the thought of some possible novelty for the next day's 
 dinner, " of course he '11 sleep. Why not ? We have no fleas, 
 have we ? " 
 
 " Fleas, Doctor Gilead ! Don't insult me ! Fleas in my beds ! " 
 and Mrs. Gilead spoke tremulously, as though hurt, wounded in 
 her huswifery— the weakest place of the weakest sex. And 
 Doctor Gilead knew there was not a flea in the house ; but it was 
 like the man — it was like the brotherhood at large — to suggest to 
 a wife the probability of the most impossible annoyance. Of 
 course, it was only said to hurt her. 
 
 Nor let lis forget the Miss Gileads. For each, saying no syllable 
 to the other, was sleepless with the thoughts of providing life-long 
 bliss for the noble, the beautiful guest. How deUghtful to make 
 him happy for the rest of his days,, and how very advantageous 
 to be a legal partner in the felicity. If eyes ever did dazzle— if 
 lips ever did take man's heart from his bosom, like a stone fi-om a
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 245 
 
 black cherry (we think that simile perfect), eyes and lips should 
 do the double deed to-morrow. 
 
 And young St. James, in a deep sea of eider-down, took his 
 rest ; none the worse, it may be, that he knew not of the con- 
 sph-acy working against his freedom. Tlu-ee sets of hymeneal 
 chains were almost all night long hammered at by three youn^ 
 ladies, and yet the unconscious victim slept ; even as the culprit 
 takes unbroken rest, whilst hammers fall upon the scaflbld for 
 to-morrow. 
 
 If the reader will pass the intentions of tlie young ladies as at 
 least benevolently purposed, he must confess that we have for the 
 last three chapters left young St. James most tenderly cared for. 
 Sleeping and waking he has had the prettiest cares, the sweetest 
 attentions, like a shower of rose-leaves, cast upon him. And now 
 Monday morning was come. The morning of the day of nomina- 
 tion was arrived. A law-maker was to be made by the voice of 
 a free peoi^le ; a senator, without crack or flaw ; a perfect crystal 
 vessel of tlie state was to be blo^vn by the breath of unbought 
 man. Nature seemed to sympathise with the work ; at least, 
 such was tlie belief of Doctor Gilead, his imagination kindling 
 somewhat with the occasion. He rose only a little later than the 
 sparrows ; and from the beauty, the enjoyment of out-door objects, 
 took the hapijiest omens. A member was to be returned to Par- 
 liament. Certainly the lark never fluttered nearer heaven — never 
 sang so hojiefully. Such was Doctor Gilead's sweet belief ; and 
 rapt in it, he did not the next moment hear the voice of an ass in 
 a distant meadow — gave no ear to his owoi geese gaggling near 
 his barn. Haj^py the superstition that on such occasions will only 
 listen to the lark ! 
 
 Everybody appeared at breakfast with a face drest for triumph. 
 " Had his lordship slept well ? " asked Mrs. Gilead ; and with 
 voices that would melt the heart of a man, were the thing really 
 soluble, each Miss Gilead put the same question, but with a manner 
 that plainly said her peace of mind depended on an affirmative 
 rejily. His lordship had sle^rt well. Each and all of the JMiss 
 Gileads were blest for their existence ! 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Folder 1 " asked his lordship, as that 
 worthy man, with liis old equable look, entered the breakfast pai-- 
 lour. Now, Mr. Folder had never looked better — never felt better. 
 His calmness, his philosophy was astonishing, admirable ; the 
 more so, as it was his friend and not himself who had lost a 
 treasure of gold. In few words, and in his own smiling way, 
 Mr. Folder said he was charming. 
 
 " But where 's Tangle 1 eh ?— not left Tangle behind 1 " cried 
 his lordship.
 
 246 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " No, no," said Folder, with a happy smile. " He preferred a 
 ■walk across the fields." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! he doesn't often get a bit of grass in London, 
 I dare saj'," said the Doctor ; who then turned to his lordship, 
 and rubbing his hands, and laughing as at the enjoyment of a 
 sweet secret, said, " It wouldn't do, my lord, to lose Tangle ; no, 
 no, we must take care of Tangle." Innocent Doctor Gilead ! At 
 that moment he thought the agent the happy keeper of thou- 
 sands of metal birds of Paradise ; and alack ! they had made 
 wuigs for themselves, and flown away. Had the Doctor known 
 the condition of Tangle, what an abject, forlorn varlet would 
 he have seemed in the offended eyes of his admirer ! 
 
 Mr. Tangle was announced. He entered the room ; his face 
 galvanised into a smile. It was plain, at least to Folder, who 
 knew all, that the agent had laboured so hard to get that smile 
 into his countenance that it would be very difficult to dismiss it — 
 it was so fixed, so very rigid. It seemed the hardest smile cut 
 in the hardest oak. 
 
 " Quite well, I trust, Mr. Tangle ? None the worse, I hope, for 
 last night 1 " said young St. James, gaily. 
 
 Tangle's knees struck each other at his lordship's voice. Last 
 night ? Did his lordship, then, know of the robbery ? Such was 
 the first confusion of Tangle's thoughts ; and he then remembered 
 that his lordship doubtless hinted at the wine swallowed, and not 
 at the gold carried away. Wliereupon, Tangle declared that he 
 was quite well — never better. And then he resolutely put down 
 a rising groan. 
 
 "Nothing the worse for anything last night, I'll be bound, eh, 
 Mr. Tangle ? " cried Doctor Gilead, alive, as every man ought 
 to be, to the reputation of his wine, when the wine, like the 
 Roman's wife, is not to be suspected. " I should think not. And, 
 Mr. Tangle, I 've not forgotten the cai-p that pleased you so much. 
 There 's plenty in the pond ; and we '11 have some of the finest, I 
 can tell you." At tliis moment the Doctor was summoned from 
 the room ; whilst new visitors continued to arrive, assembling to 
 escort the noble candidate to a very modest fabric, largely chris- 
 tened a.s the Town Hall. Young St. James knew everybody — 
 welcomed everybody. There was not a man present with whom 
 he would not and could not have shared his heart ; it was so 
 unexpectedly large upon the happy occasion. 
 
 " Don't you wish, my lord, that your noble father the excellent 
 Marquess was here to see your triumi)h 1 " exclaimed one of the 
 artless IMiss Gileads. Posy ignorance ! She knew not that, 
 however the paternal heart might have yearned to be present, it 
 wjis stenily checked by a strong sense of constitutional duty. For
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 247 
 
 the Marquess, as a peer of England, could not, must not, directly 
 or indirectly seem to interfere in the election of a member of 
 Parliament — in the free assertion of the people's choice. Therefore 
 it was only permitted to the father, the peer, and the patriot to 
 send liis banker. 
 
 And still the visitors poured in ; and as the crowd grew, every 
 man looked more important, as though catching zeal and constancy 
 of purpose from new comers. " The borough 's been in the family 
 these thousand years," cried a spare, fibrous, tliin-faced man, with 
 a high piercing voice, " and the constitootion had better go to 
 sleep at once if any nobody 's to come to represent us." 
 
 " Tell 'ee what. Muster Flay, we own't stand it," said a free- 
 holder in a smock frock, that in its unspecked whiteness might 
 have typified the purity of election. " We own't stand it. My 
 father and his father — ^and hisn after hisn — all on 'em did vote for 
 the family, — and when folks come to ax me for my vote agin em, 
 — why, as I says to my wife, it 's like a flyin' in the face of 
 Providunce." 
 
 " To be sure it is " — answered Flay — " it 's ungrateful ; and 
 more, — it 's unconstitootioual." 
 
 " No, no, Muster Flay : the Blues have always paid me and 
 mine very well " — 
 
 " Hush ! Not so loud," said Flay, with his finger at his 
 eloquent lip. 
 
 " Bless 'ee, everybody knows as everybody's paid," answered 
 the clean-breasted voter. 
 
 " To be sure they do ; nevertheless," observed Flay, " it isn't 
 constitootional to know it. It 's what we call a fiction in the law ; 
 but you know nothing o' these things. Master Stump," said the 
 barber, who then drew himself back a little to take a better look 
 of the tine specimen of ignorance before him. 
 
 " What 's a fickshun 1 " asked Stump. " Somethin' o' use, I 'spose ? " 
 
 " I believe you — tlie constitootion couldn't go on without it. 
 Fiction in the constitootion is like the flour in a plum-pudding — it 
 holds all the prime things in it together." 
 
 " I see," answered Stump, with a giin ; " if they hatln't no 
 fickshun, they 'd make a veiy pretty biling of it ! " 
 
 And after this irreverent fashion, comparing the lofty uses and 
 the various wisdom of the constitution to the ingredients of a 
 Christmas pudding, did Flay, the Blue barber, and his pupil in 
 the art of government, discourse amid the mob assembled in the 
 grounds of Lazaras Hall ; when a feint cheer, an ineffectual 
 shout, rose from some of the mob gathered about a horseman 
 arrived in haste, with special news. This intelligence was speedily 
 conveyed to Doctor Gilead, whose face suddenly glowed hke
 
 248 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 stained glass, he was so delighted with the tidings. Making his 
 way hack to his lordship, the Doctor cried — " Joy, my lord ! 
 Joy ! Joy ! The enemy won't stand ! The Yellow 's mounted 
 the white feather ! No contest, my loi^d — no contest ! Three 
 cheers gentlemen, for our member ! " And Doctor Gilead, for 
 awhile forgetful of the meekness of the pastor in the zeal of 
 the patriot, sprang upon a chah-, and loudly huzzaed. His note 
 of rejoicing was responded to, but somehow not heartily. The 
 assembly tried to look very delighted, very triumphant ; yet, it 
 was plain, they felt a latent annoyance. Was it that they were 
 disappointed of the pleasing excitement of a hard-contested 
 constitutional fight ? Was it, too, that every man felt himself 
 considerably lowered, not only in his self- estimation, but in the 
 value that would otherwise have been set upon him by opjiosite 
 buyers 1 It is a painful feeling to be at the tyrannous, the 
 ignorant valuation of any one man ; and doubtless, many of the 
 electors of Liquorish shared in this annoyance, for now they 
 might be bought at young St. James's own price. When a 
 man does drive his principle, like his pig, to market, it must 
 try the Christian spirit of the seller to find only a solitary 
 buyer. The principle, Hke the jjig, may be a very fine prin- 
 ciple ; a fine, healthy, thorough-going principle ; and yet the 
 one buyer, because the only one, may chaifer for it as though 
 the goods were a very measly prmciiile indeed. The man must 
 sell ; so there goes a prmciple for next to nothing : a principle 
 that, with a full market, would have fetched any money. To sell 
 a principle may be the pleasantest thing in the world, but to 
 almost give it away is surely another matter. 
 
 In Mr. Tangle, the news excited mixed emotions. He rejoiced 
 that the money would be less needed than had an opposmg buyei' 
 been in the market : and then he felt doubly sad at the loss : for 
 with the gold in his possession, and there beuag the less necessity 
 for its wide expenditure, he might— he felt sure he could have 
 done it somehow— yes, he might have levied a heavy per centage 
 upon what remained. There would have been a larger body of 
 metal for the experiment ; and let this be said of him, Tangle 
 always preferred such experiments on a grand scale. Thus Tangle, 
 confused in soul, and downcast m demeanour, sufi"ered himself to 
 be led to one of the half-dozen carriages prepared for the procession 
 to the Town Hall. 
 
 Shall we attempt a description of the mob in vehicles— the mob 
 on horseback— and the mob on foot, departing from the rectory, 
 bound on the solenm duty of making a fire-new senator ? No : 
 we will merely chronicle the touching truth that, as the mob 
 moved on, they sent forth a cheer, that was shrilly answered
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 249 
 
 from the toi^most windows of the rectory, whereat all sorts of 
 maids, covered all over with blue ribands, screamed, and flut- 
 tered handkerchiefs and napkins in glad augury of triumph. 
 The order of the rector for the profusest display of St. James's 
 colours had been carried out with responding zeal by his re- 
 tainers. Blue fluttered everywhere. The dairy-maid had decked 
 Crumple's horns with blue, and the cow, as the maid averred, 
 seemed very proud indeed of the badge ; had she worn it in 
 honour of her own son, then only a foi'tnight old, she could not 
 have looked more complacent, happy. There was not a single 
 ass belonging to the rectory that did not somewhere carry the 
 colour ; and we do assure the reader, very grave and very wise 
 the asses looked under it. Tbey seemed, as Jock the hind ob- 
 served, to understand " the thing, like any Christian." A blue 
 flag fluttered from the top of the rectory — and blue streamers 
 from every out-house. Even the gilt weathercock — the fiict some- 
 how escaped the eye of the rector — bore at its four points a long, 
 long strip of blue riband hi honoiu* of the political principles of 
 the Blue candidate. 
 
 The mob, we say, cheered as they set forward from the rectory, 
 and the men-servants and the maid-servants cheered again. The 
 household gods of Lazarus Hall di'ew a long breath as relieved 
 from the crowd and tumult of the mob that had hustled and con- 
 fused them ; and the solemn row of Ecclesiastical Fathers, stand- 
 ing in Church-militant file upon the library shelves, once more 
 seemed" to feel themselves the undisturbed possessors of their 
 oaken home. Poor old fellows ! — many of them, too, such won- 
 derful hands at choi^pLng one hair into htlle bundles of hairs, the 
 better to make springes with — so many too, the Eloquent Dumb 
 — the Great Forgotten — the Illustrious Dim — the Folio Furniture 
 in calf or truly pastoral vellum, — for five-and-twenty years had 
 stood upon the shelf, and no rude hand had ever touched them. 
 They had been bought by Doctor Gilead, and made to stand 
 before all men visiting the library, as vouchers for the learning of 
 the rector. But when Scipio — of coui'se, sir, you remember the 
 story — when Scipio, by the fortune of war, was made the some- 
 time guardian of a beautiful princess, Scipio himself was not 
 more respectful of her charms, than was Doctor Gilead of the 
 fascinations of the Fathers : he never knew them — nevei'. We 
 are aware that there may be vulgar- souls who, judging ft-om 
 their simial selves, may doubt the continence of Scipio : we think 
 this very likely ; for sure we are that many folks, seemg the 
 scholastic beauties possessed by Doctor Gilead, believed he must 
 enjoy them : for the Doctor, like Scipio, never bragged of his 
 abstinence. He, good soul, suffered men to think just what they
 
 250 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 plea-sed : but this we know, although tlie Fathers were for five- 
 and-tweuty years in the power of Doctor Gilead, yet, a Scipio in 
 his way, he never — to speak scrupulously, like a matron — he 
 never so much as laid his little finger on them. 
 
 Therefore, shortly before the arrival of his lordship, was it a 
 great surprise to the Fathers to find themselves one morning 
 taken from the shelves and opened. How stiff, poor fellows, were 
 they all in the back ! And no doubt, very much astounded was 
 Origen, and Basil, and Theophylact, and Jerome and TertuUian, 
 and other respectable Fathers, to find themselves dusted and 
 thwacked as they, when in the flesh, were wont to dust and 
 thwack their disputants ; the man-servant and the maid-servant, 
 otherwise intent, taking no more account of them than if they 
 were old day-books and ledgei's. In the vanity of their hearts — 
 at least, in as much vanity as can belong to churchmen — they 
 thought they were to be consulted and reverenced ; in a word, 
 made much of. And their owner. Doctor Gilead, did make much 
 of them. He jiaid them the deepest devotion of which the good 
 man was sensible ; for he had them all packed off to be newly 
 furbished and newly gilt ; and there the dead Fathers of the 
 Church stood glistening with living gold ; and possibly feeling as un- 
 easy in the splendour forced upon them as any bishop in a coach- 
 and-four. There they were, like the cherubim, " in burning 
 row ; " doomed, liowever, to perpetual silence — perpetual neglect. 
 Now and then the good Doctor would, of course, glance at them 
 to satisfy himself that they stood in order : he would occasionally 
 run his eye along the shelves, like an officer inspecting his regi- 
 ment ; but the Doctor no more thought of consulting some of 
 those picked men of the army of martyrs, than would the veiy 
 gorgeous colonel pause to gossip with the drummer. There they 
 stood, a sort of divinity guard of honour. A body, very neces- 
 sary to assert the importance of the rank of the great man in 
 whose service they were called out, but on no account to be made 
 familiar with. 
 
 And, we say, tlie tumultuous mob departed from the Hall 
 and left the Fathers — with their newly-gilt backs glittering in the 
 sun — to meditate on human turbulence and human vanity. Poor 
 Fathers ! twice were they doomed to be fed upon. They had 
 been duly eaten in the grave, and now their body of divinity, 
 embalmed, as they vainly thought it, in printer's ink, was drilled 
 and consumed by that omnivorous library worm, of the birth and 
 liistoiy of which entomologists have, we are sure of it, a very 
 false and foolish notion. For it is our conviction that, as the 
 worms that consume the body of the author are bred not in his 
 grave dust, but in his own flesh, so do the worms — the only living
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 2-51 
 
 things tliat go entirely through some tomes — found in books, 
 wholly originate and take their birth from the written matter of 
 the volume. Hence, the quiddities, and concetti, and what Eve, 
 once in her pouts with Adam (for the phrase is as old,) called the 
 maggots of the brain, that abound in much controversial theology 
 do, in process of time, become those little pestilent things that 
 entirely eat up paper, print, and all. A warning this to men, if 
 they would have their printed bodies last, to take care and avoid 
 the aforesaid quiddities, and concetti, and maggots. For little 
 knows the thoughtless beholder of many a tall, sturdy volume, 
 what certain devastation is going on among its leaves. Many a 
 controversialist who has shaken thvmderbolts, but which, indeed, 
 were nothing worse than little pebbles in a tin-pot — (by means of 
 which, by the way, we have seen boys make asses gallop, pebbles 
 jingled in a pot being thunder to asses,) — many a Jupiter of syl- 
 lables in his day is, at this moment, being slowly but surely de- 
 voured, and that too by the venuicelli bred in what he deemed 
 his own immortal thunder. "Was there not, to give a very familiar 
 instance, the famous Miianbettimartinius, who wrote a mighty 
 folio to prove that there were no fleas in the Ark 1 Did he not 
 stand upon his flea as a postdiluvian creation — stand ujjon it as 
 the great pyramid on its base, for the bows and salaams of all 
 posterity 1 And where and what is Miianbettimartinius now ? 
 A dead body of polemics. Now and then we see him handsomely 
 bound upon a rector's, a bishop's shelf. Doctor Gdead had a 
 very fine tall copy ; but we can see through the binder's cuticle ; 
 our mental ^asion can pierce through calf-skin, and behold the 
 worms at work. Pooh ! the whole thing is as alive and wriggling 
 as an angler's box of gentles. 
 
 But we must quit the Fathers, and fall in with the mob. 
 We shall not attempt to count the number of votes upon horse- 
 back—the number of votes on foot— that preceded and followed, 
 and on each side hemmed about the carriage of the noble candi- 
 date. Everybody, save Tangle, looked happy. And he, although 
 he rode in a very fine coach, would insist upon looking as though 
 he was taking a final journey in a cai-t ; and although a young 
 clerg>Tnan of excellent family, one in whose oi-thodoxy Doctor 
 Gilead had great hopes for one of his daughters— although the 
 young gentleman let oif some ca])ital jokes, bran-new from Cam- 
 bridge, in Tangle's private ear, for his private delight— he. 
 Tangle, did nothing but slightly bow, and look glassily about 
 him, as though that veiy promising young clergyman was, at 
 the moment, imparting the most solemn consolation ; which, it 
 is but hard justice to him, again to assure the reader, he was 
 not. Tande's soul was with his gumeas. And it was as if
 
 2d2 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 every guinea bad a pai-ticulai* hold of his soul, and each guinea 
 was flying a different way, — tearing and tugging at the poor 
 soul in a thousand directions. The young clergyman was inces- 
 sant in liis attentions. " I say, old Death's-head " — thus familiar 
 did the gi-eat cause in which both were x-iding make the man 
 of Cam and the man of law, — " I say, look at that girl with 
 cherry ribands." 
 
 Tangle was determined to put down this libertine familiarity at 
 once and for ever. He, therefore, never deigning to look at either 
 cheri-y lips or cherry ribands, observed, " Su*, I am a married 
 man." Mr. Tangle believed that he had at once abashed, con- 
 founded his fi-ee acquaintance. He had uttered that, which he felt 
 ought to silence any decent pei-son : he had spoken his worst, and 
 looked to be, at least, respected. He wished, however, to be very 
 secure, and therefore repeated, — "Sir, I am a married man." 
 Whereto the young clergjTQan resjjonded, and let us do him jus- 
 tice, with evident s}Tupathy — "Poor devil ! " 
 
 The procession moved on — the music played — and there was 
 not one of the mob who did not feel a huge interest in the very 
 handsome young lord who was going up to Parliament to take 
 especial care of all of them. — In the like way, that when the 
 knight of old was armed, and about to go forth to slay the dragon 
 that carried off men, virgins, and cattle, and continually breathed 
 a brimstone blight upon the crops and herbage, making dumpish 
 the heart of the farmer, — in the like way that he was attended 
 by sage, grey-headed reverence, by youths and maidens, bearing 
 gai-lands and green boughs, and accompanying him with shouts, 
 and prayers, and lovmg looks,— so did the young lord St. James 
 take his way to the hustings, that he might therefrom depai-t for 
 Parliament, there to combat with and soundly ckub the twenty 
 d'-aguna always ready to eat up everybody and everything, if not 
 prevented by the one particular member. Young St. Jtones would 
 be the champion against the dragon taxation : he would keep the 
 monster from the farmer's bacon — from the farmer's wife's eggs 
 — from the farmer's daughter's butter : he would protect their 
 rights ; and the farmer, and farmer's wife, and farmer's daughter, 
 all felt that they had a most dear and tender interest in that 
 sjilendid young gentleman, who would do nothing but bow to 
 them, and smile upon them, just for all the world as if he was not 
 a morsel better than they. 
 
 " He '11 let 'em know what 's what when he gets among 'em," 
 said an old countryman to Flay, who, that he might be as near as 
 pos.sible to the lord about to be made a law-maker, walked with 
 his hand upon the carriage. " They 've had it all their oAvn way 
 long enough ; he '11 make 'em look about 'em."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 2o3 
 
 "The man for the constitootion. That 's plain with half an 
 eye ; he 's born with it all in his head, like a cock with a comb," 
 said Flay. " It 's in the family," continued the barber ; " in the 
 family." 
 
 The procession halts at the Hall. We pass the cheering, the 
 groaning of the opposite parties. It was plain, that it was already 
 known there would be no contest ; whereupon dark and blank 
 were the looks of the Yellows, and verj loud and fierce their 
 denunciations. The Blues, too, though they put a boldly happy 
 face on the matter, were ill at ease. A sharp opposition would 
 have given them great delight, inasmuch as their tried patriotism 
 would have shone all the more eifulgent for the test. 
 
 And now the solemn business is ojDened by Mr. Mayor, too 
 oppressed by the greatness of the occasion, to suifer one word of 
 his very eloquent address to be heard by the multitude ; who, no 
 doubt, in gratitude, cheered uproariously. 
 
 The Reverend Doctor Gilead then stept forward ; and suddenly 
 the crowd seemed to feel themselves at church, they were so 
 hushed. The Doctor said that nothing but his long know- 
 ledge, his aflection for his lordship, could have induced him to 
 break from that privacy which they all knew was his greatest 
 happiness. But he had a duty to pei'form ; a duty to his country, 
 to them, and to himself. That duty was to propose the distm- 
 guished nobleman before them, as their legal and moral repre- 
 sentative in Pai'liament. 
 
 And young St. James was duly proposed and seconded. " Is 
 there no other candidate 1 " asked the Mayor, with a conscious 
 face that there was not. 
 
 " Yes," cried a voice ; and immediately a man stept forward, 
 whilst the Yellows roared mth triumph. " I liave to 2:iro])ose," 
 said the man, — and reader, that man was no other than Ebenezer 
 Snipeton, husband of Clarissa Snipeton, — " I have to propose, as 
 the representative of the borough of Liquorish, Mattlievr Cai?- 
 stick, Esq." 
 
 A shout of derision burst from the Blues. For a moment, 
 the Yellows, taken by surprise, were silent : they then paid back 
 the shout with shoutings vehement. 
 
 " Does anybody second Matthew Capstick ? " asked the Mayor, 
 aghast, 
 
 "I does," cried Hasp ; and again the Yellows shouted. 
 
 The Reverend Doctor Gilead looked haughtily, contemptuously, 
 at the farce acted about him. Nevertheless, lie thought it neces- 
 sary to demand a poll for young St. James ; the show of hands — 
 as the astounded Mayor was compelled to own — beuig " decidedly 
 in favour of Matthew Capstick, Esq."
 
 254 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV, 
 
 " Why you never mean to do it ? " asked Bright Jem anxiously, 
 sorrowfully. 
 
 " A mau is wedded to his country, Jem ; and being wedded, 
 must listen to her voice," was the answer of Capstick. 
 
 It was nearly midnight, and the late muffin-maker and his man 
 sat alone in the Tub. The news of his probable election for 
 Liquorish had fallen upon Capstick explosively. He had, in 
 truth, been much startled, agitated by the tidings ; but, the 
 muffin-maker was a philosopher, and after a brief hour or two 
 he had subdued the flesh-quakes of the merely modest man 
 trembling at his own under-valuation, and sat — re-assured and 
 calm, contemplating his possible appeai-ance amidst the sages of 
 the land, himself a sage — with the quiet resignation of a patriot. 
 Capstick industriously essayed a look, a manner of monumental 
 tranquillity. He smoked apparently, for all the world, like a 
 common man ; and yet — it did not escape the afi'ectionate glance 
 of Jem — yet did Capstick's eye now and then bum and glow 
 with a new light, even as the tobacco, at the breath of the smoker, 
 glowed through the embers. Rapidly was his heart enlarging 
 with the good of the nation. Orations, to be uttered to the world 
 at the proper season, were conceived in the muffin-maker's brain ; 
 and as he sat, like a pagan god, in a cloud of his own making, 
 they already grew and grew, and he already felt for them the 
 mysterious love of the parent towards the unborn. Ah-eady his 
 ears rang with the shoutings of an instructed, a delighted senate. 
 His heart beat thick %vith the thought of Magna Charta, and the 
 tremendous uses he would yet make of that sublime text. With 
 no hope, no thought of Parliament, it had been the pride of the 
 muffin-maker to despise the world and its doings ; a hopeless 
 world, overstocked with fools and knaves, altogether unworthy 
 of the consideration of a philosophic mind. And now, with the 
 chance of becoming a senator, Capstick felt a sudden charity for 
 the universe. After all, it was a universe not to be neglected. 
 And for the men and women inhabiting it — poor two-legged 
 emmets ! — they must not be suffered to go to ruin their own per- 
 verse way. He would, therefore, go to Parliament and save them. 
 
 Now, when a man has once for all determined upon a mag- 
 nanimous line of conduct, he cannot but for the time look the 
 better, the bigger, for the resolution. It is thus in all cases. For
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 255 
 
 instance, when a virgin, with lowered lids and lips tremblino' at 
 their own courage, drops the " yes " that is to make a man beatific 
 for the term of his natural existence — a " yes " at which all the 
 wedding-rings in all the goldsmiths' shops sympathetically vibrate 
 — she, the virgin, looks as she never before looked ia her life ; 
 sublimated, glorified, with a halo of beauty about her ; a halo 
 catching light from her liquid eyes, and rosy, burning face. And 
 when, too, the widow, with a sweet audacity, facing the mischief, 
 man, as an old soldier faces a cannon, says "yes," tolling the 
 monosyllable shortly, boldly as a bell tolls one — she, too, expands 
 a little — just a little, -with the thought, the good determined upon, 
 — she, too, has her halo, though certainly of a dimmer kind ; just 
 a little dulled, like a second-hand rmg. So true it is, that mag- 
 nanimity has an expansive, a decorative quality. And so when 
 Capstick, for a moment, felt hunself a member of Parliament, he 
 felt for the time his waistcoat much too small for him. In the 
 like way that when, stirred by great emotions, the female heart 
 takes a sudden shoot, it is sometimes necessary to cut the stay- 
 lace to allow for the growth. 
 
 And Capstick sat enlarged by his own thoughts ; with the ears 
 of his soul up-jiricked — for souls have ears, and at times pretty 
 long ones — as though listening for the trumpets that should sol^nd 
 a blast for his triumph. But Bright Jem had a heay>', a dolorous 
 exj^ression of the divine countenance of man. His master was in 
 danger of being made a member of Parliament. He was, at that 
 moment, in the imminent peril of being taken from rustic delights, 
 from the sweet, the flowery leisiu-e of the country, to be turned 
 into a maker of laws. His condition weighed heavily upon the 
 sense of his faithful, his affectionate servant : who gazed upon 
 him as Pylades would have regarded Orestes, had dear Orestes 
 been sentenced to the pillory. Capstick already felt himself in 
 the House of Commons, and smiled through his own smoke, as 
 he thought of one of the hundi'ed speeches he would make, and 
 the cheers that would celebrate its delivery ; and Bright Jem 
 only thought of the unsavoury missiles to be hurled at his friend 
 in the hour of his trial. 
 
 " A man is wedded to his country, Jem," repeated Capstick, 
 with a growing love for the assertion. 
 
 " His country ! Why, you don't call Liquorish your country, 
 do you 1 Besides, what does the country know about you, 'xcept 
 your muflans : if the country hasn't quite forgot them by this 
 time ? If you are made a member of Parliament— heaven pre- 
 serve you, says I — you '11 only be made out of spite and malice," 
 cried James. 
 
 Mr., Capstick took his pipe wide away from his mouth, and
 
 2.56 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 began what would doubtless have been a very eloquent speech. 
 Bright Jem, however, suffered him to get no fuilher than — " The 
 choice of the people, Jem." 
 
 " The people ! The choice of the guineas, that 's it, Mr. Cap- 
 stick. A member for Liquorish ! Well, they might as well make 
 a little image of the golden calf over agin, and send that to Par- 
 liament : for that 's the people 's choice hereabouts. Why, you 
 must know, that it 's for no love of you that Snipeton — as they 
 call hina — put you up. To carry his pint agin his young lordship — 
 for there 's some sore atween 'em— he 'd send a chimbly -sweeper 
 to Parliament without washing him." 
 
 " Impossible ! " cried Capstick, with very considerable dignity. 
 
 " Certain of it," insisted Jem, " else why, may I be so bold to 
 ask, should he pitch uj^on you ? " 
 
 " I am not exactly a chimney-sweeper, Mr. James ; not exactly," 
 observed Capstick, majestically. 
 
 " A course not : a good way from it : but you know what I 
 mean, dont't you 1 " said Jem. 
 
 " It is no matter. Mr. Snipeton has very briefly satisfied me 
 of the purity, the patriotism of his intentions, and — good night 
 Mr. James," and Capstick rose. " I must rise early tomoiTOw." 
 
 " Don't say Mr. James, then : it 's a putting a stone in my 
 pillow that I couldn't sleep on, seeing I 'm not used to it. God 
 bless you, sir— good night," and Jem held forth his hand. 
 
 " Good night, Jem," said Capstick, taking Jem's hand. " And 
 mind, to-morrow, early, Jem — very early, Jem." 
 
 Almost at dawn Jem was in the garden, digging, digging as 
 though he would get rid of thought. At times, very savagely 
 would he plunge the spade into the eart.h, as though it relieved 
 him. And then he gi'oaned — hummed — and sighed. And the 
 morning broke gloriously ; and the birds sang and whistled ; and 
 the flowers came laughing out in the sunshine. The summer 
 earth, one wide altar, steamed with sweetest incense to heaven. 
 
 Jem had laboured for a couple of hours before Capstick joined 
 him in tlie garden. " Why, Jem, you 've done a full half-day's 
 work already," said the candidate for Liquorish. 
 
 " Somehow I couldn't rest : and when I did sleep, I had 
 nothing but nasty dreams. If I didn't dream you was taken 
 to the Tower for pulling the Speaker's nose— and I know 
 your temper, sir — nothing more likely — I wish I may die. 
 Never had such a clear, clean dream in all my life. It was 
 all made out so." 
 
 " And what did they do with me at the Tower ? " asked Cap- 
 stick, a little tickled by the importance of the imprisonment. 
 
 " Why they chopped your head off as clean as a sheep's," said
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 257 
 
 Jem, earnestly. " I saw 'em do it ; heard the chopper go rioht 
 through bone, gristle, and all." Capstick clapt his hand to his 
 neck, then suddenly took it away again, and shook his head and 
 smiled. Jem continued. " They chopped it off, and I heard it 
 fall from the block with a bump. And after that they cut you 
 into four quarters to be hung up for an example." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! and that 's the worst they did," cried Capstick ; 
 " there was an end, then 1 " 
 
 " No there wasn't," said Jem ; " for I dreamt that they made 
 me pack up one of the quarters, Uke spring-lamb, and carry it to 
 your old mixffin-shop, and hang it jest over the door at ween the 
 two windows, as a warning to all traitors. And I hung it up. 
 And then I dreamt I sat down on the door-step, and it was as 
 touch as ever I could do to keep the birds from pecking at you, 
 for all I did nothing but pelt 'em with dollars." 
 
 " Very extravagant," said Capstick, who added gravely, laying 
 his hand very tenderly upon Jem's shoulder, "when the time 
 really comes, don't throw away silver ; first try penny pieces." 
 Jem shook his head : he could not reUsh the humour of the 
 economy. 
 
 " If, now, they really should make a member of parliament of 
 you," — Jem shuddered at the notion as at the thought of some 
 nauseous drug — " you don't mean to say you '11 leave the Tub, 
 the garden and all? " 
 
 " The voice of the country, Jem, must be obeyed. We '11 come 
 down here, and recruit ourselves when the House is prorogued. 
 We shall enjoy it all the more for the work of the session." Cap- 
 stick ah-eady spoke like a member. 
 
 " Well, I know somethin' of parliament, for I knew poor Sam 
 Chilterns, the linkman, as was kUled by the late hovu's. He used 
 to tell me a good deal about it. Whatever pleasiu-e you can have, 
 to go and sit steaming among a mob of folks — and hearing speeches 
 and sums of figures that you don't know nothing about — and never 
 opening your own mouth " — 
 
 " Never think it, Jem," cried Capstick, " I shall speak, and veiy 
 often — very often." 
 
 " The Lord help you ! " exclaimed Jem, amazed at such deter- 
 mination. " At your time of life, too ! " 
 
 " That 's it, Jem. Twenty, ten, years ago, I shouldn't have 
 been ripe for it. Keally great men are of slow gro-vvth ; J feel 
 that I have just now reached my prime, and my country shall 
 have it. You don't know— how should you ?— what I may meet 
 with in parliament." 
 
 " A little on it," said Jem, " You '11 meet with bad hoivrs and 
 noisy company ; and you '11 turn night into day, and day into 
 
 s
 
 258 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 nif^ht, and so do no good witli neither one nor the other. Meet ! 
 Will you meet with any such company as you leave ? I should 
 like to know that." 
 
 " "Why, what company do I leave 1 " asked Capstick coldly, 
 and with dignity. 
 
 "Why, the company about you," cried Jem, and Capstick 
 shortly coughed. " Look at 'em : mil you meet with anything like 
 them roses, jest opening their precious mouths, and talking to you 
 in theu' own way — for how often you 've said they do talk, if 
 people will only have the sense to understand 'em ! You '11 go to 
 court, perhaps ; and, if you do, will you meet with finer velvet 
 than 's in them heai'tsease 1 will you see any diamonds " — and here 
 Jem struck a bush with his spade, and the dew-drops in a silver 
 shower trembled and fell from it — "any diamonds brighter and 
 wholesomer than them 1 Will you hear anything like that in 
 parUament ? " — cried Jem, emphatically, and he pointed upwards 
 to a lark singing in the high heavens. 
 
 " These things ai*e to be enjoyed in their due season ; when, as 
 I say, the House is prorogued," said Capstick. 
 
 " And what 's to become of all the animals that I thought you 
 so fond on 1 They '11 none on 'em come to good when you 're 
 away. There 's them beautiful bees — sensible things ! — you 
 don't think they 'U have the heart to go on working, working, 
 when you 're wasting your time in the House of Commons ? 
 And you '11 go and make laws ! Ha ! We sha'n't haA'^e no luck 
 after that. If the bantam hen that 's sitting doesn't addle all 
 her eggs, I know nothing of bantams. Why, how," — and Jem 
 spoke in a saddened tone — "how in six weeks do you think 
 you 'U look ?" 
 
 " Look ! how should I look ? " cried Capstick, bending his brows. 
 
 " WTiy, you '11 look like a act of parhament ; and a precious old 
 act, too ; all parchment like, with black marks. And you '11 go 
 to bed when the sun gets up ; and instead of meeting him, as you 
 do now, with a head as clear as spring water — and looking at 
 him, all health and comfort — and walking about hearing the 
 birds and smelling the cows, the flowers and the fresh earth — 
 why, you '11 be slinking home to your bed with no heart to stare 
 in the sun's face — and your precious head will seem biling with a 
 lot of talk ; all wobbling with speeches you can make nothin' on 
 — and you 'U soon wish yourself a mushroom, a toadstool, anything 
 to be well in the country agin." 
 
 " Jem," said Capstick, " you mean well ; but you 're an enthu- 
 siast." 
 
 " You may call me what names you like," said Jem, very re- 
 signedly, " but you 'U never be happy away from the Tub."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 259 
 
 " You 'II lay the breakfast," obsei-ved Capstick, peremptorily 
 ending the conversation as lie turned from the garden to the 
 house, whilst Jem — as if he had a new quarrel with the soil — due/ 
 his spade into the earth with increased energy. 
 
 In a few minutes a hen broke out into the customary proclama- 
 tion of a new egg. — " WeU, I know," cxied Jem, pettishly, " I 
 know : you 're like a good many people, you are ; can't even give 
 I^oor folks an egg without telling aU the world about it. Humjjh ! 
 he may as well have 'em fresh while he can ; " and Jem took his 
 way to the hen-roost — " poor soul ! he '11 get nothing fresh when 
 he 's a member of parliament." 
 
 In veiy dumpish spii'its did Jem prepare the breakfast. But 
 when he saw Capstick, habited in his very best, issue from his 
 chamber, Jem groaned as though he looked upon a victim an-ayed 
 for the sacrifice. Capstick would not hear the note of tribulation, 
 but observed — " You '11 go with me, Jem." 
 
 " I 'd rather not," said Jem ; " but I 'spose I must go in the 
 mob, to see as nobody pelts you. Well ! I wonder what any Jew 
 will give for that coat when you come home. But I 'spose it 's all 
 right. People put their best on when they 're hanged, and why 
 shouldn't you ? All right, o' course." 
 
 Capstick managed to laugh, and tried to eat his breakfast mth 
 even more than customary rehsh — but it would not do : he had 
 no appetite. He felt himself on the verge of greatness. And his 
 heart was so big it left him no stomach. Suddenly was heard the 
 sound of distant music. " Heaven save you ! " cried Jem ; " they 're 
 coming after you." 
 
 " Don't be a fool," said the philosophic Capstick, and the music 
 and the shouting seemed to enter his cahn bosom like flame, for 
 he suddenly observ-ed, " It 's very warm to-day, Jem." 
 
 " Nothing to what it will be," said Jem. " Here they come. 
 Afore it's too late, will you hide under the bed, and I'll say 
 you 're out 1 " Jem rapidly put the proposal as a last desperate 
 resource. 
 
 "Don't be a fool," again cried Capstick, and with increased 
 vehemence. " Open the door." 
 
 " It 's all over— too late," groaned Jem, and almost immediately 
 the music came clanging to the window, and the mob huzzaed, 
 and Ea,sp, and others of Capstick's committee, filled the cottage, 
 
 "Hurrah!" cried Easp, " three cheers for Capstick ! Cap- 
 stick and the Constitution ! " and the mob roared in obedience 
 " Now, Mr. Capstick ; all right, I can teU you. His lordship 
 hasn't a toe to stand upon— not a smgle toe. This blessed mght 
 you 'U sleep member for Liquorish ! Down with the Blues ! 
 The Constitution and Capstick ! Hurrah ! Why, Jem, —
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 cried the barber, suddenly astounded — " you hav'n"t got no colour. 
 Here 's one." 
 
 " Well, if I must make myself a canary," cried Jem, and he 
 took the proflfered riband, and shook his head. 
 
 " Now then, strike up, and tliree more cheers for Capstick and 
 the Constitution," roared Easp. The trumpets sounded — the 
 drums beat-r-the mob roared, — and amidst the hubbub, Capstick 
 suffered him^f to be carried off by the committee to one of the 
 three caniages drawn up at the end of the lane, whilst Bright 
 Jem, as though he walked at a funeral, pensively followed. — In a 
 few moments the line was formed ; and musicians and mob, 
 takino- new breath, gave loudest utterance to their several instru- 
 •;jnents. And Capstick, the philosopher, smiled and bowed about 
 ^lim with all the easy grace of an old candidate. Bright Jem 
 o-azed at him with astonishment. Could it be possible that that 
 smiling, courteous, bending man was the rigid muffin-maker ? 
 After that, there was nothing true, nothing real in humanity. At 
 once, Jem gave up the world. 
 
 The procession reached the Town Hall. Hurrahs and hoottngs 
 met Capstick ; who felt warm and cold at the salutations. It was 
 plain, however, that Capstick and the Constitution — as Hasp 
 would couple them — must triumph. The gi-eat confidence in 
 young St. James had, somehow, been severely shaken. It was 
 known even to the little children of the borough that the myste- 
 rious chest of gold had been carried off ; and as the customary 
 donation to the electors was not forthcoming, it was believed 
 that young St. James would rashly trust to purity of election. 
 Tangle, secure in his belief that there would be no opposition to 
 his lordship, had said no word of the robbery ; hence, he had 
 suffered veiy valuable time to be lost — time that had been im- 
 proved to the utmost by the agents of Snipetou, who, though he 
 scarcely appeared himself, laboured by means of his mercenaries, 
 with all the ardour that hatred and gold could sujjply in the 
 cause. When, however, it became certam that his lordship would 
 be opposed, Tangle felt the dire necessity — dii-e, indeed — of telling 
 the truth. And then he felt he had not the courage to carry him 
 thi'ough so unusual a task. Whereupon, he sneaked to his inn, 
 ordered a post-chaise, placed himself and portmanteau therein, 
 and late at night secretly drove towards London. Ere, however, 
 he departed, he left a letter for the noble candidate. We give a 
 con-ect copy. 
 
 " My Lord, — Deeply, indeed, do I regret that a circumstance — 
 a tender circumstance — to which it is needless more particulai'ly 
 to allude (for what — what right have I, at such a time, to force
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 261 
 
 my domestic sorrows on your lordship's attention ?) — a tender cii'- 
 cumstance, I say, compels my immediate attendance in London. 
 You may judge of the importance of the event from the very fact 
 that, at such a time, it can sever me from your lordship. I leave 
 you, however, in the full assurance of your triumph — in the full 
 belief that parliament, which has received so many ornaments 
 from your noble house, has yet to obtain an unj^aralleled lustre'in 
 the genius of your lordship. With the profoundest respect, I am 
 your lordship's most devoted servant, " Luke Tangle." 
 
 •'P.S. — We are all, in this mortal world, liable to accidents. 
 My good friend, Mr. Folder, will inform your lordship of a cu'- 
 cumstance that has given me much pain : a circumstance, however, 
 that when I shall have the honour of nest meeting your lordship,_ 
 I doubt not I shall be able most fully to explain to your lordship's 
 most perfect satisfaction." 
 
 "There is great villany in this, — great ■\dllany, my lord," said 
 Doctor Gilead, possessed of the contents of the letter — " but it 
 is n't so much the money that 's lost ; that may be remedied — it 's 
 the time, the precious time. There is no doubt that the other 
 side have taken the most unprincipled advantage of the calamity, 
 and have bribed right and left. Nevertheless, we must not de- 
 spair. No ; certauily not. We must look the difficulty in the 
 face like men, my lord — like men." The Doctor, too, spoke like 
 one determined to fight to the last minute, and the last guinea. 
 And the Doctor was not merely a man of words. No. With a 
 fine decision of character, he immediately drew a cheque for a 
 much larger amount than was ever dreamt of by all the ai^ostles, 
 and confiding it to a trusty servant, he shortly, but emphatically, 
 said to him — "Gold." The man smilingly acknowledged the 
 magic of that potent monosyllable, and departed bhthely on his 
 errand. Nevertheless, there was a strong sense of honour in the 
 hearts of the majority of the patriots of Liquorish ; for although 
 some took double bribes — although some suffered themselves to 
 be gilt like weather-vanes, on both sides— the greater number 
 remained true to the first purchaser. It was the boast — the con- 
 solation that made so many of the Yellows walk upright through 
 the world— that they stuck to their first bargain. The double 
 fee would have been welcome, to be sure ; but as some of them 
 touchingly observed, they had characters to take care of. Besides, 
 the same candidate might come again. 
 
 " Can you have any notion of the cause of the motives of this 
 man, Snipeton ? " asked Doctor Gilead of young St. James, who 
 slightly coloured at the home question. "Why should he have 
 stai-ted a candidate 1 "
 
 262 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES, 
 
 '•Possibly — I caxi't tell — but I say jDossibly he has strong 
 poUtioal feelings. But, 'tis uo matter, 'twill only add to the 
 excitement : at the most, 'twill only be a joke. A muffin-maker 
 sitting for Liquorish ! For our borough ! 'Tis too ridiculous to 
 imagine," and young St. James laughed. 
 
 " A very contemptible person, certainly," said Doctor Gilead ; 
 "nevertheless, he 's twenty a- head of your lordship, and as there 
 is not above another hour for polling, and we know the number of 
 votes, mattei's do look a httle desperate." Such was the opinion 
 of Doctor Gilead, very dolorously pronounced at an advanced 
 pei-iod of the day ; and young St. James — although he had com- 
 bated the notion like a man and a lord — ^began to give ground : 
 it uo longer seemed to him among the impossibilities of the world 
 that the family borough of Liquorish might be usurped by a 
 muffin-maker. And then St. James — thinking of Clarissa — 
 meditated a terrible revenge upon her husband. 
 
 In the meanwhile, the contest raged with every variety of 
 noise and violence consequent upon the making of a member of 
 parliament. Songs were sung ; — how the poet was so suddenly 
 found, we know not ; but discovered, he was potently inspired by 
 ready gold and ale, and in no time enshrined the robbery of the 
 money-box in verse. Every verse, like a wasp, had a sting at the 
 end of it, aimed at the corruption of the Blues. The concluding- 
 stanza, too, breathed an ardent wish for the future prosperity 
 and happiness of the thief — an expression of kindness that Tom 
 Blast, as he mingled among the mob, received with the silence of 
 modesty. Tom's only regret was that Jingo, his own child, had | 
 not been entrusted with the ballad, as the melody and the senti- i 
 ment of the song were beautifully adapted to the voice and i 
 intelligence of the yoimg minstrel. Besides, there would have \ 
 been something droll — very droll, a matter to be chuckled over [ 
 with private friends — had Jingo chaunted the satirical lament for 
 the stolen gold ; he bemg, above all others, peculiarly fitted for 
 tlie melodious task. And where could he be? — once or twice 
 thought the father, and then the paternal anxiety was merged in 
 the deep interest of the liour ; for Tom Blast with all his might 
 roared and cheered and hooted in the cause of the Yellows. 
 Much, we think, would it have abated the patriotic zeal of 
 Oapstick, had he known how vociferously he was lauded by the 
 thief of Hog Lane. But at such a time, applause must not be too 
 curiously analysed. 
 
 And now both parties began to number minutes. A quarter of 
 an hour, and tlie poll would close. The Blues had for the past 
 twenty minutes ralUed ; and Doctor Gilead rubbed his hands and 
 declared that, iu spite of the corrupt practices of the Yellows, in
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 263 
 
 spite of the soul-buying bribery that had been resorted to by 
 unchristian men, the rightful seat of St. James would not be 
 usurped by a muffin-maker. Poor Jem hmig about the Committee- 
 rooms, and secretly exulted when Capstick receded ; as secretly 
 mourned when he advanced. At length the final numbers were 
 exhibited ; and to the joy of the Yellows, the despaii- of the 
 Blues, and to the particular misery of Jem himself, Matthew 
 Capstick, Esq., was declared ten votes a-head of his opponent ! 
 
 " Three cheers for Capstick, our member," cried Easp from the 
 window of the Yellow Committee-room. "Three cheers for 
 Capstick and the Constitution ! " 
 
 " Give it him," cried Flay from an opposite house, and the 
 obedient loyal mob of Blues discharged a volley of mud and 
 stones and other constitutional missiles in use on such gloi'ious 
 occasions. Crash went the windows ; and, on the instant, the two 
 .factions in the street were engaged in a general fight ; all moving, 
 as they combated, towards the Town Hall, already beset by a 
 roaring mob. 
 
 A few minutes, and Mr. Capstick appeared. Whereupon, the 
 high bailifi' declared him duly elected a knight burgess, and 
 buckled the sword about him — the sword with which, by a pretty 
 fiction, the knight was to defend the borough of Liquorish from 
 all sorts of wi'ong. Capstick, with the weapon at bis thigh, 
 advanced with great dignity ; for a time regardless of the showers 
 of eggs and potatoes that, from the liberal hands of the Blues, 
 immediately greeted him. The young Lord St. James — how 
 Snipeton leered at him ! — also appeared on the hustings, and acci- 
 dentally received full in his face an egg, certamly intended for 
 the visage of the successful candidate. It was plain, too, that 
 Capstick thought as much, for he turned, and taking out his 
 pocket-handkerchief, advanced to his lordship, and in the politest 
 manner observed, — "My lord, I have no doubt that egg was 
 intended to be my property: will you therefore permit me to 
 reclaim my own 1" — and saying this, Capstick with his white 
 kerchief removed the offensive matter from his lordship's face, 
 whilst the crowd— touched by the courtesy of the new member- 
 laughed and cheered uproariously. 
 
 Mr. Capstick then advanced to the front of the liustiugs. At 
 the same moment a potato fell short of him, near liis foot. 
 Whereupon the member drew his sword, and running it into the 
 potato, held it up to the mob. Another laugh— another^cheer 
 greeted the action. " Silence ! he 's a rum 'un— heai- him ! " was 
 the cry, and m less than ten minutes the new member was 
 permitted to proceed. Whereupon he said : 
 
 " Gentlemen— for gentlemen in a mob are always known by
 
 26-1 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 theii- eggs and potatoes — I should, indeed, be unworthy of the 
 houom- you have placed and showered upon me, did I in any way 
 complain of the manner in which you have exercised the pri^^leges 
 I see lying about me. I am aware, gentlemen, that it is the free 
 birthright of Englishmen — and may they never forget it ! — ^to pelt 
 any man who may offer himself for the honour of representing 
 them in Parliament. It is right that it should be so. For how 
 imfit must be the man for the duties of his office — for the trials 
 that in the House of Commons he must undergo — if he cannot, 
 properly and respectfully, receive at the hands of an enlightened 
 constituency any quantity of mud, any number of eggs or 
 potatoes. I should hold myself a traitor to the trust reposed in 
 me, did I at this moment of triumph object to either your eggs or 
 your potatoes." (Very loud cheering ; with a cry of " You 're 
 the sort for us.") " No, gentlemen, I look upon eggs and potatoes 
 as, I may say, the corner-stones of the Constitution." (" Three 
 cheers for the Constitution," roared Easp, and the Yellows 
 obediently bellowed.) " Nevertheless, permit me to say this much. 
 Feeling the necessity that you should always exercise for your- 
 selves the right of pelting your candidates with eggs and potatoes 
 — permit me to observe that I do not think the sacred cause of 
 liberty will be endangered, that I do not believe the basis of the 
 Constitution will be in the smallest degree shaken, if upon all 
 future elections, when yoii shall be called upon to exercise the 
 high prerogative of pelting your candidates, you select eggs that 
 ai-e sweet, and first mash your potatoes." 
 
 Laughter and loud cheers attested the reasonableness of the 
 proposition. Wlien silence was restored, young Lord St. James 
 stood forward. His rival, he said, was for a time nominally theu- 
 candidate. A petition to the House of Commons would, however, 
 speedily send him back to his proper obscurity. His lordship was 
 prepared to prove the grossest bribery 
 
 "The box of guineas ! "—"Who stole the gold ?" was shouted 
 from the mob, and Tom Blast himself boldly halloed— "Who 
 stole the guineas 1 " 
 
 Doctor Gilead stept forward. "My friends," he said, "it is 
 time that a box of money was stolen — but, my friends, you ^ill 
 rejoice with me to learn that the box is recovered." 
 
 " Gammon ! " cried Blast wdldly. 
 
 " The thief or thieves had cast the box into my fish-pond ; but 
 I have just been informed that on dragging the pond for carp — I 
 had given the order before I quitted home— the box has been 
 found ! Three cheers, my friends ! " 
 
 Blast groaned and the Blues huzzaed. 
 
 The ceremony of chau-ing was duly performed, Bright Jem
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 265 
 
 witnessing the triumph with a hea%7- heart : but Matthew Cap- 
 stick, Esq., M.P., (he had been duly qualified by Snipeton,) as he 
 was paraded along the streets of Liquorish had no wish ungratified 
 — ^yes, there was one, a little one. It was merely that the late 
 Mrs. Capstick could, for a very brief time, look up from her grave 
 and see her elected hiisband in his moment of glory ! 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI. 
 
 It is fit we now expjlain a few matters of the past for the better 
 apprehension of the future. Let us therefore gossip five minutes. 
 Let us pause awhile in this green lane — it is scarcely half-a-mile 
 from the Town Hall of Liquorish, — ere mounting Pen, om* flimiliar 
 hippogriff, with you, sir, on the crupper, we take a flight and in a 
 thought descend upon the mud of London. The sweet breath of 
 the season should 02ien hearts, as it uncloses myiiads of buds and 
 blossoms. So, let us sit upon this tree-trunk — this elm, felled and 
 lopped in December. Stripped, maimed, and overthrown, a few 
 of its twigs are dotted with green leaves ; spring still working 
 within it, like hope in the conquered brave. 
 
 Is not this an escape from the scufliing and braying of immortal 
 man, moved by the feelings and the g-uineas of an election 1 "VATiat 
 a very decent, quiet fellow is Brown ! And Jones is a civil, 
 peaceable creature ! And Kobinson, too, a man of gentle bearing ! 
 Yet multiply the three by one, two, three hundred. Let there be 
 a mob of Browns, Joneses, and Eobinsons, and then how often — 
 made up of individual decency, and quietude, and gentleness — is 
 there a raving, roaring, bullying multitude 1 The individual Adam 
 sets aside his dignity, as a boxer strips for the fight ; and whether 
 the thing to be seen is a lord mayor's coach, fireworks, or a zany 
 on a river, goose-paddled in a washing-tub, the sons of Adam wall 
 throng to the sight, and fight and scream for vantage-ground, with 
 a violence that would shame any colony of monkeys, clawing and 
 jabbering for stolen sugar-cane. Sweet, then, is it to the philo- 
 sopher to morahse upon the hubbub and the jostling crowd. He 
 pities the madness of the multitude, and respects the serenity of 
 his own soul : the more so, if looking from a wmdow, his own toes 
 ai'e untrodden, and his own coat-tails untorn. 
 
 And so, reader, let us breathe awhile in this green solitude— if, 
 indeed, it be a solitude. For who shall count the little eye-like 
 flowers peeping at us from the hedges— looking up from the sward 
 in our face, openly as loving innocence ? A soUtude ! What a
 
 26C ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 ■world of grasses do we tread upon, a world so crowded and 
 humming with insect citizens ! If only one turn of the peg we 
 would let down our pride — of all the heart-strings the bass and 
 grumbling one — we might compare many of these children, fathers, 
 and grandfathers of a day with the two-legged kings of creation, 
 the biped majesties of thi-eescore years and ten. We might watch 
 their little runnings to and from their hoards ; their painful 
 cUmbings to the very needle point of some tall blade of grass ; 
 watch them and snule, even as the angels, at their pleasant leisure 
 watch and smile at you, Grubbiugs, when you go to the Bank 
 and add to youi* sweet salvation there, the balance : smUe, as at 
 poor Superbus when, cUmbuig and climbing, he rose to great 
 Gold Stick, and kept it twenty years, — to angelic computation 
 just twenty thi-obbings of a fevered heart. Sm-ely, there is not 
 an insect that we might not couple with an acquaintance. Here, 
 in tliis little, trim sobriety, is our quaker friend, Placens ; and 
 here, in this butterfly, tipsy with its first-day's wings, is Polly, 
 foolLsh PoUy, who cannot consent to see the world, unless she sees 
 it in her finest clothes. And so, looking at a piece of turf, no 
 bigger than a lark's foot-stool, we may people it with fi'ienda and 
 world acquaintance. 
 
 Is this solitude ] And the blackbird, ^yith his notes of melted 
 honey, winds and whistles — no. Solitude 1 The jay, whose voice 
 is a continual dissent, grates — no. Solitude 1 And the household 
 rook swims upward in the ah", and with homeward caw, awakens 
 busy thoughts of life, of the day's cares and the day's necessities. 
 The earth has no place of sohtude. Not a rood of the wilderness 
 that is not thronged and eloquent with crowds and voices, com- 
 muning with the spirit of man ; endowed by such communion 
 with a knowledge, whose double fruit is clivinest hope and meekest 
 humility. 
 
 So once more to our story : once more to consider the doings of 
 men. Tliey are not to be thought of with less charity for this 
 gossip in a green lane. Nay, try it, reader, on your own accoimt. 
 Say that you have a small wi-ong at your heart ; say, that in 
 your bosom you nurse a pet injury like a pet snake. Well, bring 
 it here, away from the brick-aud-mortar world ; see the innocent 
 beauty spread around you ; the sunny heavens smiling protecting 
 love upon you ; listen to the harmonies breathing about you ; 
 and then say, is not this immortal injury of yours a wretched 
 thing, a moral fungus, of no more account than a mildewed toad- 
 stool ? Of course. You are abashed by omnipotent benevolence 
 mto charity : and you forgive the wrong you have received from 
 man, in your deep gi'atitude to God. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are natures hardly susceptible of such
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 267 
 
 influeuce. There are folks who would take their smallest wrono-s 
 with them iuto Paradise. Go where they will, they cany with 
 them a travelling-case of injuries. 
 
 And wi'ongs, natui'ally enough, bring us back to Ebenezer 
 Snipeton. It was his trade to lend money : nevertheless, he was 
 not a man who suffered business to entirely absorb his pleasure. 
 Hence, when he discovered that the patriot who, purely for the 
 sake of his country, was to snatch Liquorish from young St. James, 
 thought better of the rashness, refusing at the last moment to save 
 the nation, — he, Ebenezer, treated himself to a costly but deUcious 
 enjoyment. And he — it was thus he pondered — he could ajGford 
 it. He was a thrifty, saving man. He dallied not with common 
 temptations. He wasted no money upon luxurious housekeeping ; 
 and for his wife, no nun ever spent less with the milliner. He 
 took care of that. "Well, as the homely proverb goes, it is a poor 
 heart that never rejoices ; and therefore Ebenezer Snipeton, 
 temperate, self-denjing in all other expensive enjoyments, was 
 resolved, for once in his days, to purchase for himself a handsome 
 piece of revenge. Determmed upon a treat, he cared not for its 
 cost. He would carry Capstick mto Parliament, though in a 
 chariot of solid gold. The young lord had dared to look upon 
 Clarissa. The creature, a part of himself j whose youth and 
 beauty, belonging to him, seemed to him a better assurance 
 against decay and death. He had bought her for his lawful wife, 
 and Holy Church had written the receipt. Nevertheless, that 
 smooth-faced smiling lord— he, too, to whom the good old husband 
 in the embracing philanthropy of a hundred per cent, had lent 
 ready gold, to be paid back, post-obit fashion, on a father's coffin- 
 lid— he, the young, handsome, profligate St. James, with no more 
 reverence for the sanctity of marriage than has a school-boy for 
 an orchard fence, he — it was plain — would carry off that mated 
 bird ! This one thought parched the old man as with a fever : 
 waking, it consumed him ; and he would start from his sleep, as 
 though— such was his worded fancy— an adder stu'red in his 
 night-cap. Therefore he would not stint himself in his feast of 
 vengeance. And therefore the freeholders were bought at theii- 
 own price,— and they proved how dearly they valued a vote,— 
 and Capstick, the muffin-maker, conquered the son of a mai'quis. 
 People averred that the new member owed his elevation to the 
 fiercest malice ; but he, misanthrope as he was, had now and 
 then his holiday notions of humanity, and did not to the fuU 
 believe the scandal. No : though he did not confess it to Imuself 
 it was plain that his neighbours— at least the more thoughtful of 
 them— believed in his powers of statesman.ship ; it was then- 
 wish, theii' one hope, that he should represent them ; and though
 
 268 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 lie himself cared not a straw for the honoiu-, it would have seemed 
 ungracious to refuse. And so he quitted the Tub, and Bright 
 Jem went hea^-ily along with him to London. " I shall be quite 
 the simple Roman in this business," said Capstick. " I feel myself 
 very like Cincinnatus taken from turnips." " Without goin' to 
 that Parliament, I only wish you was well among 'em agin," 
 interrupted Jem. "And therefore," continued the senator, "I 
 shall lodge humbly." And Capstick kept his word ; for he 
 hired a three-pair floor and an attic in Long Acre ; and having 
 purchased a framed and glazed copy of Magna Charta to hang 
 over the chimney-piece, he began very deeply to consider his 
 manifold duties as Member of Parliament. 
 
 "With varjdng feelings St. Giles had watched the progress of 
 the election. He had — it was his duty — shouted and bellowed for 
 St. James. Nevertheless, the final prosperity of the muffin-man, 
 his early benefactor, scarcely displeased him. Again, too, he 
 thought that, should the young lord refuse to employ him — for he 
 had still been baulked in his endeavour to see St. James — the new 
 member for Liquorish would need new attendants to illustrate his 
 dignity. And Bright Jem had, of course, revealed to Capstick 
 all the transport's story ; for the felon had made a clean breast of 
 his mystei-y to Jem, on their way to Kingcui?, the schoolmaster. 
 And so, the election revel over, with a lightened heart St. Giles 
 set out for London. Should St. James fail him, he was sure of 
 Capstick. 
 
 If human miseiy demand human sjTnpathy, the condition of 
 Tom Blast is not to be despised. It is our trust that the reader 
 followed him when, oppressed by the weight of gold, he tripped 
 and staggered from the Olive Branch, and gasped and sweated as 
 he reached the field, whereia he solaced his fatigue with the secret 
 thought of future fortune bringing future reformation. It was 
 with this strengthening impulse that he flung the iron box, gold- 
 crammed, into the middle of a pond. There it lay, like one of 
 Solomon's brazen kettles in the sea, containing a tremendous genius 
 — an all-potent magician, when once released to work among men. 
 And Tom would go to London, and in a few days, when Liquorish 
 had subsided from its patriotic intoxication to its old sobriety, he 
 would return with some trusty fellow-labourer in the world's hard 
 ways, and angle for the box. Unliappy, fated Blast ! He had 
 flung his gold-fish mto Doctor Gilead's pond. He had emiched 
 the rector's waters with uncounted guineas. Next, of course, to 
 " the fishpools in Heshbon," the Doctor loved that pond, for it 
 contained cai-p of astonishing size and intelligence. Often would 
 the Doctor seek the waters, and whilst feeding their tenants— 
 tenaaits-at-will— deUght himself with their docility and dimensions.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 269 
 
 It was pretty, now to contemplate them in tlie pond, and now to 
 fancy them in the dish. The Doctor knew the vahie, the pleasure 
 of exercismg the imagination ; and thus made his carp equally 
 iniuistrant to his immortal and his abdominal powers. "Well the 
 pond was to be di-agged for the election dinner, and the net 
 becoming entangled with the box — but the Doctor has already 
 revealed the happy accident. Tom Blast felt himself a blighted 
 man. It was always his way. Any other thief would have hid- 
 den the goods in any other pond : but somehow or the other, the 
 clergy had always been his misfortune. It was no use to struggle 
 with fate : he was doomed to bad luck. And when, too, he had 
 made up his mind to such a quiet, comfortable life ; when he had 
 resolved upon respectability and an honest course ; he felt his 
 heart softened — it was too bad. Notliing was left for him but to 
 return to the thief's wide home, London. He, poor fellow ! could 
 have subdued his desires to live even at Liquorish ; for tobacco 
 and gin were there ; but, he knew it, in such a place he must 
 starve. With the loss of the box came a quickened recollection 
 of the loss of Jingo. Wliere could the child have wandered ? 
 Blast had learned that Tangle had been despoiled of his purse on 
 the night of the greater robbery. Now, though the paternal heart 
 was pleased to believe that such theft was the work of the boy, 
 the father was nevertheless saddened at the child's disobedience. 
 If it was the boy's duty to rob, it was no less his duty to bring the 
 -stolen goods to his affectionate parent. In prosperity the human 
 heart is less sensible of slight. Blast, whilst the believed possessor 
 of countless guineas, scarcely thought of his son ; but, stript of 
 his wealth, his thoughts — it was very natural — did turn to his 
 truant child and the purse the younglmg had stolen. 
 
 And now, reader, leave we the borough of Liquorish. Its 
 .street is silent, and save that certain of its dwellers have bought 
 new Sunday coats and Sunday gowns — save that here and there 
 in good man's house a new clock, with moralising tick to human 
 life, gives voice to silent time— save that on certain shelves new 
 painted crockery illustrates at once the vanity and fragility of 
 human hopes, no man would dream that a member of parlia- 
 ment had within a few hours been manufactured in that dull 
 abiding-place. 
 
 And now, reader, with one drop of ink, we are again in London. 
 Ha ! We have descended in St. James's Square. The morniiig 
 is very beautiful ; and there, at the Marquis's door, smiling m 
 the sun, is an old acquaintance, Peter Crossbone, apothecary; 
 the learned, disappointed man ; for Crossbone had looked upon 
 the escape of St. James from Dovesnest as an especial misfortune. 
 All 1,;= v.T-Afp«« inn.nl dfl.vs be had veamed for what he called 
 
 All his professional days he had yearned
 
 270 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 distintniished practice. We doubt whether he would not have 
 thought the Tower lions, being crown property, mo.st important 
 patients. For some time, he had pondered on the policy of 
 visitulo- young St. James, the wounded phoenix that had flown 
 from his hands. His will was good ; all he wanted was a decent 
 excuse for the intrusion ; and at length fortune blessed him. 
 He felt certain of the young lord's condescending notice, if he, the 
 village apothecary, could show himself of service to him. The 
 mai-quis's father was much persecuted by that luxurious scorpion, 
 the gout, that epicurean feeder on the best fed. Now Crossbone 
 had, in his own opinion, a specific cure for the torment ; but he 
 much doubted whether science would be his best recommendation 
 to the yoimg heir. No : he wanted faith in such an intercessor. 
 And thus, with his brain in a pitch-black fog, he meditated, and 
 saw no way. And now is he surrounded by mist, and now is he 
 in a blaze of light. And what has broken tlirough the gloom, 
 and dawned a sudden day ? That luminous concentration, that 
 world of eloquent light — for how it talks ! — a woman's eye. 
 
 Suddenly Crossbone remembered a certain look of Clarissa. 
 And that look was instantly a light to him that made all clear. 
 That look showed the jealousy of the husband ; the passion of the 
 wife. Snipeton was a tyrant, and Clarissa a victim. And then 
 compassion entered the heart of Crossbone, and did a little soften 
 it. Yes ; it would be a humane deed to assist the poor wife, and 
 at the same time so dehcious to delight his lordship. And then 
 he — Crossbone knew it, — he himself was so fit for the gay world. 
 He was born, he would say, for the stones of London, and there- 
 fore hated the clay of the country. 
 
 Eeader, as you turned the present leaf, Crossbone knocked at 
 the door, and stood with an uneasy smile upon his face, awaiting 
 the porter, who, with a fine, critical ear for knocks, knew it could 
 be nobody, and treated the nobody accordingly; that is, made 
 the nobody wait. In due season, Crossbone and the porter stood 
 face to face. "Is Lord St. James within?" And Crossbone 
 tried to look the easy, town man. It would not do. Had he 
 been a haystack, the porter would as readily have known the 
 country growth. 
 
 " Lordship within ? " grunted the porter. " Don't know." 
 ^ But Mr. Crossbone knew better. It was his boast ; he knew 
 life ; and therefore always paved its little shabby passages with 
 silver: other passages require gold, and only for that reason 
 are not thought so shabby. True, therefore, to his principles, 
 Mr. Crossbone sneaked a card and a dollar into the porter's hand. 
 
 " Ralph, take this card to his lordship. Good deal bothered, 
 all of us, just now," added the porter.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 271 
 
 " Good deal," corroborated Ealph, the sou of Gum, and lookino- 
 up and down at the apothecary, he went his way. Quick was his 
 return ; and with respectful voice he begged the gentleman to 
 follow him. 
 
 " We have met before, Mi-. Crossbone," said St. James, and a. 
 shadow crossed his face. " I well remember." 
 
 " No doubt, my lord. It was my happiness to employ my poor 
 skill in a case of great danger. Need I say, how much I am 
 rewarded by your lordship's present health ? " 
 
 " I have been worse beaten since then," said the youno- 
 lord, and he bit his lip. He then with a gay air continued : 
 " Mr, Snipeton is, I beheve, yoiu- patient ? " 
 
 " Bless your heart, my lord, — that is, I beg your pardon," — 
 for Crossbone felt the familiarity of the benison — " Mr. Snipeton 
 is no man's patient. King Charles of Charing Cross — saving his 
 majesty's presence — has just as much need of the faculty. When 
 people, my lord, have no feelings they have little sickness : that 's 
 a discoveiy I 've made, my lord, and old Snipeton bears it out. 
 Now his wife — ha ! that 's a flower." 
 
 "Tender and beautiful," cried St. James, with animation. 
 " And her health. Mi". Crossbone 1 " 
 
 " Delicate, my lord ; delicate as a bird of paradise. I 've often 
 said it, she wasn't made for this world ; it 's too coarse and dirty. 
 However, she '11 not be long out of her proper place. No : she 's 
 dying fast." 
 
 " Dying ! " exclaimed St. James. " Dying ! Impossible ! Dying 
 —with what ? " 
 
 " A more common malady than 's thought of, my lord," answered 
 Crossbone. He then advanced a step, and projecting the third 
 finger of the left hand, with knowing look observed — " Eing- 
 worm, my lord." 
 
 " Ha ! " cried St. James, airily. " Emg-wonn ! Is that indeed 
 so fatal ? " 
 
 " When, my lord, it fixes on the marriage finger of the young 
 and beautiful wife of an old and ugly miser, it 's mortal, my lord 
 —mortal, it does so afiect, so ossify the heart. I 've seen many 
 cases," added Crossbone emphatically, resolved to make the most 
 of certainly a very peculiar practice. 
 
 " And there is no remedy ? " asked St. James, as he placed his 
 palms together and looked keenly in the apothecary's face. 
 
 " Why, I 've known the worm removed with gi-eat success : 
 that is," said the apothecary, returning the look,^ "when the 
 patient has had every confidence in the practitioner." 
 
 "Mr. Crossbone," cried St. James, "you are a man of the 
 world ? "
 
 •j72 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " My lord," answered the apothecary, with a thanksgi\dng bow, 
 '■' I am." 
 
 Now, when a man pays a man this praise, it happens, say sis 
 times out of nine, that the comphmeut really means this much : 
 "You are a man of the world ; that is, you are a shrewd fellow, 
 ■who know all the by-ways and turnings of life : who know that 
 what is called a wrong, a shabbiuess, in the pulpit or in the dming- 
 room (before comisanj'), is nevertheless not a wrong, not a shabbi- 
 ness when to be imdertaken for a man's esj^ecial interest. They 
 are matters to be much abused, until required : to shake the head 
 and make mouths at, until deemed indispensable to our health to 
 swallow." To praise a man for knowing the world, is often to 
 commend him only for his knowledge of its dirty lanes and crooked 
 alleys. Any fool knows the broad paths — the squares of life. 
 
 And Mr. Cro.ssbone — sagacious person ! — took the lord's com- 
 pliment in its mtended sense. He already felt that he was about 
 to be entrusted with a secret, a mission, that might test the lofty 
 knowledge for which he was extolled. Therefore, to strengthen 
 his lordship's confidence, the apothecary added, " I am, my lord, 
 a man of the world. There are two golden rules of life ; I have 
 ever studied them." 
 
 " And these are 1 " — asked St. James, drawing him on. 
 
 "These are, to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. 
 Your lordship may command me." 
 
 '■'Mr. Crossbone" — and St. James, motioning the ajjotheeary to 
 a chair, seated himself for serious consultation — " Mr. Crossbone, 
 this Snipeton has deeply injured me." 
 
 " I believe him capable of anything, my lord. Soiry am I to 
 say it," said Crossbone, bhthely. 
 
 " He has wounded the dignity of my familj-. He has wrested 
 from us the borough of Liquorish" — Crossbone looked wondrous 
 disgust at the enormity ;— " a borough that has been ours, aye, 
 since the Conquest." 
 
 " No doubt," cried Crossbone. " He might as well have stolen 
 the family plate." 
 
 " Just so. Now, INIr. Crossbone, I do not pretend to be a whit 
 better than the ordinary run of my fellow-creatures. I must 
 therefore confess 'twould give me some pleasure to be revenged 
 of this money-seller." 
 
 "Situated as you are, my lord ; wounded as you must be in a 
 most patriotic part, I do not perceive how your lordship can, as a 
 nobleman and a gentleman, do less than take revenge. It is a 
 duty you owe your station— a duty due to society, for whose 
 better example noblemen were made. Eevenge, my lord ! " cried 
 Crossbone, with a look of devotion.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 273 
 
 " The sweeter still the better," said St. Jcames. 
 
 " Eight, my loi-d ; very right. Eeveuge is a magniheent 
 passiou, and not to be meddled with in the spirit of a chandler. 
 No trumpery ha'porths of it, — 'twould be imworthy of a 
 nobleman." 
 
 " Mr. Crossbone, you are a man of great intelligence. A man 
 who ought not to vegetate in the country with dandelion and 
 pimpernel. No, sir : you must be fixed in London. A genius 
 like yours, Mr. Crossbone, is cast away upon bumj^kins. We 
 shall yet see you with a gold cane, in your own carriage, 
 Mr. Crossbone." 
 
 And with these words, Lord St. James gently pressed the tips 
 of Crossbone's fingers. The apothecary was wholly subdued by 
 the condescension of his lordship. He sat in a golden cloud, 
 smiling, and looking bashfully grateful. And then liis eyes 
 trembled with emotion, and he felt that he should very much Hke 
 to acknowledge upon his knees the honour unworthily confeiTed 
 upon him. It would have much comforted him to kneel ; never- 
 theless, with heroic self-denial he kept his seat ; and at lengtli in 
 a faint voice said — " It isn't for me, your lordship, to speak uf my 
 poor merits ; your lordship knows best. But this I must say, 
 my lord ; I do think I have looked after the weeds of the world 
 qui-te long enough. I o-\vn, it is now my ambition to cultivate the 
 lilies." 
 
 " I understand, Mr. Crossbone ! Well, I don't know that even 
 the court may not be open to you." 
 
 The vision was too much for the apothecary. He sighed, as 
 though suddeiJy oppressed by a burthen of delight. In fancy, 
 he already had his fingers on a royal pulse, whose harmonious 
 throbbings communicating Avith his own ennobled anatomy, 
 sweetly troubled his beating heart. However, with the will of a 
 strong man he put down the emotion, and returned to his lord- 
 shijD's business. 
 
 " You spoke of revenge, my lord 1 Upon that wealthy wretch, 
 Snipeton 'i May I ask what sort of revenge your lordship desires 
 to take 1 " 
 
 "Faith! Mr. Crossbone, my revenge is like Shylock's.^ I'd 
 take it," said the young gentleman, with a smile of significajit 
 bitterness — " I 'd take it ' nearest his heart.' " 
 
 " Yes, I understand ; perfectly, my lord," said Crossbone with 
 new gaiety. " The flesh of his flesh, eh ? His ^vife ? " 
 
 " His wife ! " cried St. James passionately. 
 
 " Excellent, my lord ! Excellent ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! " And the 
 apothecary could not resist the spirit of laughter that tickled 
 him ; it was so droll to imagine a man— especially an old man—
 
 274 ST. GILES AND ST. .JAMES. 
 
 despoiled of his wife. "She would be sweet revenge," cried 
 Crossbone, rubbing his hands with an implied relish. 
 
 " And practicable, eh 1 " cried St. James. Crossbone smiled 
 again, and inibbed liis hands with renewed pleasure, nodding the 
 while. " He has carried her from Dovesnest ; biiried her some- 
 where ; for this much 1 know — she is not at his house in the 
 city." 
 
 " I know all, my lord ; all. I have received a letter — here it 
 is," — and Crossbone gave the missive to St. James : " you see, he 
 ■ftTites me that she is ill — very ill — and as he has great faith in 
 my knowledge — for there is no man without some good point, let's 
 hope that — in my knowledge of her constitution, he desires me to 
 come and see her. I 've arrived this very morning in London. I 
 wa.s going dii'ect to him ; but — surely there 's providence in it, 
 my lord — but something told me to come and see you first." 
 
 " And I am deUghted," said St. James, " that you gave ear to 
 the good genius. You '11 assist me 1 " 
 
 " My lord," said Crossbone solemnly, " I have, I hope, a proper 
 respect for the rights of bu'th and the institutions of my country. 
 And I have always, my lord, considered politics as nothing more 
 than enlarged morals." 
 
 "Thank you for the apothegm," said the flattering St. James. 
 " May I use it in parliament when — I get there 1 " 
 
 " Oh, my lord ! " simpered Crossbone, and continued. " En- 
 larged morals. Now, this man Snipeton, in opposing your lordship 
 for Liquorish, ui bringing in a muffin-maker over your noble head 
 — all the town is ringing with it — has, I conceive, violated whole- 
 sale morality, and should be punished accordingly. But how 
 punished 1 You can't touch him through his money. No : 'tis 
 his coat of mad. He 's what I caU a golden crocodile, my lord, 
 \\'ith but one tender place — and that 's his wife. Then strike 
 hiin there, and you punish him for his presumption, and revenge 
 the disgrace he has put upon your family." 
 
 " Exactly," said St. James, a Uttle impatient of the apothecary's 
 morala. " But, my good sir, do you know where the lady is 1 " 
 
 " No. But I shall order her wherever may be most convenient. 
 Would the air of Bath suit you 1 " asked the apothecary with a 
 leer. 
 
 " Excellently— nothing could be better," said St. James. 
 
 " Bath be it, then. And she must go alone ; that is, without 
 that Mj-s. Wilton. I don't like that woman. There 's a cold 
 watchfulness about her that we can do without, my lord." 
 
 " But how separate them ? " asked St. James. 
 
 "Leave that to me. Well handled, nothing cuts like a shaip 
 lie ; it goes at once through heartstrings." St. James passed his
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 hand across Ms face : lie felt his blood had mouuted there. " It 
 has often separated flesh of flesh and bone of bone, and may easily 
 part mistress and servant. Talking of servants, have you no 
 trusty it llow to go between us, my lord 1 " 
 
 Even as the apothecary spoke EaljDh brought in a card ; the 
 card given by St. James to St. Giles. The returned transport 
 awaited in the hall the command of his patron. 
 
 " Nothing could be more fortunate," cried St. James. " Ralph, 
 tell the man who brings this, to attend this gentleman and take 
 his orders. To-morrow I will see him myself." 
 
 "And to-morrow, my lord," said the apothecary, with new 
 courage holding forth his hand, " to-morrow you shall hear from 
 me." 
 
 " To-morrow," said St. James. 
 
 " To-morrow ; heaven be with your lordship ; " and with this 
 hope, the apothecary departed. 
 
 St. James hastily paced the room. The walls were hung with 
 mirrors. 
 
 The young gentleman — was it a habit ? — still walked with his 
 hand to his face. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 When Snipeton turned his horse's head from Dovesnest — for 
 the which incident we must send back the reader some dozen 
 chapters — he resolved, as he rode, upon closiug his accounts with 
 the world, that freed from the cares of money, he might cheiish 
 and protect his youthful, blooming partner. Ai-rived in London, 
 seated at his books in St. Maiy Axe, the resolution was strength- 
 ened by the contemplation of his balance against men. He had 
 more than enough, and would enjoy life in good earnest. Why 
 should he toil like a slave for gold-dust, and never know the 
 blessings of the boon 1 No : he would close liis accounts, and 
 open wide his heart. And Snipeton was sincere in this his high 
 resolve. For a whole night, wakiag and dreaming, he was fixed 
 in it ; and the next morning tlie uxorious apostate fell back to his 
 first creed of money-bags. Fortune is a woma^., and therefore 
 where she blindly loves— (and what Bottoms and Calibans she 
 does embrace and fondle !)— is not to be put aside by slight or 
 ill-usage. All his life had Fortune doted upon Snipeton, hugging 
 him the closer as she carried him up— no infimt ape more tenderly 
 clutched in ticklish places,— and he should not leave her. And 
 
 T 2
 
 276 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 to this eud did Fortune bribe back lier renegade with a lumping 
 bargain. A young gentleman — a very young gentleman — desired 
 for so much ready metal, to put his land upon parchmeat, and 
 that young gentleman did Fortune take by the hand, and, smiling 
 ruin, lead him to St. Mary Axe. In few minutes was Suipeton 
 wooed and won again ; for, to say the truth, his weakness was a 
 mortwaffe. The written parchment, like charmed characters, 
 conjui-ed him ; put imagination into that dry husk of a man. He 
 would look upon the deed as upon a land of promise. He would 
 see in the smallest pen-marks giant oaks, with the might of 
 navies waiting in them ; and from the sheepskin woidd feel the 
 nimble air of Arcady. There it lay, a beautiful bit of God's 
 earth — a sweet morsel of creation — conjured and conveyed into a, 
 few black syllables. 
 
 .^d so, Snipeton made his peace with his first wife Fortune, 
 and then bethought him of his second spouse, Clarissa. That he 
 might duly attend to both, he would remove his second mate 
 from Dovesnest. There were double reasons for the motion ; for 
 the haven of wedded bliss was known to the profligate St. James ; 
 who, unmindful of the sweetest obligation money at large usance 
 ought to confer upon the human heart, dared to accost his 
 creditor's wife. Let Dovesnest henceforth be a place for owls 
 and foxes, Clai'issa should bring happiness within an hour's ride 
 of St. Mary Axe. The thought was so good, sent such large 
 content to old Snipeton's heart, that with no delay it was carried 
 out, and ere she well had time to weep a farewell to her favourite 
 roses, Mrs. Snipeton left Dovesnest to the spiders. 
 
 Was it a wise change, this 1 Had Snipeton healthy eyes ; or 
 tUd avarice, that jaundice of the soul, so blear his vision, that he 
 saw not in the thin, discoloured features of the wife of his bosom, 
 aught to tmtcli a husband's heart 1 She never complained. 
 Besides, once or tmce he had questioned her ; and she was not 
 ill. No, well, quite well ; and — this too he had asked — very 
 happy. Nevertheless, it would the better satisfy him if Crossbono 
 could see her. Crossbone knew her constitution, and — and so 
 that meek and knowing man was summoned to London. 
 
 In a green, sequestered nook, half-way between Hamjistead 
 and Kilburn, embowered m the middle of a garden, was a small 
 cottage ; so hidden, that oft the traveller passed, unheeding it. 
 In this cottage -vas Clarissa. To this retreat would her husband 
 amble every day from St. Mary Axe, quitting his money temple 
 for the treasure of his fireside, his pale and placid wife ; and 
 resolved to think himself blessed at both places. 
 
 " Mr. Snipeton is late to-day," said Mrs. Wilton, tlie mother 
 housekeeper.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " He will come," replied Clarissa,, in the tone of one resi'^ned to 
 a daily care. " He will come, mother." 
 
 Mrs. Wilton looked with appealing tenderness in her daughter's 
 face ; and in a low, calm voice, controlling her heart as she spoke, 
 she said — "This must not be : do not repeat that word — not 
 even when we are alone. Some day it may betray me to your 
 husband, and then" — 
 
 " What then 1 " asked Clarissa. 
 
 " We should be parted ; for ever — for ever," cried the woman, 
 and with the thought she burst into tears. 
 
 " Not so. Nothing pai-ts us ; nothing but the kindliness of 
 death," said Clarissa. "And death is kind, at least" — 
 
 " At least, my child, the world with you is too young to think 
 it so." 
 
 " Old, old and faded," said Clarissa. " The spirit of youth is 
 departed. I look at all things with dim and weary eyes." 
 
 " And yet, my child, there is a sanctity in siaflering, when 
 strongly, meekly borne. Our duty, though set about by thorns, 
 may still be made a staff, supporting even while it tortures. Cast 
 it away, and like the prophet's wand, it changes to a snake. God 
 and my own heart know, I speak no idle thoughts, I speak a 
 bitter truth, bitterly acknowledged." 
 
 " And duty shall support me on this weary pilgrimage," said 
 Clarissa. Then taking her mother's hand, and feebly smiling, she 
 added, " Surely, it can be no sin to wish such travel short : or if 
 it be, I still must wish — I cannot helj) it." 
 
 " Time, time, my child, is the sure conciliator. You will li^'e 
 to wonder at and bless his goodness." 
 
 " You say so — it may be," said Clarissa, with a lightened look, 
 " at least, I '11 hope it." And then both smiled gaily— wanly ; for 
 both felt the deceit they strove to act but could not carry through. 
 Words, words of comforting, of hoi^e were uttered, but they fell 
 coldly, hollowly ; for the spirit of truth was not in them. They 
 were tilings of the tongue, passionless, mechanical ; the voice 
 without the soul. At this moment, old Dorothy Vale entered 
 the room; and she was welcome: even though she announced 
 the coming of the master of the house. 
 
 "Master's coming up the garden," said Dorothy, each hand 
 rubbing an arm crossed before her. " Somebody 's wdth him." 
 
 " A stranger here ! Who can it be ? " cried Clarissa. 
 
 " Don't say he 's a stranger ; don't say he isn't ; can only see a 
 somebody," answered Dorothy, in whom no show whatever of 
 this world of shows could have awakened a momentary curiosity. 
 Her inheritance, as one of Eve's daughters, was this beautiful 
 earth, sky-roofed ; yet was it no more to her than a huge deal
 
 278 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 box, pierced with air-holes. A place to eat, drink, sleep, and 
 hang up her bonnet in. 
 
 Another miaute, and Snipeton entered the room. The husband 
 had returned to the haven of his hopes, and was resolved that the 
 •world — then comprised in the single person of Peter Crossbone, 
 who followed close at the heels of his host — should bear witness 
 to his exceeding hapjiiness ; to the robust delight that, as he 
 crossed his thi'eshold, instantly possessed him : for with an anxious 
 look of joy, he strode up to his wife, and suddenly taking her 
 cheeks between both his hands, pursed out her hps, and then 
 vigorously kissed them. He was so happy, he could not, would 
 not feel his wife shrink at his touch — could not, would not see her 
 white face flush as with sudden resentment, and then subside into 
 pale endurance. No : the husband was resolved upon displaying 
 to the world his exceeding happiness, and would not be thwarted 
 in his show of bhss, by trifles. He merely said, still dallying with 
 his felicity — " Never mind Crossbone ; he 's nobody ; a family man 
 — has been married, and that 's all the same." Now, Crossbone, 
 in his wayward heart, felt tempted to dispute such position ; it 
 was not aU the same — to him. Nevertheless, he would not be 
 captious. It was a poor, an ignorant opinion, and therefore his 
 host and customer should have the free enjoyment of it. 
 
 "Mrs. Snipeton," said the Apothecary, "though I do not feel 
 it professional to hope that anybody is well, nevertheless in your 
 case, I do hope that— well, well, I see ; a little pale, but never 
 fear it— we '11 bring the roses out again. In a little whUe, and 
 you '11 bloom like a bow-pot." 
 
 " To be sure she will," said Snipeton. « I thought of buying 
 her a pretty little horse ; just a quiet thing"— 
 
 " Nothing could be better— perhaps. As I often say, horse- 
 flesh is the thing for weak stomachs. I may say as much to you 
 as a friend, Mr. Snipeton ; folks often go to the doctor's, when 
 they should go to the stable. Yes, yes— horse exercise and 
 change of air" — 
 
 " We '11 talk of it after diimer," said Snipeton suddenly wincing ; 
 for his heart could not endure the thought of separation. Busi- 
 ness and love were delightful when united ; they gave a zest to 
 each other : but certainly— at least in the case of Snipeton— were 
 not to be tasted alone. Granted that he sat in a golden shower 
 m St Mary Axe ; how should he enjoy the luck falUng du-ect 
 trom heaven upon him, if his wife— that flower of his existence- 
 was transplanted to a distant soil ? Would not certain bees and 
 butterflies hum and flutter round that human blossom ? Agam, 
 It he himself tended the pretty patient, would not ruin— taking 
 certam advantage of the master's absence— post itself at his door-
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 279 
 
 step ? Doating Inisljand — devoted man of money ! His heart- 
 strings tore him one way — his piu'se-strings another. " We '11 
 talk of it after dinnei-," he repeated. " And Master Crossbone, 
 we '11 have a bottle of excellent wine." In some matters Crossbone 
 was the most compliant of men : and wine was one that, offered 
 cost-free, never fomid him implacable. And the truth is, Snipeton 
 knowing this, hoped that the wine might contain arguments 
 potent over the doctor's opinions. After one bottle, nay two, it 
 was not impossible that Crossbone might reconsider his judgment. 
 The air of Hampstead might be thought the best of aii-s for 
 Clarissa. Wine does wonders ! 
 
 The dinner was served. Crossbone was eloquent. " After your 
 labours in town, Mr. Snipeton, you must find it particularly 
 delightful, particularly so, to come home to Mrs. Snipeton," — 
 the husband smiled at his wife — " and dine off youi" owti greens. 
 One's own vegetables is what I consider the pni-est and highest 
 enjojTnent of the country. Of course, too, you keep pigs ? " 
 
 Sniijeton had prepared himself for a compliment on his con- 
 nubial happiness ; and therefore suffered a wrenching of the spirit 
 when called upon to speak to his cabbages. With a strong will 
 he waived the tender subject ; and merely answered, " We do not 
 keep pigs." 
 
 " That 's a pity : but all in good time. For it 's hardly possible 
 to imagine a prettier place for pigs. Nothing like growicg one's 
 own bacon. But then I always like dumb things about me. 
 And, Mr. Snipeton, after youi- work in town, you can't think how 
 'twould unbend your mind — how you might repose yourself, as I 
 may say, on a few pigs. It 's beautiful to watch 'em day by day ; 
 to see 'em growing and unfolding their fat hke lilies ; to make 
 'em your acquaintance as it were, from the time they come into 
 the world to the time they're hung up in your kitchen. In this 
 way you seem to eat 'em a himdred times over. However, pigs 
 are matters that I must not trust myself to talk about." 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Snipeton, with a porker-like grunt ? " Why 
 not ? " 
 
 '■' Dear Mrs. Crossbone ! Well, she tms a woman ! " (It was, 
 in truth, Crossbone's primest consolation to know that she was a 
 woman.) " Our taste in everything was just alike. In eveiy- 
 thing." 
 
 " Pigs included ? " asked Snipeton, \sdth something like a sneer. 
 
 But Crossbone was too much stirred by dearest memories to 
 mark it. He merely answered, " Pigs included." After a pause. 
 " However, I must renounce the sweeter pleasures of the country. 
 Fate calls me to London." 
 
 " It delio-hts me to hear it, Mr, Crossbone ; for we shidl then
 
 280 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 1)3 SO near to one another," cried Snipeton. " Cbarming news 
 tliis, isn't it, Claiy ? " And the old husband chucked his wife's 
 i liiu, and would smile in her pale, unsmiling face. 
 
 " Well, as an old friend, ]Mr. Snipeton, I may jDerhaps make 
 no difference with you. Otherwise, my practice promises to be 
 confined to royalty. To royalty, Mr. Snipeton. Yes ; I was sure 
 of it, though I never condescended to name my hopes — but I 
 knew that I should not be lost all my life among the weeds of the 
 v/orld. Eeputation, Mr. Snipeton, may be buried, like a potato ; 
 but, sir, Hke a potato " — and Crossbone, tickled by the felicity of 
 the simile, was rather loud in its utterance — " like a potato, it 
 will shoot and show itself." 
 
 " And yoiirs has come up, eh ? Well, I 'm very glad to hear 
 it," said Snipeton, honestly, " because you '11 be in London. Your 
 knowledge of Clarissa's constitution is a great comfort to me." 
 
 " I have studied it, Mi-. Snipeton ; studied it as a botanist 
 would study some strange and beautiful flower. It is a very 
 pecuhar constitution — very peculiar." The dinner being over, 
 Clarissa rose. 
 
 " You '11 not leave us yet, love ? " cried Snipeton, taking his 
 wife's hand, and ti-yiug to look into her eyes that — wayward eyes ! 
 — would not meet the old man's devouring stare. 
 
 " Pray excuse me," said Claiissa, v.'ith a politeness keen enough 
 to cut a husband's heart-strings. " I have some ordv. re — direc- 
 tions — for Mrs. Wilton. You must excuse me." 
 
 " That 's a treasure, Crossbone ! " exclaimed Snipeton with a 
 laborious burst of affection, as Clarissa left the room. "A 
 diamond of a woman ! A treasure for an emperor ! " 
 
 "Don't — don't" — cried Crossbone, hurriedly emptying his 
 glass. 
 
 " I said a treasure ! " repeated the impassioned husband, striking 
 the table. Crossbone shook his head. " What," cried Snipeton, 
 knitting his brow, " you question it ? Before me — her husband ? " 
 
 "Pray understand me, dear sir," said Crossbone, tranquilly 
 filling his glass. " JMi's. Snipeton is a treasure. She 'd have been 
 a jewel — a pearl of a woman, sir, iu the crown of King Solomon : 
 and that 's the worst of it." 
 
 " The worst of it ! " echoed Snipeton. 
 
 " Tn this world, my good friend, if a man knew what he was 
 about, he 'd set his heart upon nothing." The apothecary drained 
 his glass. "Looking, sir, as a moralist and a philosopher, at 
 what tho worth of this world at the best is made of,— what is it, 
 but a large soap and water bubble blown by fate ? It shines a 
 miimte "—here the moralist and philosopher raised his wine to 
 his eye, contemplating its ruby brightness—" and where is it ? "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 281 
 
 Saying this, Crossbone s%\^alIo\ved the wine : a fine practical com- 
 ment on his veiy fine philosophy. " I ask where is it 1 " 
 
 " Very true," observed Snipetou, taking truth as coolly as 
 though used to it. " Very true ; nevertheless " — 
 
 "Mr. Snipeton, my good Mend," cried Crossbone — ^his hand 
 lovingly round the neck of the decanter — " Mr. Snipeton, he is the 
 wdsest man who in this world loves nothing. It 's much the safest. 
 Did you ever hear of the river Styx ? " 
 
 " I can't say," growled Snipeton. " Is it salt or fresh 1 " 
 
 " One dip in it makes a man invulnerable to all things ; stones, 
 arrows, bludgeons, swords, bullets, cannon-bulls." 
 
 " 'Twould save a good deal in regimentals if the soldiers might 
 bathe there," said Snipeton, grinnmg grimly. 
 
 " So much for Styx upon the outward man," cried Crossbone : 
 '•' but I have often thought 'twould be a capital thing, if people 
 could take it inwardly ; if they could drmk Styx." 
 
 " Like the Bath waters," suggested Snipeton. 
 
 " Exactly so. A course or two, and the interior of a man would 
 then be insensible of foolish weakness," said Crossbone. 
 
 " You 'd never get the women to drink it," remarked Snij^eton, 
 very gi-avely. 
 
 " 'Twould not be necessaiy, if man, the nobler animal — for as 
 Mrs. Snipeton is not here, we can talk like phdosojahers"— Snipeton 
 grunted — " if man, the nobler animal, for we know he is, though 
 it would not be right perhaps to say as much before the petticoats, 
 — if man could make his own heart in\'Tihierable, why, as for 
 woman, she might be as weak and as foohsh as she pleased ; 
 which, you must allow, is granting her much, Mr. Snipeton." 
 And here the apothecary would have laughed very joAaally, but 
 his host looked grave, sad. 
 
 "It seems, Mr. Crossbone, you are no great friend to the 
 women," said Snipeton. "Yet you must allow, v.e owe them 
 much." 
 
 " Humph ! " cried Crossbone in a prolonged note. He then 
 hastily filled his glass : as hastily emptied it. 
 
 "You seem to dispute the debt?" said Snipeton, gallantly 
 returning to the charge. 
 
 " Look here, Mr. Snipeton," cried Crossbone, with the air of a 
 man determined for once to clear his heart of something that has 
 long lain WTiggling there—" look here. The great charm of a 
 bottle of wine after dinner between two friends is this : it enables 
 them to talk like philosophers ; and so that tlie servants don't 
 hear, philosophy with a glass of good fruity port— and youi-s is 
 capita], one tastes blood and fibre in it ;— pliilosophy is a very 
 pleasant sort of thing ; but like that chma shepherdess on the
 
 232 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 mantel-piece, it is mucli too fine and delicate for the outside world. 
 No, no ; it is only to be properly enjoyed in a parlour ; snug and 
 with the door shut." 
 
 " Very well. Perhaps it is. "We were talking of our debts to 
 woman. Go on," said Suipeton. 
 
 " Our debts to woman. Well, to begin ; in the first jjlace we 
 call her an angel ; have called her an angel for thousands of 
 years : and I take it — but mind, I speak as a philosopher — I take 
 it, that 's a flam that should count as a good set-off on our side. 
 Or I ask it, are men, the lords of the creation, to go on lying for 
 nothing ? " It was plain that this wicked unbelief of Crossbone 
 a little shocked his host, and therefore, as the bottle was neai-ly 
 out, the apothecary felt that he must regain some of his ground. 
 Whereupon he sought to give a jocular guise to his philosophy ; 
 to make it, for the nonce, assume the comic mask. " Ha ! ha ! 
 Look here : you must allow that woman ought, as much as in her 
 lies, to make this world quite a paradise for us, seeing that she 
 lost us the original garden." Snipeton just smQed. " Come, 
 come," cried the hilarious apothecary, " we talk as philosophers, 
 and when all 's said and done about what we owe to woman, you 
 must allow that we 've a swinging balance against her. Yes, yes ; 
 you can't deny this : there 's that little matter of the apple still 
 to be settled for." 
 
 '* 'Tis a debt of long standing," said Snipeton, with a short laugh. 
 
 " And therefore, as you know — nobody better " — urged Cross- 
 bone — "therefore it bears a heavy interest. So heavy, Mr. 
 Snipeton — by-the-bye, the bottle 's out — so heavy they can never 
 pay It. And so we mustn't be hard upon 'em, poor souls — no, we 
 mustn't be hard upon 'em ; but get what we can in small but 
 sweet instalments. I — for all I talk in this philosophic way — I 
 was never hard upon 'em — dear little things — never hard upon 
 'em in aU my life." 
 
 For a few minutes philosophy took breath, whilst wine, the 
 frequent nutriment of that divine plant, as cultivated by Cross- 
 bone, was renewed. At length the apothecary observed— "To 
 serious business. Mi-. Snipeton. Having had our little harmless 
 laugh at the sex, let us speak of one who is its sweetest flower, 
 and its brightest ornament. Need I name Mi-s. Suipeton 1 " 
 
 The old man sighed ; moved xmeasily in his chair ; and then 
 with an efi'oi't began. " Mr. Crossbone, my friend— I cannot tell 
 you — no words can tell you, how I love that woman." 
 
 "I can imagine the case— very virulent indeed," said the 
 apothecary. " Late in life it 's always so. Love with young men, 
 I mean with very young men, is nothing ; a slight fever. Now, 
 at mature time of life, it '.s little short of deadly typhus. Of coui-se.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 283 
 
 I speak of love before marriage ; that is, love "with all its fears 
 and anxieties ; for wedlock 's a good febrifuge." 
 
 '' I have struggled, fought with myself, to think — but you shall 
 tell me — yes, I will streng-then myself to hear the worst. Now, 
 man," — and Snipeton grasped the arms of his chair with an iron 
 hold, and his breast heaved as he loudly uttered — " now spejik it." 
 
 " Look jov. here, Mr. Snipeton. Do you think me a stock, or a 
 stone, that I could sit here quietly and comfortably drinking your 
 ■wine, if I couldn't give you hope — a little hope in return ? " 
 
 " A little hope ! " groaned the old man. 
 
 " A man in my position, Mr. Snipeton — with glorious circum- 
 stances, as I have observed, opening upon him — cannot be too 
 cautious. I should be sorry to compromise myself by desiring 
 you to be too confident. Nevertheless, she is young, Mr. Snipeton ; 
 and the spu-it of youth does sometimes puzzle us. In such spirit 
 then — strong as it is in her — I have the greatest faith." 
 
 " You have ! " exclaimed Snipeton, starting from his seat and 
 seizing Crossbone's hand. " Save her and — and you shall be rich ; 
 that is, you shall be well recompensed — veiy well. My good 
 friend, you know not the misery it costs me to seem happy in her 
 sight. I laugh and jest" — Crossbone looked doubtingly— "to 
 cheat her of her melancholy ; yet" — 
 
 " Yet she does not laugh and joke in return ?" observed Cross- 
 bone. " But she will — no doubt she will." 
 
 " And then, though I know her to be sick and suffering, she 
 never complains : but still assures me she is well — very well." 
 
 " Dear soul ! You ought to be a happy man — ^you ought, but 
 you won't. Can't you see that she won't confess to sickness 
 because — kind creature ! — she can't think of paining you 1 She 'd 
 smile and say 'twas nothing — I know she would, if she were 
 dying." 
 
 " For God's sake, speak not such a word," cried the old man, 
 turning pale. 
 
 " She must die some day," said Crossbone. " Though, to be 
 sure, according to the course of nature, that is, if I save her — of 
 which, indeed, to tell you truly, I have now no doubt — I will 
 stake my reputation present and to come upon the matter " — 
 
 " You give me Hfe, youth," exclaimed Snipeton," with sudden 
 happiness. 
 
 " But I was about to say that, if saved, the chances are you may 
 leave her yet young and blooming, behind you." The old man's 
 face darkened. It was a bitter thought that. Was there not 
 some place in the East, where, when a husband died, his wife, even 
 through the torture of fire, followed him ? This horrid thought- 
 how, poor man ! could he help it ? for reader, how know you what
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 thought you shall next think ? — this thought, we say, passed 
 through Snipeton's brain. But Clarissa was no Hindoo wife. 
 She might — as the prating doctor said — she might be left, yes, to 
 smile and be happy, and more, to award happiness to another on 
 this earth, when her doatiug, passionately doating husband should 
 have his limbs composed in the grave. Again ; he might live 
 these twenty years. And in twenty years that beautiful face 
 would lose its look of youth — those eyes would burn with sobered 
 light — that full scarlet lip be shrunk and faded. And then — ^j'es, 
 then he thought, he could resign her. In twenty years — perhaps 
 in twenty years. With this cold comfort, he ventured to reply to 
 the apothecary. 
 
 '•' Never mind my life, that's nothing. All I think of is Clarissa ; 
 and there is yet time — she is safe, you say V 
 
 '■ It 's very odd, very droll, that just now you should have 
 named Bath — the Bath waters, you know," smirked Crossbone. 
 
 '• Wherefore odd — how di'oU ? I do not understand you." And 
 yet he had caught the meaning. 
 
 " She must go to Bath ; she must drink the waters. Nothing 's 
 left but that," averred the apothecary, 
 
 '• I tell you, man, for these three months I caimot quit Loudon. 
 A world of money depends upon my stay." 
 
 " And why should you budge 1 You don't want your wife, do 
 you, at St. Mary Axe 1 She doesn't keep your books, eh 1 " 
 Snipeton frowned, and bit his lip, and made no answer. Then 
 Crossbone, his dignity strengthened by his host's wine, rose. 
 " Mr. Snipeton, I have studied this case, studied it, sir, not only 
 as a doctor, but as a friend. I have now, sir, done my duty ; I 
 leave you as a husband and— I was about to say as a father, but 
 that would be premature ; as a husband and a man to do yours. 
 All I say is this : if your wife does not immediately remove to 
 Bath," — Crossbone paused. 
 
 " Well," snarled Snipeton, defyingly, "and if she does not ?" 
 
 " In two months, sir— I give her two months— she '11 go to the 
 church-yard." 
 
 " And so she may— so she shall/'— exclaimed Snipeton, violently 
 striking the table — his face blackening with rage, his eyes lurid 
 with passion. "So she shall. An honest grave and my name 
 clear— I say, an honest grave, and a fair tombstone, with a fair 
 reiiutation for the dead. Anything but that accursed Bath. Why, 
 ^"''"— ''i'i"-l Sniijeton, dilathig with emotion, stalked towards the 
 apothecary—" what do you think me ? " 
 
 Now this question, in a somewhat dangerous manner tested 
 Crossljone's sincerity. In sooth, it is at best a perilous interroga- 
 tive, trying to the ingenuousness of a friend. Crossbone paused ;
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 285 
 
 not that he had not an answer at the veiy tip of his tongue : an 
 answer bubbling hot from that well of truth, his heart— and for 
 that reason, it was not the answer to be rendered. He therefore 
 looked duly astonished, and only asked — " Mr. Snipeton, what do 
 you mean ?" 
 
 " 1 tell you, man, I 'd rather see her dead ; a fair and honest 
 corpse, than send her to that pest-place," cried the husband. 
 
 '' Pest-place ! Eeally, Mr. Snipeton ! this is a little too much 
 to wij^e off the reputation of a city — the reputation of hundreds of 
 years too — in this manner. Eeputation, sir — that is, if it 's good 
 for anj'thing — doesn't come up like a toadstool ; no, sir, the real 
 thing 's of slow gro-n-th. Bath a pest-place ! Why, the very 
 fountain of health." 
 
 " The pool of vice — the very slough of what you call fashion. 
 And you think I 'd send my wife there for health ! And for what 
 health 1 Why, I '11 say she retirrned -with glowing lace and spark- 
 ling eyes. What then ? I should loathe her." 
 
 " Lord bless me ! " exclaimed Crossbone. 
 
 " Now, we are happy, very happy ; few wedded couples more 
 so : very happy " — and Snipeton gxound the words beneath all 
 the teeth he had, and looked furiously content. Crossbone stared 
 at the writhing image of comiubial love. 
 
 •' You certainly look haj^py — extraordinarily happy," — ibawled 
 the apothecary. 
 
 " And whilst we live, will keej) so. Therefore no Bath insects 
 — no May-flies, no Jmie-bugs." 
 
 " 'Tisn't the Bath season for 'em," put in the apothecary. 
 " They 'I'e all in London at this time." 
 
 " All 's one for that. I tell you what — here, Dorothy, another 
 bottle of wine — I tell you what, IMaster Crossbone, as you say 
 we '11 talk the matter over philosophically, I think that 's it ; and 
 therefore, no more words about Bath. Come, come, can there be 
 a finer aii- than this 1 " cried the husband, rubbing his hands, and 
 trying to laugh. 
 
 " My dear sir, the quality of the air is not the thuig— it 's the 
 change that 's the medicine. And then there 's the waters " — 
 
 " We have an excellent spring at Hampstead. Years ago I 'm 
 told the nobility used to come and drmk it." 
 
 " Then, sir, the waters hadn't been analysed. Since then 
 they 've been found out : only fit for cattle, sir, and the lower orders. 
 Never known now to agree -ndth a person of gentility of stomach — 
 that is, of true delicacy. And for the aii", it 's very good, certainly, 
 just for the common purposes of life ; but as I say, it 's not the 
 quality, it 's the change that 's the thing. There 's cases, sir, in 
 which I 'd send patients, ay, from Montpelier to the neighbourhood
 
 28G ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 of Fleet-ditch. The fact is, sir, there can't be at times a better 
 cliaiige than from tlie best to the worst. The kmgs, sir, get tired — ■ 
 heartily sick of good ah- if it 's always the same : just as the stomach 
 would get tired of the very best mutton, had it nothing but mutton 
 every day." 
 
 Suipeton was silent : pondering a refutation of this false philo- 
 sophy. Still he tugged at his brain for a happy rejoinder. He 
 felt — he was certain of it — that it would come when the apothe- 
 cary had gone away, but unhappily he wanted it for present use. 
 He felt himself hke a rich man with all his cash locked up. Now 
 wit, like money, bears an extra value when rung down imme- 
 diately it is wanted ; men pay severely who require credit. Thus, 
 though Snipeton knew he had somewhere in that very strong box, 
 his skull, a whole bank of arguments, yet because he could not at 
 the moment draw one, Crossbone — the way of the world — believed 
 there were absolutely no effects. Snipeton, however, got over a 
 difficulty as thousands before him — and thousands yet unborn will 
 jump an obstacle ; — he asked his opponent to take another 
 glass of ■wine. If Bacchus often lead men into quagmu'es deejj 
 as liis vats, let us yet do him this justice, he sometimes leads 
 them out. 
 
 " I believe you said something about horse exercise. Cross- 
 bone 1 Now with a horse — you don't drink " — a hospitable slander 
 this on the apothecary — " with a horse there 's change of air at 
 will, eh 1 " 
 
 " To be sure there is. And then there 's Highgate and Finchley, 
 and — well, that might do, perhaps," said Crossbone, 
 
 " i\jid in the evenings" — and Snipeton brightened at the 
 prospect — " we could ride together." 
 
 " Death, sir, — certaui death " — and Crossbone gave one of his 
 happiest shudders. " The night air is poison — absolute poison. 
 No, the time would be from — let me see — from eleven to three." 
 
 " Impossible ; quite impossible. Can't leave business — certain 
 ruin," cried Snipeton. 
 
 " Certain death, then," said Crossbone, and he slowly, solemnly 
 drained his glass. " Certain death," he repeated. 
 
 " Don't say that, Crossbone," cried Snipeton, softened. " Mrs. 
 Wilton — perhaps she rides, and then " — 
 
 " As for Mrs. Wilton, I trust you are under no particular obli- 
 gation to that person 1 " 
 
 " Obhgation," cried Snipeton ; as though the thought implied 
 an insult. "Why do you ask ? " 
 
 " Nothing but for your wife's health. The fact is, Mi-s. Wilton 
 alway.i seems melancholy, heavy ; with something on her mind. 
 Now, my dear su*, it is a truth in moral philosophy not sufficiently
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 287 
 
 well known and attended to, that dumps are catdiing." And 
 Crossbone looked the proud discoverer of the subtlety. 
 
 " Indeed — are they 1 Perhaps they may be. Well, there 's 
 a wench coming up from Kent — somewhere near Dovesnest. I Ve 
 been coaxed to consent to it. She may make a sort of merrier 
 companion." 
 
 '■' She may," said Crossbone ; " but what you want is an honest, 
 shai'p fellow — for honesty wathout sharpness in this world is like a 
 sword without edge or point ; very well for show, but of no real 
 use to the owner. 
 
 " Go on," cried Snipeton, bowing to the apothecary's apothegm. 
 
 " Now, I have the very man who '11 suit you. The miracle oi 
 a groom. Honest as a dog, and sharp as a iDorcupine." 
 
 " Humph ! " cried Snipeton, mai'velling at the human wonder. 
 
 " Your servant, Mr. Crossbone " — said Dorothy Vale, opening 
 the door — " has called as you desired." 
 
 " Tell him to come in," cried Crossbone : who then said to 
 Snipeton — " At least you can see the fellow." And close upon 
 these words, St. Giles stood in the room. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVin. 
 
 It may be remembered that Snipeton and St. Giles had met 
 before. And certainly St. Giles had not forgotten the event : 
 his somewhat anxious look declared his recollection of the scene 
 at Dovesnest, in which he played the part of rogue and vagabond 
 according to the statute ; but as Snipeton had no corresponding 
 interest in the cu-cumstance, he had wholly forgotten the person 
 of the outcast in the candidate for service. But m truth, St. Giles 
 was not the same man. At Dovesnest he was lu rags : fear and 
 want had sharpened his face, withering, debasing him. And 
 now, he breathed new courage with every hour's freedom. — 
 He was comfortably, trimly clad ; and his pocket— too oft the 
 barometer of the soul— was not quite at zero. Hence, in few 
 moments, he looked with placid respect at Snipeton, who stared 
 all about liis face, as a picture-dealer stares at an alleged old 
 master ; ynth a look that in its cunning, would even seem to 
 hope a counterfeit. Was St. Giles really the honest fellow that 
 he appeared ; was there in truth the original mark of the original 
 artist upon him : or was he a fraudful imitation especially made 
 to gull a trusting gentleman ?— Was there really no flaw in that
 
 288 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 honest seeming face ? And Snipeton as he looked half-wished 
 that all men — or all servants at least — were fashioned like 
 earthen vessels ; that, properly filliped, they should perforce 
 reveal a damnifying fracture. Certainly, such sort of human 
 pottery, expressly made for families, would be an exceeding 
 comfort to aU housekeepers. Snipeton thought this ; to his own 
 disappointment thought it : for there being no such test of moral 
 soundness, he could only choose the domestic, two-legged vessel 
 before Mm by its looks. Alas ! why was there no instant means 
 of trying the music of its ring 1 
 
 " That will do ; you can wait," said Crossbone to St. Giles, 
 who thereupon left the room. 
 
 " And what can you say for this fellow ? Do you know all 
 about him — who begot him — where he comes from ? " asked 
 Snipeton. 
 
 Crossbone was a man of quick parts : so quick, that few knew 
 better than he, the proper time for a complete lie. We say a com- 
 plete lie ; not a careless, fragmentary flam, with no genius in it ; 
 but a well-built, architectural lie, buttressed about by circumstance. 
 Therefore, no sooner was the question put to him than, without let 
 or hesitation, he poured forth the following narrative. Wonderful 
 man ! Msehood flowed from him like a fountain. 
 
 " The young man who has just quitted us is of humble but 
 honest origin. His parents were villagers, and rented a little 
 garden gi-ound whereon they raised much of their lowly but 
 healthy fare. Far, far indeed was the profligacy of London from 
 that al)ode of rustic iimocence. His playmates — I mean the young 
 man's— were the lambkins that he watched, for at an early age he 
 was sent out to tend sheep : his books the flowers at his feet, the 
 clouds above his head. Not but what he reads remarkably well 
 for his condition, and writes a good stout, servant's hand. He was 
 seven yeai-s old— no, I 'm wrong, eight, eight years— when he lost 
 his father, who, good creature, fell a \ictim to his humanity. A 
 .sad matter that. He was killed by a AvindmiU." 
 
 " I thought you said 'twas his humanity," observed Snipeton. 
 
 " And a windmill," averred Crossbone. " A neighbour's child 
 was gathering buttercups and daisies, and had strayed beneath 
 the mill's revolving sails. The young man's father obeying the 
 impulse of his benevolent heart, rushed foi-ward to save the little 
 innocent. His humanity, not measurmg distance, carried him too 
 near the sails ; he was struck to tlie earth with a compound frac- 
 ture of the .skull, and died." 
 
 " This you know 1 " muttered Snipeton, looking with a wary 
 eye. 
 
 " 'Twas when I was an apprentice. The man being poor, and
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 289 
 
 the case desperate, 'twas given up to me to do my best with it. I 
 learned a great deal from that case, and from that moment felt a 
 natural interest in the orphan. And he has been worthy of it. 
 You 'd hardly believe the things I could tell you of that young 
 man. You can't think how he loves his mother." 
 
 " No great credit in that,— eh ?" said Snipeton. 
 
 " Why, no ; not exactly credit ; but you must own it 's graceful 
 — very graceful. He makes her take nearly all his wages. 
 Hardly saves enough for shirts and pocket-handkerchiefs. Now 
 this strikes me as being very filial, Mr. Snipeton ? " 
 
 " And you think he 'd make a good groom, eh ? " asked the 
 cautious husband. 
 
 " Bless you ! he knows more about horses than they know 
 themselves. But all he knows is nothing to his honesty. I 've 
 trusted him with untold gold, and he has never laid his finger 
 upon it." 
 
 " How do you know, if you never counted it ? " asked Snipeton. 
 
 " That is " — said Crossbone, a little pulled up—" that is, you 
 know what I mean. And — the thought 's been working in me, 
 though I've talked of other matters — I do think that a horse with 
 the quick and frequent change of air a horse can give, may do 
 everything for Mrs. Snipeton ; for, as I 've said before — she 's 
 young, veiy young ; and youth takes much killing. And there- 
 fore, you '11 make yourself easy ; come, you '11 promise me that 1 " 
 
 " I wiU," said Snipeton, a little softened. " You 've given me 
 new heart. Come, another glass." 
 
 " Not another drop. Pen and ink, if you please. I must write 
 a little prescription for a little nothing for your good lady ; not 
 that she wants medicine," said Crossbone. 
 
 " Then why poison her with it ? " asked Snipeton with some 
 energy. 
 
 " She wouldn't be satisfied without it. Therefore, just a little 
 coloured negative ; nothing more." Pen and ink were ordered, 
 brought ; and Crossbone strove to write as innofeutly as his art 
 allowed him. " There must be an apothecaiy at Hampstead, and 
 I '11 send the man with it ;" and Crossbone folded the prescription 
 and rose. 
 
 " And when shall we see you agam 1 " asked Snipeton. 
 
 " Why, in two or three days. But I have done all the good I 
 can at present. You '11 tiy the horse ? " — 
 
 " I will."— 
 
 " And the man ? " — 
 
 "I'll think of him.— Tell me, does he know .'uiyl-ody in 
 London 1 " 
 
 " Any calf you like, brought to Smithfield, knows more of the 
 
 V
 
 290 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 ^vays— more of the people of town. He 's a regular bit of country 
 turf. Green and fresh. Else do you think I 'd recommend him 1 " 
 asked Ci'ossboue vexy earnestly. 
 
 " I almost think— I mean I 'm pretty siu-e— that is, I will tiy 
 hmi," said Snipeton. 
 
 " Then between ourselves, I Ve recommended you a treasure. 
 An d — stop ; I was about to go, forgetting the most important 
 thing. You heard me say that dumps were catching ? I hope 
 you 've thought of that. Now, that Mrs. Wilton — the house- 
 keejjer — she 'd ruin any young woman. Bless you ! She 's 
 hypochondria in petticoats." 
 
 " Humph ! I don't know ; I prefer a serious woman for her 
 calling. Perhaps a little over melancholy to be sure, never- 
 theless " — 
 
 " I hate your very grave-looking people. If they really are 
 what they look, they 're bad ; if they arn 't, they 're worse. And 
 in a word — I might say more if I chose, but I won 't — in a word, 
 I don't think that Mrs. Snipeton will ever get any good from 
 your housekeeper. Good-bye, God bless you ; — the man shall 
 bring the medicine." So saying, and looking deepest mystery, 
 Crossbone departed. 
 
 The apothecary had achieved more than he had hoped. It was 
 very true, thought Snipeton, the woman was cold — melancholy. 
 Again, she had never looked upon him with pleasant looks. Her 
 respect .seemed wrung from her : it was not free — natural. And 
 yet her eye watched his wife with vmceasing regard. Eveiy 
 moment — when least wanted, too — she was hovering near her. 
 How was it, he had never seen this before ? It was plain the 
 woman had some false influence ; exercised some power that 
 estranged his wife from him. 
 
 Let us leave Snipeton for a brief time sti'uggling and weltering 
 iu this sea of doubt ; now trying to touch certain ground, and now 
 carried away again. Let us leave him, and follow the apotliecary. 
 He had had just wine enough ; which cii'cumstance was to him 
 the most potent reason for having moi-e. He had put up at the 
 Flask at Hanijjstead ; and to that hostelry he strode, St. Giles 
 silently fullowing him. 
 
 ''My man," said Crossbone, "who was your father — where 
 were you born — what have you been doing — and where do you 
 come from ? An answer if you please to each of these questions." 
 
 St. Giles, plucking up courage, simply replied — " I am his lord- 
 ship's servant ; and have his orders to follow you." 
 
 " Tliere 's not the slightest doubt, his lordship's servant, that 
 you 're a convenient rascal of all work, and quite up to the busmess 
 we shall put you to." Let not the reader imagine that these
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 291 
 
 words were uttered by Crossbone : by no means ; not a syllable 
 of them. But the thought — the ethereal essence of words — had 
 touched the brain of the apothecary, and his whole frame tinfded 
 with the awakened music. He had found a scoimdrel, he was 
 sure of it, and he was happy. 
 
 " Very good, my man ; very good : I understand you. As you 
 say, you are his lordship's servant, and have his lordship's orders 
 to take my directions. Very well. You wilt therefore j^lease to 
 take your father and mother from my hands. Understand, for once 
 that they were honest, respectable people ; and be grateful for 
 the parents I 've given you. Your father, good man ! was killed 
 by a windmill ; and your mother still lives in the country, and 
 regularly takes thi-ee-fourths of yoiu* wages. And you are not 
 to forget that you have a great love for that mother. And now, 
 take this prescription to the apothecary's ; tell him to make it up, 
 and send to Mr. Snipeton's. After which, you '11 come to me at 
 the Flask. Go." St. Giles, with perplexed looks, obeyed Cross - 
 bone, and went upon his errand. " I 've given the vagabond a 
 father and mother to be proud of — it 's quite clear, much better 
 than were really bestowed upon him ; and he hasn 't a word of 
 thanks to say upon the matter. Let a gentleman lie as he will 
 for the lower orders, they 're seldom grateful. Nevertheless, let 
 us have the virtue that he wants. Were he a piece of pig-headed 
 honesty, he wouldn't suit our work. No : Providence has been 
 very good in sending us a rascal." With these mute thoughts, 
 this final thanksgiving, did Crossbone step onward to the Flask. 
 He would there further ponder the plan that, throwing Snipe- 
 ton's young wife into the arms of a young nobleman — (and, in 
 common justice, so old and vulgar a man had no claim to such 
 refinement and beauty ; she must have been originally mtended 
 for high life, and therefore cruelly misapplied,)— would throw him, 
 Crossbone, the prime conspii-ator, into the very highest practice. 
 He would keep a carriage ! As he looked at the glorious clouds, 
 coloured by the settiug sun, he felt puzzled v.'hether his coach 
 panels should be a bright blue, a flame-coloured yellow, or a 
 rich mulberry. Still the clouds changed and shifted, and still 
 with the colour of his carriage at his heart, he looked upon them 
 as no other than a celestial pattern-book, rolled out to help him 
 in his choice. The wide west was streaked and barred with goM ; 
 and starmg at it, Crossbone was determined that lace, three-inch 
 lace, should blaze upon his liveries. And rapt in this sweet th-eam, 
 he walked on, his heart throbbing to the rumblmg of his coach 
 wheels. That music was so sweet, so deep, absorbing, that accom- 
 panying his footsteps, he was within a few paces of the Flask ere 
 he saw a crowd gathered about the door, and heai-d the words 
 
 TT i?
 
 2fj2 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 « he 's killed." His professioual zeal was immediately quickened, 
 and hurrying into the middle of the crowd, he saw the body of 
 a man, apparently lifeless, carried towards the inn. The people 
 crowded around, and by their very anxiety impeded the progress 
 of the bearers towai'ds the door. " Stand aside, folks— stand 
 aside," cried Crossbone, " I 'm a physician ; that is, a medical 
 man. Keep his head up, fellow." 
 
 " Get out o' the way," exclaimed a stranger, " you don't know 
 how to cany a fellow-cretur," and the benevolent new-comer 
 thrust aside the rustic who was, awkwardly enough, supporting 
 the shoulders of the wounded man, and with admirable zeal, and 
 great apparent tenderness, reUeved him of the charge. "Poor 
 soul — poor soul ! " he cried, much affected, " I do wonder if he 's 
 a wife and family 1 " 
 
 " A bed-room ; immediately — a bed-room," exclaimed Cross- 
 bone, and his sudden patient was carried up-stairs, Crossbone 
 following. As he ascended, a horse bathed in foam, and every 
 muscle quivei'ing, was led to the door. 
 
 " It 's my beUef that that Claypole sends out his boy to fly his 
 kite a purpose to kill people, that he may bury 'em. That 's the 
 third horse he 's frit this week ; the little varmint ! And this 
 looks like death any how." Thus delivered himself, a plain- 
 spoken native of Hampstead. 
 
 " You may say death. Cracked like a egg-shell ; " and sajdng 
 this, the speaker significantly pointed to Ids own skull. " The 
 doctor 's a trying to get blood : it 's my opinion he might as well 
 tiy a tomb-stone. Well, this is a world, isn't it ? I often thanks 
 my luck I can't afford a horse : for who 's safe a-horseback ? A 
 man kisses his wife and his babbies, if he has 'em, when he 
 mounts his saddle of a mornin' — and his wife gets him lamb and 
 sparrow-gi'ass, or something nice for supper, — 'xpectiug him home. 
 She listens for his horse's feet, and he 's brought to his door in a 
 shell." 
 
 " Well, mate, you do speak a truth ; nobody can deny that," 
 said one of the mob ; who, it is probable, scarcely dreamt that the 
 sometime moraUst and truth were so very rarely on speaking 
 terms. And this the reader will, doubtless, admit, when we inform 
 1dm that the man who so humanely, so affectionately lent his aid 
 to the thrown horseman, helping to bear him -with all tenderness 
 up stairs, was Mr. Thomas Blast. It was his business, or rathei-, 
 as he afterwards revealed, his pleasure to be at Hampstead — his 
 solemn pleasure. At this moment, St. Giles on his return from 
 the apothecary's, came to the inn-door. Ere he was well aware 
 of the greetuig, his hand was grasjjed by Blast, — " Well, how do 
 you do 1 Who 'd have thought to see you here 1 " Who, in sooth
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 293 
 
 but Blast himself, — seeing that he had dogged his prey from 
 St. James's-square 1 " Ha ! my good friend," cried Blast, very 
 much moved, " you don't know the trouble I 've had since we met. 
 But you must see it in my looks. Tell me, ain 't I twenty years 
 older ? " 
 
 " I don't see it," muttered St. Giles : though, assuredly, 
 such a sight would have carried its pleasure to the runaway 
 transport. 
 
 " Ha ! you won't see it ; that 's so like a friend. But don't 
 let us stand in the street ; come in and have a pot ; for I 'vc 
 somethin' to say that '11 set your art a bleeding." Hoping, pray- 
 ing, that Crossbone might not observe him — and feeling dwarfed, 
 powerless, under the will of Blast, — St. Giles turned into a side- 
 room with his early teacher and destroyer. 
 
 " I don't feel as if I could do anything much in the way of 
 drink," said Blast, to the waiter following, " and so, a little brandy- 
 and-water. Well, you wonder to see me at Hampstead, I dare 
 say ? You can't guess what brings me here ? " 
 
 " No," said St. Giles. " How should I ? " 
 
 " I 'm a altered man. I come here all this way for nothin' else but 
 to see the sun a settin'. Your health ;" and Blast, as he said, did 
 nothing in the way of drink : for he gulped his brandy-and -water. 
 
 " To see the sun a-setting ! " ci-ied St. Giles ; we fear, too, a 
 little incredulously. 
 
 " Ha ! you 're young, and likes to see him a getting' up ; it 's 
 natrul ; but when you 're my time o' life, and have stood the 
 wear and tear o' the world as I have, yovi '11 rather look at the 
 sun when he sets, then. And, do you know why 1 You don't ? 
 I '11 tell yon. Acause, when he sets, he reminds you of where 
 you 're a going. I never thouglit I should ha' been pulled up in 
 the way I have been. But trouble 's done it. My only comfort 's 
 now to look at the settin' sun — and he sets nowhere so stylish 
 here at Hampstead." 
 
 " And so you 've had trouble 1 " said St. Giles, coldly. 
 
 " Don't talk in that chilly way, as if your words was hailstones. 
 I feel as if I could fall on your neck, and cry like a 'oman. Don't 
 freeze me in that manner. I said trouble. Loss o' property, and 
 death." 
 
 " Death ! " cried St. Giles. 
 
 " Little Jingo. That apple o' both my eyes ; that tulup of a 
 child. Well, he was too clever to live long. I always thought it. 
 Much too for'ard for his age. He 's gone. And now he 's gone, 
 I do feel that I was his father." St. Giles stifled a rising groan. 
 " But — it 's my only comfort — ^he 's better looked arter now than 
 with me."
 
 294 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " No doubt," said St. Giles with a quickness that made Blast 
 stare. " I mean, if he is where you hope he is." 
 
 " I should Hke to pay him some respect. I don't want to do 
 much : but — I know it 's a weakness ; still a man without a 
 weakness has no right to live among men ; he 's too good for this 
 sinful world. As I was sapng, I know it 's a weakness : still, I 
 should like to wear a little bit o' black — if it was only a rag, so it 
 was black. You couldn't lend me nothing, could you ? Only a 
 coat would be something to begin Tvith." 
 
 St. Giles pleaded in excuse his very limited wardrobe ; and Blast 
 was suddenly satisfied. 
 
 " Well, he's gone ; and if I was to go as black as a nigger, he 
 woiddn't rest the better for 't. Besides, the settin' sun tells me 
 we shan't be long apart. Nothing like simsets to pull a man up ; 
 and so you '11 know when you 've had my trouble. Your health 
 agin." 
 
 " And you have had a loss of property besides ? " asked St. 
 Giles. 
 
 " Look here," cried Blast, taking off his hat and rumpling up 
 his hair : " here 's a change ! Once as black as a crow ; and now 
 — oh, my dear friend " — St. Giles shi'unk at the appeal as at a 
 presented pistol — " if you want to put silver on a man's head, 
 you 've only to take all the gold out of his pocket. Had a loss ! 
 You may say a loss. I tell you what it is : it 's no use for a man 
 to think of being honest in this world : it isn't. I 've tried, and 
 I give it up." 
 
 " That 's a pity," said St. Giles : knowing not what to say — 
 knowing not how to shake off his tormentor. 
 
 " AVliy, it is ; for a man doesn't often make his mind up to it. 
 "Well, I 've had my faults, I know ; who hasn't 1 StiU, I did 
 think to refoi-m when T got that lump of money ; and more, I did 
 think to make a man of you. I 'd chalked out the prettiest, inno- 
 ceutest life for both on us. I '11 make a sojer of Jingo, I thought ; 
 yes, I '11 buy him some colours for the army, and make him a 
 gen'lman at once. And then I thought we would so enjoy our- 
 selves ! "We 'd ha' gone and been one all among the lower orders. 
 In summer time we 'd ha' played at knock 'em-downs with 'em, 
 jest to show we was all made o' the same stuff; and in winter 
 we wouldn't ha' turned up our noses at hot-cockles, or blind-man's 
 buff, or nothin' of the sort ; but ha' been as free and comfortable 
 witli the swinish multitude (for I did begin to think 'em that when 
 I got the money) as if they 'd got gold rings in their noses, and 
 like the pig-feced lady, eat out of a silver trough. I thought 
 you 'd be a stick to my old age. But what 's the use o' thinking 
 on it? As my schoolmaster used to say, — 'Him as sets his
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 295 
 
 lieart on tlie things of this life,' — I 've forgot the rest ; but it 's 
 all ot a piece." 
 
 "And how did you get this money?" asked St. Giles, with 
 very well-acted innocence. 
 
 " How did I get the money 1 How should I get it 1 By the 
 sweat of my brow." And so far, the reader who remembers the 
 labour of Blast in his theft of the gold-box, may acquit him of an 
 untruth. 
 
 "And having got such a heap of gold," rejoined St. Giles, 
 " pray tell me — how did you lose it 1 " 
 
 Now Blast had, and never suspected it, a sense of humour : he 
 could really enjoy a joke when least palatable to most men ; 
 namely, when made against themselves. Nevertheless, with 
 peojile who have only a proper pride of such philosophy, he had 
 his share of sensitiveness, to be called up at a reasonable crisis. 
 Hence, when St. Giles pressed him to explain his loss, the jest 
 became a hurt. Good nature may endure a tickling with a 
 feather, but resents a scratch from a tenpenny nail. " My dear 
 young friend," said Blast, "don't do that; pray don't. When 
 you 're as old as me, and find the world a slippin' from under you 
 like a hill o' sand, you '11 not laugh at the losses o' gray hairs," 
 and again Blast drew his fingers through his locks meekly, 
 mournfully. "How did I lose it ? No : you waru't at Liquorish, 
 you warn't 1 No ; you don't know 1 Well, T hope I 'm not 
 much worse than my neighbours ; and T don't like wishing bad 
 wishes, it is sieh old woman's work ; it 's only barking the louder 
 for wanting teeth. But this I will wish : if a clergyman o' the 
 'Stablished Church is ever to choke himself with a fish-bone, I do 
 hope that that clergyman doesn't live far from Lazai-us Hall, and 
 that his name begins with a G. I 'm not a spiteful man ; and so I 
 won't wish anything more plain than that. But it is hard" — and 
 again Blast, he coidd not help it, recurred to his loss — " it is hard, 
 when I 'd resolved to live in peace with all the world, to give a 
 little money to the poor, and — as we all must die — when I did 
 die, to have sich a clean, respectable moniment put up to me 
 inside the church, with a naked boy in white stone holding one 
 hand to his eyes, and the other putting out his link— you 've seen 
 the sort o' thing I dare say ?— it is hard to be done out of it after 
 all. It 's enough to make a man, as I say, think o' nothin' but 
 the setting sun. Howsomever, it serves me right. I ouglit to 
 ha' know'd that sich a fine place must ha' belonged to the 
 clergyman. If I 'd hid the box in a ditch, and not m a parson's 
 fish-pond, at this blessed moment you and I might ha' been 
 happy men ; lords for life ; and caUed, what I 've heard, useful 
 members of society. And now, mate," asked Blast with sudden
 
 20(5 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 wai-mtli — " how do you like your place ? Is it the thing 1 — is it 
 clover ? " 
 
 "Wliat place?" asked St. Giles. "I'm in no place, certain, 
 as yet." 
 
 " There, then, we won't say nothin' about it. Only this. Wlien 
 you 're butler — if I 'm spared in this wicked world so long, — you 
 won't refuse an old friend. Jingo's friend. Jingo's mother's friend" 
 — St. Giles turned sick at his mother's name, so sjioken — " you 
 won't refuse him a bottle o' the best in the pantry ? You won't, 
 will you 1 Eh ? " 
 
 " No," stammered St. Giles. " Wliy should I ? Certainly not, 
 when I 'm butler." 
 
 '•'And till then, old fellow," — and Blast bent forward in his 
 chair, and touched St. Giles's knee with his finger — " lend us a 
 guinea." 
 
 St. Giles recoiled from the request ; the more so, as it was 
 seconded by contact with the petitioner. He made no answer ; 
 but his face looked blank as blank paper : not a mark was m it 
 to serve as hieroglyph for a farthing. Blast could read faces 
 better than books. " You won't then 1 Not so much as a guinea 
 to the friend of Jingo's mother ? " St. Giles scowled. " "Well, as 
 it 's like the world, why should I quarrel ? Now jest see the 
 difference. See the money, I 'd ha' given you, if misfortin' hadn't 
 stept in. ' He 's a fine fellow,' I kept continally saying to myself; 
 * I don't know how it is, I like him, and he shall have half Not 
 a mite less than half And now, you won't lend me — for mind J 
 don't ax it as a gift — you won't lend me a guinea." 
 
 " I can't," said St. Giles. " I am poor myself : very poor." 
 
 " Well, as I said afore, we wcm't quarrel. And so, you shall 
 have a guinea of me." Saying this, Blast with a cautious look 
 towards the door, drew a long leathern purse from his pocket, 
 St. Giles suddenly felt as though a party to the robbeiy that — he 
 knew it — Blast must somewhere have perpetrated. 
 
 " Not a farthing," said St. Giles, as Blast dipped his finger and 
 thunil) in the purse. " Not a farthing." 
 
 " Don't say that ; don't be proud, for you don't know in this 
 world what you may want. 1 dare say the poor cretur up stairs 
 was proud enough this momin' ; and what is he now 1 " 
 
 " Not dead ! " cried St. Giles, " I hope not dead." 
 
 " Why, hope 's very well ; and then it 's so very cheap. But 
 there 's no doubt he 's gone ; and as he 's gone, what, I should 
 like to know" — and Blast threw the purse airily up and down 
 — " what was the use of this to him ? " 
 
 " Good God ! You haven't stole it ? " exclaimed St. Giles, 
 leaping to his feet.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 297 
 
 " Hush ! " cried Blast, " don't make sich a noise as that -wdth 
 a dead body in the house. The worst o' folks treat the dead with 
 respect. Else jjeople who're never thought of at all when in the 
 world, wouldn't be gone into black for when they go out of it. 
 I'd no thought of the matter, when I run to help the poor 
 cretur : but somehow, going up stairs, one of his coat tails did 
 knock at my knuckles so, that I don't know how it was, when 
 I 'd laid him comfortable on the bed, and was coming dowTi agin, 
 I found this sort o' thing in my pocket. Poor fellow ! he '11 never 
 miss it. Well, you won't have a guinea, then ? " 
 
 " I 'd starve first," exclaimed St. Giles. 
 
 " My good lad, it isn't for me to try to put myself over your 
 head, — but this I must say ; when you 've seen the world as I 
 have, you '11 know better. You won't talk of starving in that 
 manner." 
 
 At this moment, the waiter entered the room. 
 
 " How is the poor gentlema,n up stairs ? " asked St. Giles. " Is 
 there no hope t " 
 
 " Lor bless you, yes ! They 've bled him and made him quite 
 comfortable. He's ordered some rump-steaks and onions, and 
 says he '11 make a night of it." Thus spoke the waiter. 
 
 " Do you hear that 1 " asked St. Giles of Blast. 
 
 " Sorry to hear it : sorry to think that any man arter sich an 
 escape, should think o' nothing better than supper. My man, 
 what 's to pay ? " St. Giles unbuttoned his pocket. " No ; not 
 a farden ; tell you, I won't hear of it. Not a farden : bring the 
 change out o' that," and Blast laid down a dollar : and the waiter 
 departed on his errand. 
 
 " I tell you, I don't want you to treat me ; and I won't have 
 it," said St. Giles. 
 
 " My good young man, a proper pride 's a proper thing ; and 
 I don't like to see nobody without it. But pride atween friends I 
 hate. So good bye, for the present. I '11 take my change at the 
 bar " And Mr. Blast was about to hurry himself from the room. 
 
 "Stay," said St. Giles ; "should I wish to see you, where are 
 jou to be found ? " . 
 
 " Well, I don't know," said Blast. " Sometimes m one place- 
 sometimes another. But one thing, my dear lad, is quite sure 
 Here Blast put both Ms hands on St. Giles's shoulders and 
 looked in his face with smilmg malignity-" One tlnng is quite 
 sure • if you don't know how to find me, I shall always know 
 where to come upon you. Don't be afeard of that young man 
 
 And with this. Blast left the room, while St. Giles sank in ins 
 chair, weary and sick at heart. He was in the villain s power 
 and seemed to exist only by his sufferance.
 
 298 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Does it live in the memory of the reader that Snipeton, only a 
 chapter since, spoke of a handmaid on her way from Kent to 
 make acquaintance with his fire-side divinities ? That human 
 flower, with a freshness of soid like the dews of Paradise upon 
 her is, reader, at this very momeut in Fleet Street. Her face is 
 beaming with happiness — her half-opened mouth is swallowing 
 wonders — and her eyes twinkle, as though the London pavement 
 she at length treads upon was really and truly the very best of 
 gold, and dazzled her with its glorif^dng brightness. She looks 
 upon the beauty and wealth about her gaily, innocently, as a little 
 child would look upon a state coffin ; the velvet is so rich, and 
 the plates and nails so glittering. She has not the wit to read 
 the true meaning of the splendour ; cannot, for a moment, dream 
 of what it covers. Indeed, she is so delighted, dazzled by what 
 she sees, that she scarcely hears the praises of the exceeding 
 beauty of her features, the wondrous symmetiy of her form ; 
 praises vehemently, industriously uttered by a youthful swain 
 who walks at her side, glancing at her fairness with the libertine's 
 felonious look. He eyes her innocence, as any minor thief would 
 eye a brooch or chain ; or, to give the youth his due, he now and 
 then ventures a bolder stare ; for he has the fine intelligence to 
 know that he may rob that country wench of herself, and no 
 Bridewell — no Newgate — 'nail punish the larceny. Now, even 
 the bow of sixpenny riband on her bonnet is protected by a 
 statute. Besides, Master Ealph Gum knows the pririleges of 
 certain people in a certain condition of life. Young gentlemen 
 born and bred in London, and serving the nobility, are born and 
 educated the allowed protectors of rustic girls. The pretty 
 country things— it was the bigoted beUef of the young footman- 
 might be worn, like bouquets on a birth-day. — And the wench at 
 his side is a nosegay expressly sent by fortune from the coimtry 
 for his passing felicity and adornment. True it is, that Master 
 Ilalph Gum is scarcely looming out of boyhood ; but there is a 
 sort of genius that soars far beyond the parish register. Ralph's 
 age is not to be counted by the common counters, years ; but by 
 the rarer marks of precocious intelligence. He is a liveried 
 prodigy; one of those terribly clever animals that, knowing 
 everjihing, too often confound simple people with their fatal 
 knowledge. Therefore was it specially unfortunate for the damsel
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 299 
 
 that of all the crowd that streamed through Fleet Street, she 
 should have asked Baljjh Gum to indicate her way to St. Mary- 
 Axe. At the time, she was setting due eastward ; when the 
 faithless vassal assured her that she was going clean wrong ; 
 and, as hajspily he himself had particular business towards her 
 destination, it would give Inm a pleasiire he could never have 
 hoped for, to guide her vii'gin steps to St. Mary Axe. And she — 
 poor maid ! — believed and turned her all-unconscious face towards 
 Temple Bar. The young man, though a little dark, had such 
 bright black eyes — and such very large, and very white teeth, — 
 and wore so very fine a livery, that it would have been fljing in 
 the face of truth to doubt him. Often at the rustic fire-side had 
 she listened to the narrated wickedness of London ; again and 
 again had she pre-armed her soul with sagacious strength to 
 meet and confound the deception that in so many guises prowled 
 the city streets, for the robbery and destruction of the Ai'cadian 
 stranger. She felt herself in\^ncible imtil the very moment that 
 Ealph gave smiling, courteous answer to her ; and then, as at the 
 look and voice of a charmer, the Amazonian breast- plate (forged 
 over many teas) she had buckled on, melted like frost-work at 
 the sun, and left her an unprotected, because believang woman. 
 
 " Why, and what 's them 1 " cried the girl, suddenly fixed 
 before St. Dunstan's church. At the moment the sun reached 
 the meridian, and the two wooden giants, mechanically punctual, 
 striking tlieir clubs upon the bell, gave warning note of noon. 
 Those giants have passed away ; those two great ligneous heroes 
 of the good old times have been displaced and banished ; and we 
 have submitted to leam the horn- from an ordinaiy dial. There 
 was a grim digTiity in then- bearing — a might in their action — 
 that enhanced the value of the time they noted : their clubs fell 
 upon the senses of parishioners and way-farers, with a power and 
 impressiveness not compassable by a round, pale-faced clock. ^ It 
 was, we say, to give a worth and solemnity to time, to have time 
 counted by such grave tellers. If the parishioners of St. Dunstan 
 and the frequent passengers of Fleet Street have, of late years, 
 contributed more than their fair quota to the stock of national 
 wickedness, may not the evil be philosophically traced to the 
 deposition of their wooden monitors ? This very valuable surmise 
 of ours ought to be quoted in parliament— that is, if lawmakers 
 properly prepared themselves for their solemn tasks, by duly 
 conning histories like the present— quoted in opposition to the 
 revolutionary movement of the time. For we have little doubt 
 that a motion for the return of the number of felonies and 
 misdemeanours— to say nothing of the social offences that may 
 be the more grave because not named in the statutes— committed
 
 300 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 in the parish of St. Dunstaii's, would show an alarming increase 
 since the departure of St. Dunstan's wooden genii. A triumphant 
 arfnimeut this — we modestly conceive — for the conservation of 
 wooden things in high places. " La ! and what 's them ? " again 
 cried the girl, twelve o'clock being told by the strikers. 
 
 " Wliy, my tulup, them 's a couple of cruel churchwardens 
 turned into wood hundreds of years ago, for their sins to the 
 poor. But you are a beauty, that you are ! " added Ealph, mth 
 burning gallantry. 
 
 " It can't be ; and you never mean it," said the maiden, really 
 forgetting her own loveliness in her wonder of the giants. 
 " Turned into wood ? Unpossible ! Who did it ? " 
 
 " Wliy, Providence, — or, something of the kind, you know," 
 i-eplied the audacious footman. " You 've heard of Whittington, 
 I should think, my marigold, eh 1 He made a fortin in the 
 Indies, where he let out his cat to kill all the vermin in all the 
 courts — and a nice job I should think puss must have had of it. 
 "Well, tliem giants was churchwardens in his time : men with 
 flesh and blood in their hearts, though now they 'd bleed nothing 
 but saw-dust." 
 
 "You don't say so ! Poor souls ! And what did they do ?" 
 asked the innocent damsel. 
 
 Mr. Ealph Gum scratched his head for inspiration ; and then 
 made answer : " You see, there was a poor woman — a sailor's 
 wife — with three twins in her arms. And she went to one 
 churchwarden, and said as how she was a starving ; and that her 
 very Vjabbies couldn't cry for weakness. And he told her to come 
 to-morrow, for it wasn't the time to relieve paupers : and then 
 she went to the other churchwarden, and he sent out word that 
 she must come again in two days, and not afore." ' 
 
 " Two days ! " cried the maiden. " The cruel cretui's ! didn't 
 they know wliat time was to the starving 1 " 
 
 " Why, no ; they didn't ; and for that reason, both the church- 
 wardens fell sick, all their limbs every day a turning into wood. 
 And then they died ; and they was going to bury 'em, when next 
 morning their coffins was found empty ; and they was seen where 
 they now stand. And there was a Act of Parliament made that 
 their relations shouldn't touch 'em, but let 'em stand to strike 
 the clock, as a warning to all wicked churchwardens to know 
 what liours are to folks with hungiy bellies." 
 
 " Wonderful ! " exclaimed the girl, innocent as a bleating 
 lamb. " And now, young man, you 're sure this is the way to 
 Mary Axe 1 " 
 
 " Didn't I tell you, my sunflower, I was bom there ? I would 
 cany your bundle for you, only you see, his lordship, the nobleman
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 301 
 
 I serve, is very particular. Livery 's livery ; — he 'cl discharge any 
 of us that, demeaned himself to carry a bundle. Bless you ; there 
 are young fellows in our square — only I 'm not proud — that 
 woukln't speak to you with such a thing as a bundle ; * they 
 wouldn't, my wild rose. But then, you 're such a beauty ! " 
 
 " No ; I am not. I know what I am, young man. I 'm not of 
 the worst, but a good way from the best. Besides, beauty, as 
 they say, is only skin-deep ; is it ? " asked the maiden, not 
 unwilling to dwell upon the theme. 
 
 " Well, you 're deep enough for me anyhow," rephed the footboy, 
 and he fixed his eyes as though he thought them burning-glasses, 
 on the guileless stranger. " And now, here you are, right afore 
 Temple Bar." 
 
 " Mercy ! what a big gate ! and what 's it for, young man 1 " 
 cried the wondering girl. 
 
 " Why, I once heard it said in our hall that Temple Bar was 
 built on purjjose to keep the scum of the City from running 
 over into the West End. Now, this I don't beUeve," averred 
 Kalph. 
 
 " Nor I, neither," cried the ingenuous wench, " else, doesn't it 
 stand to reason they'd keep the gate shut ? " 
 
 " My 'pinion is what I once heard, — that Temple Bar was really 
 built at the time of the Great Plague of London, to keep the 
 disease from the king and queen, the rest of the royal family, with 
 all the nobility, spuntal and temperal." And Ealph coughed. 
 
 " Well, if you don't talk like a prayer-book ! " exclauued the 
 maiden, full of admiration. 
 
 " I ought by this time ; I was born to it, my dear. Bless your 
 heart, when I was no higher nor that, I was in our house. I leai'ut 
 my letters from the plate ; yes, real gold and silver ; none of your 
 horn-books. And as for pictures, I didn't go to books for them 
 neither ; no, I used to study the coach-panels. There wasn't a 
 griffin, nor a cockatrice, nor a tiger, nor a viper of any sort upon 
 town 1 wasn't acquainted with. That's knowing life, I think. 
 It isn't for me to talk, my bed of violets ; but you wouldn't 
 think the Latin I know ; and all from coaches." 
 
 " Wonderful ! But are you sure this is the way to Mary 
 Axe 1 " and with the question the maiden crossed the city's 
 barrier, and with her lettered deceiver trod the Strand. 
 
 " If you ask me that again," answered the slightly-wounded 
 Ealph, " I don't know that I '11 answer you. Come along. As 
 the carriage says, ' Jlora et semper.'' " 
 
 " Now, if you go on in that way, I won't beheve a word you 
 say. English for me ; acause then I can give you as good as 
 you send." No ; wholesome Enghsh, or I won't step another step :"
 
 302 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 and it was plain that the timid rustic felt some slight alarm — was 
 a little oppressed by the mysterious knowledge of her first London 
 acquaintance. She thought there was some hocus pocus associated 
 with Latin : it was to her the natural utterance of a conjuror. 
 With some emphasis she added, " All I want to know is — how far 
 is it to Mary Axe 1 " 
 
 " Why, my carnation, next to nothing now. Step out ; and 
 you '11 be there afore you know it. As I say, I only wish I could 
 carry your bundle — I do, my daisy." Mr. Gum might have spared 
 his regi-ets. Had his gracious majesty pulled up in his carriage, 
 and offered to be the bearer of that bundle, its owner would have 
 refused him the enjoyment ; convinced that it was not the king of 
 England who proposed the courtesy, but the father of all wicked- 
 ness, disguised as a royal Brunswick, and driving about in a car- 
 riage of shadows, for the especial purjjose of robbing rustic maids. 
 As we have intimated, the damsel had, in the fastnesses of Kent, 
 leai-ned prudence against the iniquities of London. And so, be- 
 lie^dng that St. Mary Axe was close at hand, she hopefully 
 jogged on. 
 
 " What a many churches ! " she said, looking at St, Clement's. 
 " Well, the folks in London ought to be good." 
 
 " And so they are, my wallflower," rejoined the footman. 
 " The best in the world ; take 'em in the lump. And there, you 
 see, is another church. And besides what we have, we 're a going 
 to have I don't know how many hundred more built, that every- 
 body, as is at all anybody, may have a comfortable jjew to his 
 whole self, and not be mixed u}d — like people in the gallery of a 
 playhouse — along of the lower orders. I dare say, now, your 
 grandmother in the country " — ■ 
 
 " Ain't got no grandmother," said the girl. 
 
 " Well, it 's all the same : the old women where you come from 
 — I dare say they talked to you about the wickedness of London, 
 did'nt they ? And how all the handsome young men you'd meet 
 was nothing more than roaring hons, rolling their eyes about, and 
 licking their mouths, to eat up anybody as come fresh from the 
 daisies \ Didn't they tell you this, eh, beauty 1 " cried Ralph. 
 
 " A little on it," said the girl, now pouting, now giggling. 
 
 " And you 've seen nothing of the sort ? Upon your word and 
 honour, now, have you 1 " and the footman tried to look winningly 
 in the girl's eyes, and held forth, appealingly, his right hand. 
 
 " Nothing yet ; that is, nothmg that I knows on," was the 
 guarded answer of the damsel. 
 
 " To be sure not. Now my opinion is, there 's more dowm-ight 
 wickedness — more roguery and sin of all sorts in an acre of the 
 country than in any five mile of London streets ; only, we don't
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 303 
 
 kick up a noise about our virtue and all that sort of stuff. Wliilst 
 quite to the contrary, the folks in the country do nothing but talk 
 about their innocence, and all such gammon, eh ] " 
 
 " I can't hear iimocence called gammon afore me," said the 
 girl. " Innocence is innocence, and nothing else ; and them as 
 would alter it, ought to blush for themselves." 
 
 " To be sui-e they ought," answered Gum. " But the truth is, 
 because lambs don't run about London streets — and bu-ds don't 
 hop on the jiavement — and hawthorns and honeysuckles don't 
 grow in the gutters — London 's a place of wickedness. Now, you 
 know, my lily of the valley, — folks arn't a bit more like lambs for 
 living among 'em, are they ? " 
 
 " Is this the way to Mary Axe 1 " asked the girl, with growing 
 impatience. 
 
 " Tell you, tisn't no distance whatever, only first " — and the 
 deceiver turned with his victim out of the Strand — " fh-st you 
 must jjass Drury-lane playhouse." 
 
 " The playhouse — really the playhouse ! " exclaimed the wench, 
 with an interest in the institution that in these times would have 
 sufficiently attested her vulgarity. " I should Uke to see the play- 
 house." 
 
 " Well then, my double heartsease, here it is," and Ealph 
 with his finger pointed to the tremendous temple. With curious, 
 yet reverential looks, did the girl gaze upon the mysterious fabric. 
 It was delicious to behold even the outside of that brick and 
 mortar rareeshow. And staring, the gii-l's heart was stirred with 
 the thought of the wonders, the mysteries, acted therein. She 
 had seen plays. Three times at least she had sat in a wattle- 
 built fane, and seen the di-amatic priesthood in their hours 
 of sacrifice. Pleasant, though confused, was her remembrance 
 of the strange harmonies that filled her heart to overflowing 
 —that took her away into another world — that brought sweet 
 teai-s into her eyes' — and made her thmk (she had never 
 thought so before) that there was really something besides the 
 drudgery of work in life ; that men and women were made to have 
 some" holiday thoughts— thoughts that breathed strange, com- 
 forting music, even to creatures poor and low as she. Then recol- 
 lections flowed afresh as she looked upon that mighty London 
 mystery— that charmed place that in day-dreams she had thought 
 of— that had revealed its glorious, fantastic wonders in her sleep. 
 The London playhouse ! She saw it— she could touch its walls. 
 One great hope of her rustic life was consummated ; and the 
 gi-eater woukl be accomplished. Yes : sure as her Ufe, she would 
 sit aloft m the gaUery, would hear the music, and see the London 
 players' spangles.
 
 304 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " And this is Drury-lane ? " cried the wench, softened by the 
 thought — " well ! I never ! " 
 
 " You like plays, do you l So do I, Well, when we know one 
 another a little better — for I wouldn't be so bold as to ask it now 
 — in course not — won't we go together 1 " said Ralph ; and the 
 girl was silent. She did not inquire about St. Mary Axe ; but 
 trustingly followed her companion, her heart dancing to the 
 fiddles of Druiy-lane ; the fiddles that she would hear. " And 
 this is Bow-street, my jessamy," said Ralph. 
 
 " "What 's Bow-street ? " inquired the maiden. How happy in 
 the ignoi'ance of the question ! 
 
 '■ Where they take up the thieves, and examine 'em, afore they 
 send 'em to Newgate to be hanged." The wench shivered. 
 " Never saw nobody hanged, I suppose ? Oh, it 's nothing, after 
 two or three times. We '11 have a day of it, my sweet marjoram, 
 some Monday. We '11 go to the Old Bailey in the morning, and 
 to the play at night : that 's what I call seeing life ! — eh, you 
 precious pink ! But, I say, arn't you tired ? " 
 
 •' Well, I just am. Where is Mary Axe ! " And the girl 
 stared about her. 
 
 " Why, if I hav'n't taken the wrong turning, I'm blest, and 
 that 's lost us half a mile and more. I tell you what we '11 do. This 
 is a nice comfortable house." Ralph sjjoke of the Brown Bear ; 
 at that day, the house of ease to felons, on their transit from the 
 opposite police office to Newgate. " A quiet, respectable place. 
 We '11 just go in and rest ourselves, and have atween us half-a-pint 
 of ale." 
 
 " Not a ch-op ; not for the blessed world," cried the girl. 
 
 " And then, I '11 tell you all about the playhouse and the 
 players. Bless you ! some of 'em come to our house, when the 
 servants give a party. And we make 'em sing songs and tell 
 stories, and when they go away, why, perhaps we put a bottle 
 of wine ui their pockets — for, poor things, they can't afford 
 such stuff at home, — and then they send us orders, and we go 
 into the pit for nothing. And so, we '11 just sit down and have 
 half-a-piut of ale, won't we 1 " 
 
 Silently the girl suflFered herself to be led into the Brown Bear. 
 The voice of the charmer had entered her heart and melted it. 
 To hear about plays and players was to hear sweet music ; to listen 
 to one who knew — who had spoken to the glorious London actors — 
 who, perhaps, with his own hand had put wine-bottles in their 
 pockets — was to gain a stride in the world. The gossip would 
 not delay her above half-an-hour from St. Mary Axe ; and what 
 wondei-s would repay her for the lingering ! Besides, she was 
 tired — and the young man was very kind — very respectful —
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 30.5 
 
 uothing at all like what slie had heard of London youuc men 
 
 and, after all, what was haifan-hour, sooner or later I 
 
 Mr. Ralph Gum intonated his orders like a lord. The ale was 
 brought, and Ralph drank to the maiden with both eyes and lips. 
 Liquor made him musical : and with a dehcate compliment to the 
 rustic taste of his fair companion, he warbled of birds and flowers. 
 One couplet he trolled over again and again. " Like what they 
 call sentiment, don't you ? " said Ralph. 
 
 " How can I tell 1 " answered the girl : " it 's some of youi' fine 
 London stuflp, I suppose." 
 
 " Not a bit on it ; sentiment 's sentiment all over the world. 
 Don't you know what sentiment is ? Well, sentiment's words that's 
 put together to sound nicely as it were — to make you feel inclined 
 to clap youi' hands, you know. And that's a sentiment that I 've 
 been singing " — and he repeated the burden, bawling : 
 
 ' Oh the cuckoo's a fine bird as ever you did hear, 
 And he sucks little bird's eggs, to make his voice clear.' 
 
 "There, don't you see the sentiment now ? " The maiden shook 
 her head. " Wliy, sucking the little birds' eggs — that 's the 
 sentiment. Precious clever birds, them cuckoos, eh ? They 're 
 what I call birds of quality. They 've no trouble of hatching, 
 they liavn't ; no trouble of going about in the fields, picking up 
 worms and grubs for their nestlings ; they places 'em out to wet- 
 nurse ; makes other birds bring 'em up ; while they do nothing 
 themselves but sit in a tree, and cry cuckoo all day long. Now 
 that 's what I caU being a bird of quality. How should you like 
 to be a cuckoo, my buttercup 1 " 
 
 " There, now, I don't want to hear your nonsense. What 's a 
 cuckoo to do with a Christian ? " — asked the damsel. 
 
 " Nothing, my passion-flower — to be sure not ; just wait a 
 minute," said Ralph—" I only want to speak to my aunt that lives 
 a little way ofi"; and I'll be back with you in a minute. I've 
 got a message for the old woman ; and she 's such a dear cretur 
 —so fond of me. And atween ourselves, whenever she should be 
 made a angel of— and when a angel 's wanted, I hope she '11 not 
 be forgotten— shan't I have a lot of money ! Not that I care for 
 money ; no, give me the gii-1 of my heart, and all the gold in the 
 world, as I once heard a parson say, is nothing but yellow dirt, 
 Aiid now I Avon't be a minute, my precious periwinkle." 
 
 And with this Mr. Ralph Gum quitted the room, leaving the 
 fair stranger, as he thought, in profoundest admh-ation of the 
 disinterestedness of footmen.
 
 306 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 The country girl, alone in the Brown Bear, had some slight 
 twitchings of remorse. She felt it ; she had very much slandered 
 London and the Londoners. She had been taught — she had 
 heard the story in fields and at fire-sides, seated in the shade of 
 haystacks, and in winter chimney-corners — that London was a 
 fiery furnace ; that all its inhabitants, especially the males, were 
 the pet pupils of the Evil One, and did his work vnth wonderful 
 docility. And now, how much ignorance had departed from her ! 
 In an hour or two, how large her stock of experience ! She was 
 alone— alone in a Loudon tavern ; and yet she felt as comfortable, 
 as secure of herself as though perched upon a Kent haycock. She 
 had seen thousands of people ; she had walked among a swann of 
 men and women, and nobody had even so much as attempted to 
 pick her pocket ; nobody had even snatched a kiss from her. 
 "With the generosity of a kind nature, she felt doubly trustful that 
 she had unjustly doubted. She was in a London hotel (poor haw- 
 thorn innocence !) and felt not a bit afraid ; on the contraiy, she 
 rather liked it. She looked about the room : carefully, up and 
 down its walls. No ; there was not an inch of looking-glass to be 
 seen. Otherwise she thought she might have liked to take a jseep 
 at herself ; for she knew she must be a fright ; and the young 
 man would be back soon ; and though she cared not a pin about 
 him — how could she 1 — still, still she should have liked one look. 
 
 '•' What, my little gW, all alone 1 " asked a new-comer — as the 
 3'oung woman thought, a very rude, and ugly, and somewhat 
 old man. " Got nobody with you, eh 1 "Where 's your parents? " 
 
 " I 'ra not alone, and that 's enough," said the girl, and she 
 fervently clutched her little bundle. 
 
 " Very well, my dear ; wouldn't ofi'end you, my lass ; 
 wouldn't " — 
 
 " I 'm not your dear ; and I don't want at all to be talked to 
 by you." Saying this, the girl continued to grasp her projaei-ty, 
 and looked with veiy determined eyes in the harsh, ugly face of 
 the old intruder. The fact is, the gud felt that the time was 
 come to test her energy and caution. She had too soon thought 
 too well of the doings of London. The place swarmed with wicked 
 people, there was no doubt of it ; and the man before her was one 
 of them. He looked particularly like a thief as he looked at her 
 bundle. 
 
 " That 's right : quite right, my little wench. This is a jjlace
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 307 
 
 in which you can't be too particlar," and sajdng this, Bright Jem 
 — for it was the uncomely honesty of that good fellow's face that 
 had alarmed the spinster — Bright Jem, with his mild, benevolent 
 look, nodded, and passing to the further end of tlie room, seated 
 himself in one of the boxes. And the girl felt more assured of 
 bis wickedness ; and anxiously wished the return of that very nice 
 young footman — that honest, sweet-spoken young man — so loner 
 engaged in converse with his aimt. Would he never come back 1 
 It was odd, but every moment of his absence endowed him, in the 
 girl's mind, with a new charm. Bright Jem was all unconsciously 
 despoiled of every good quality, that his graceless relative, Ealph 
 Gum, might be invested ^vith a foreign excellence. 
 
 Hark ! a footstep. No ; it is not the footman : he still tarries 
 with his aunt. It is Jerry ^Vliistle, the Bow-street officer, with 
 his daily flower between his lips ; his happy face streaked like an 
 apple ; and his cold, keen, twinkling eye that seemed continually 
 employed as a search-wai-rant, looking clean through the bosoms 
 of all men. He paused before the girl, taking an inventory of her 
 qualities. And she, to repel the boldness of the fellow, tried to 
 ai-m herself with one of those thunderbolt looks that woman in her 
 dignit)' will sometimes cast about her, striking giants oif their legs 
 and lajdng them in the dust for ever. Poor thing ! it was indig- 
 nation all in vain. She might as well have frowned at Newgate 
 stones, expecting to see them tumble, as think to move one nerve 
 of Jerrys "Wliistle. Medusa, staring at that ofiicer, would have had 
 the worst of it, and bashfully, hopelessly let drop her eyeUds. 
 And so it was with the country maiden. Jerry still stared ; 
 leaving the girl nothing to do but to wonder at his impudence. 
 At length, however, ]Mr. Gum enters the room ; and Jerry, 
 glancing at him, and, as the girl thought, very much awed by his 
 presence, instantly moves away. 
 
 " Well, I 'm so glad you 're come ! " cried the girl, and her 
 eyes sparkled, not unnoticed by the footman. 
 
 " Sorry, my daffydil, to keep you waiting ; br.t aunt is such a 
 'oman for tongue. A good cretur though ; what I call a reg'lar 
 custard of a 'oman ; made o' nothing but milk and spice and 
 sugar." 
 
 " "^Vliat ! and no eggs ? Pretty custards they 'd be," cried the 
 girl, with a smile of pity for the detected ignorance. 
 
 " That 's like you women," said Mr. Gum, playiully twitching 
 the girl's bomiet-string ; "you can't allow for a bit of fancy: 
 always taking a man up, and tying him to })ai-ticlars. Well, 
 you are a rose-bud, though ! " 
 
 " Never mind : I know that : let us go to Mary Axe," and the 
 girl vigorouslv retied her bonnet-strings, and stood bolt up.
 
 SOS ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " In a minute. Just half-amoutliful of brandy and water 
 atween us ; just no more than would fill the eye of a little needle. 
 You can't think what a lot of morals my aunt always talks : and 
 you can't think how dry they always make me. Now, don't 
 shake your dear little head as if it was of no use to you : I tell 
 you, we must have a little drop, and here it is." (And Mr. Gum 
 spoke the truth.) " I ordered it as I came in." 
 
 " Not a blessed drojj — I won't, that I won't, as I 'm a sinner," 
 cried the girl with feminine emphasis. 
 
 " A sinner ! There never was a cherub on a tombstone like 
 you. T should like to hear anybody call you a sinner — 'twould 
 be a bad day's work for 'em, I can tell you. Now, just a drop. 
 Well, if you won't drink, put your lips to the edge of the glass, 
 just to sugar it." 
 
 " Well, what a cretur you are ! " said the girl ; and with cheeks 
 a little flushed, she took a bird's one sip of the liquor. 
 
 " Ha ! now it 's worth di-inking," cried Ealph ; and he backed 
 his opinion by taking a long draught. " And now," said he, 
 staring fuU in the girl's face, and taking her hand, " and now, 
 as a particlar favour, I want you to tell me one thing. Just 
 one private question I have to put. Look in my eyes, and tell 
 me what you think of love." 
 
 " Go along with your rubbish ! " exclaimed the girl ; at once 
 cutting the difficulty of a definition. Love ! Rubbish ! She 
 knew it not ; but the wench spoke ■with the tongue of old philo- 
 sophy. She gave a homely expression to the thoughts of sages, 
 anchorites, and nuns. The slurt of hah- ; the iron girdle ; the 
 flagellating thong, all declare the worthlessness of love. " Love is 
 rubbish " chants the shaven monk : and the like treason breathes 
 the white-lijiped sister, and sometimes thinks it truth. The words 
 are wi-it on monastery, convent walls, though dull and dim-eyed 
 folks without do not believe them ; and — perverse is man ! — 
 tui-n from the silver music of the syllables for jangling marriage- 
 beUs. 
 
 " Ain't you afeard the roof will tumble on you 1 Love rubbish ! 
 Why, it 's what I call the gold band about natur's hat," — for 
 liquor made the footman metaphorical. " Love, my sUp of lavender, 
 love is" 
 
 " I don't want to know nothing about it, and I wont stay a 
 minute longer from Mary Axe." And agam the girl stood up, 
 and began to push her way from the box, Mr. Ralph Gum refusing 
 to give place, at the same time lifting the teaspoon from the 
 glass, and vainly menacing her with it in the very prettiest 
 manner. 
 
 " Well, my peppermint, you shall go ; to be sure you shall.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 309 
 
 There now " And -with determined swallow, Mr. Gum 
 
 emptied the glass to prove his devotedness to her will. " We '11 
 pay at the bar, my poppy. Don't forget your bundle. Got your 
 best things in it, eh 1 JDon't forget it, then." 
 
 A smile, with something of contempt in it, played about the 
 maiden's lip. Forget it 1 — as if any woman ever forgot a bundle, 
 the more especially when it contained any of those vestments 
 that, looked upon with thoughtful, melancholy eyes, are only 
 flowing, shining proofs of a fallen state, though the perverse 
 ingenuity of the sex contrives to give a prettiness to the livery of 
 sin, to the badges of our lapsed condition. When we remember 
 that both sorts of millinery, male and female, are the consequences 
 of original wickedness, ought not the manly heart to shrink, and 
 feel a frog- like coldness at an embroidered waistcoat ? Ought not 
 woman, smitten with the recollection of the treason of her great 
 mother, to scream even at the rustling of a pompadour, as at the 
 mo^ving scales of a gliding snake ? She ought ; but we fear she 
 seldom does. Nay, sometimes she actually loves — detenninedly 
 loves — fine clothes, as though she had first waked in Paradise, like 
 a queen from a siesta, in velvet and brocade, with jewels in her 
 hair, and court-plaster stars upon her cheek. With heart-breaking 
 perverseness, she refuses to admit the naked truth to her soul, that 
 the milliner came into the world with death. Otherwise, could 
 philosophy with its diamond point engrave this truth upon the 
 crystal heart of woman, it would very much serve to lessen pin- 
 money; We have heard it said — of course we immediately wrapt 
 our countenance in our cloak, and ran from the slanderer — that 
 woman fell for no other purpose than to wear fine clothes. In the 
 prescience which she shared with man she saw the looms of the 
 futiu-e woi'ld at work, and lost herself for a shot sai-snet. It is 
 just as possible, too, that some of her daughters may have tripped 
 at the window of a mercer. 
 
 We cannot at this moment put our finger upon the passage, 
 but surely it is somewhere written in the Talmud, that Eve on 
 leaving Eden already took with her a choice and very various 
 wardrobe. We have entirely forgotten the name of the writer 
 who gives a very precise account of the moving. Nevertheless, 
 many of the details are engraved— as with pen of iron upon rock 
 — on our heart. First came a score of elephants ; they, marching 
 with slow pace, carried our first mother's go^^ms bestowed in 
 wicker-work. To a hundred and fifty camels were consigned the 
 caps and 'kerchiefs. And our author, we remember, compassion- 
 ately dwells upon a poor dromedary, — one of two hundred—that, 
 overladen with bonnet-boxes, refused to get upon his legs until the 
 load was lightened by half, and another hunchbacked beast
 
 310 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 appointed to share the burden. Whole droves of ponies that have 
 since made their way to Wales and Shetland, carried shoes and 
 silk stockings, (with the zodiac gold-worked for clocks,) and ruffs 
 and wimples, and farthingales and hoods, and all the various 
 artillery that down to our day, from masked batteries aim at the 
 heart of heedlet-s, unsuspecting, ingenuous man, — weapons that, 
 all imseen, do sometimes overthrow him ! And in this way, 
 according to the Talmudist, did Eve move her wai'drobe into the 
 plain country ; and in so very short a time — so active is woman, 
 with her heart like a silkworm, working for fine clothes — did our 
 first mother get about her, what she, with natural meekness called, 
 only a few things ; but which Adam — and at bnly the nine 
 thousandth package, with an impatient sulkiness that we fear has 
 descended to some of his sons — denominated a pack of trumpery. 
 If women, then, are sensitive in the matter of bundles, they inherit 
 the tenderness from their first rosy mother. And our country 
 wench, though we think she had never read the Talmud, had an 
 instinctive love for tlie fine clothes she carried with her. — An 
 instinct given her by the same beneficent law that teaches parrots 
 and cockatoos to preen their i-adiant feathers. 
 
 Whilst, with profane fingers — like an allowed shopman — we 
 have twiddled with the legendary silks and muslins, and other 
 webs the propei'ty of Eve : whilst we have counted the robe-laden 
 elephants, and felt our heart melt a little at the crying, eloquent 
 pathos of the bonnet- crushed dromedary, Mr. Ralph Gum has 
 paid for his liquor, and, his heart generous with alcoliol, has stept 
 into Bow-street. Glowing with bnmdy and benevolence, he heroi- 
 cally observed — " Never mind the bundle. I don't care if any of 
 our folks do see me. So, my heart's honeysuckle, take my arm." 
 And, with little hesitation — for now they could not be very far 
 from St. Mary Axe — the girl linked herself to that meek footman. 
 " Don't know what place this is, of course ] Covent-garden 
 market, my bluebell. This is where we give ten guineas a pint 
 for green peas, and " 
 
 " Don't they choke you ? " cried the wench, astounded at what 
 she thought a sinfulness of stomach. 
 
 " Go down all the sweeter," answered the epicurean vassal. 
 " Wlien they get to ten shillings a peck, they 're out of our square 
 altogether ; only fit for pigs. Noble place, isn't it 1 Will you 
 have a nosegay i Not but what you 're all a nosegay yourself ; 
 nevertheless, you shall have something to sweeten you ; for that 
 Mary Axe— well, I wouldn't set you against it— but for you to 
 live there ; you, a sweet little cretur that smells of nothing but 
 cow's breath and new-mown hay ;— why. it 's just murder in a 
 slow manner. So do have a nosegay ; " and Mr. Gum insisted
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 311 
 
 upon disbursing threepence for a bunch of wallflowers, which — 
 against his wish and intention — she herself placed in her bosom 
 Then he said : "I do pity you, going to Mary Axe." 
 
 " But I 'm not a gouig to stay there," said the girl : " no — 
 I 'm only going to see master, and he 's to take me into the 
 country, to live with sich a sweet young lady." 
 
 " Well, there '11 be a couple of you," said Ealph, " I 'm blessed 
 if there won't. And whereabouts ? " 
 
 " That 's telling," replied the girl ; as though she stored up a 
 proibimd secret in her heart, that it would take at least five 
 minutes for Ralph's picklock tongue to come at. This Ealph 
 felt, so said no more about it. 
 
 " And here, in this place, we make our Members for West- 
 minster — things for Pai'liament, you know." 
 
 " How droll ! Wliat should they bring 'em like turnips to 
 market for 1 " inquired the wench, wonderuig. 
 
 " Don't you know ? Because they may be all the nearer the 
 bad 'tatoes and the cabbage stumps. That 's what our porter tells 
 me is one of the rights of the constitution ; to pelt everybody as puts 
 himself up to go into Parliament. Well, I 've been done out of 
 a nice chance, I have," said the footman with sudden melancholy. 
 
 " What do you mean 1 Not lost anything ] " and the girl 
 looked sweetly anxious. 
 
 " Ain't I, though ? You see, his lordship, my young master, 
 went and stood in the country ; and I couldn't go down with him. 
 Now, if he 'd only put up for Westminster, I 'd just have come 
 here in plain clothes, and dressing myself as if I was a blackguard, 
 shouldn't he have known what bad 'tatoes was ! " 
 
 " Why, you wicked cretur ! you wouldn't have thrown 'em at 
 him ? " 
 
 " Oh, wouldn't I though ! " cried Mr. Gum, and he passed his 
 tongue round his lips, enjoyingly. 
 
 " What for 1 Is he sich a wicked master — sich a very bad 
 man 1 " inquired the girl. 
 
 " Don't know that he is. Only you can*t think what a pleasure 
 it is to get the upper hand of high folks for a little while ; and 
 'tatoes and cabbage stumps do it. It 's a satisfaction, that 's all," 
 said the footman. 
 
 " I won't walk with you — not another step," and the wench 
 angrily withdrew her arm. 
 
 " There you go, now ; there you go. Just like all you women ; 
 if a man makes a harmless joke, — and that 's all I meant— you 
 scream as if it was a flash of hghtning. Bless you ! I 'd go to the 
 world's end for my master, even if I never was to see Mm again. 
 That I would, my sprig of parsley."
 
 312 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Is this the way to Mary Axe 1 If I "m not there directly, I '11 
 ask somebody else." 
 
 " Just round this turning, and it 's no way at all." And 
 Mr. Gum went through the market, and through street after 
 street, and threaded two or three courts, the girl looking now 
 impatient, now distrustful. At length Ealph paused. " My dear, 
 if I havn't left something at my aunt's ! In that house, there ; 
 just step in a minute, while I call for it." 
 
 " No, I sha'n't," answered the Avench, with a determination that 
 somewhat startled Mr. Gum. " I sha'n't go into any house at all, 
 afore I come to Mary Axe. And if you don't show me the way 
 directly, I '11 scream." 
 
 " Why, what a little sweet-briar you are ! Don't I tell you, my 
 aunt lives there ? A nice, good old soul, as would be glad to see 
 you — glad to see anybody I brought to her. I tell you what, now, 
 if I must say the truth, I told her what a nice girl you was ; and 
 how you was waiting for me ; and the good old 'oman began to 
 scold me ; and asked me why I didn't bring you here. I sha'n't 
 stop a minute — not a minute." 
 
 The girl looked up in Ralph's face ; looked up so trustingly, and 
 again so innocently placed her arm in his, that that great-hearted 
 footman must have felt subdued and honoured by the confidence 
 of his companion. And so he was about to hand her across his 
 aunt's threshold — he was about to bring her face to face with that 
 venerable, experienced, yet most mild woman, — when, suddenly, 
 he felt his right ear seized as by a pair of iron pincers, and the 
 next moment he felt himself spinning round and round ; and the 
 very next moment he lay tumbled in a heap upon the pavement. 
 His heart bursting with indignation, he looked up, and — somehow, 
 again he felt another tumble, for he saw in his assailant Bright 
 Jem, his mother's brother-in-law ; the meddlesome, low fellow, 
 that had always taken it upon himself to talk to him. A few paces 
 distant, too, was Mr. Whistle, Bow-street officer, serenely turning 
 his flower between his lips, and with both his hands in his pockets, 
 looking down upon tlie footman as though he was of no more 
 account than a toadstool. Of course, the girl screamed as the 
 as.sault was committed ; of course, for a few moments her rage 
 against the ruffian, — the ugly man who had, and so like his impu- 
 dence, spoken to her at the Brown Bear, — was deep and womanly. 
 But suddenly the face of Mr. Gum grew even a little darker; 
 and the wench, though no scholar, read treason in every black 
 line. Hence, with growing calmness, she beheld Mr. Gum elabo- 
 rately rub himself, as he slowly rose from the pavement. 
 
 " Who spoke to you 1 What did you do that for 1 " Such was 
 the poor i)latitude that the smitten footman uttered : for guilt was
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. .-^IS 
 
 at his heart ; detection weighed upon him, and he could not 
 crow. 
 
 " Doesn't his aunt hve here 1 " cried the gu-1. " He said it was 
 his aunt tliat wanted to see me ? " 
 
 " The only aunt he ever had," said Bright Jem, " is in heaven ; 
 and — I know it — she 's a Hushing for him this very minute. I 
 say, Whistle, couldn't we help him to a little Bridewell for all 
 this ? " 
 
 Mr. Whistle, shifting his flower to the corner of his mouth, was 
 about to say something ; but it was clear that Mr. Gum had not 
 at the moment either taste or leisure to attend to legal opinions. 
 He therefore took to his heels ; and he never ran so fast, because, 
 perhaps, he never felt so little as he ran. 
 
 " Now wasn't I right. Whistle 1 And didn't I say that there 
 was mischief in him ? And wasn't it lucky we followed him from 
 the Bear 1 Well, he has a nice crop of early wickedness, hasn't 
 he ? " Thus spoke Bright Jem, with a face of wonder. Mr. Whistle, 
 however, was in no way disconcerted or astonished. He was one 
 of those unfortunate people — though he himself considei^ed his 
 happy superiority to arise from the circumstance — who had seen 
 so much wickedness, that any amount or eccentricity of evil failed 
 to surprise him. He therefore twirled the flower in his mouth, 
 and remarked a little plaintively — " Wliy was you so quick ? If 
 you 'd only had patience, we might have sent him to Bridewell ; 
 and now, you 've spoilt it all — spoilt it all." With these words, 
 and a brief shadow of disappointment on his brow, the officer 
 departed. 
 
 " Poor little soul ! " cried Jem, taking the girl's hand, and 
 lookmg paternally m her face — " where did you come from — and 
 where are you going to 1 Come, you '11 answer me, now, won't 
 you ? " 
 
 " I come from Kent, and I 'm going to Maiy Axe. That young 
 man, I thought, was takmg me the way " — 
 
 " Poor little lamb ! You wouldn't think he was old enough for 
 .so big a \dllain ; but somehow, he's been reared in a hot-bed, and 
 has spindled up 'stonishingly. He 's my wife's sister's child, and 
 I will say this for his father ; he was as good and as honest a 
 nigger as ever a Christian white man stole to turn a penny with. 
 But we can't send goodness down from father to son ; it can't be 
 willed away, like the family spoons. ' Vu-tue,' as Mr. Capstick 
 says, ' like vice, doesn't always descend in a right line ; but often 
 goes in a zigzag.' " 
 
 The girl was an attentive hstener ; but we fear did not very 
 perfectly understand the uttered philosophy. She, liowever, felt 
 that she had been snatched from peril by the interference of the
 
 314 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 odd aiid ugly-looking man before her, and gratitude and confidence 
 stirred in her woman's heart. " Bless you, sir ; I was very 
 uncivil, but I thought — that is — I 'm in such a tremble — can you 
 take me to Mary Axe 1 I 'm going to a place. Perhaps you 
 know the gentleman — Mr. Snipetou ? I mean Mrs. Snipeton, his 
 beautiful young wife ? " 
 
 Jem stared, and marvelled at the strangeness of the accident. 
 He, however, owned to no acquaintance with the fortunate owner 
 of the lady. " Take my ann," he said, " and I '11 leave you at 
 the very door." With this Jem proceeded onward, and at length 
 turned into Long Acre. Passing the door of Capstick — for we 
 beheve we have already informed the reader that the member for 
 Liqiiorish had taken humble lodgings in that district — the door 
 opened, and the senator himself, with no less a person than 
 Mr. Tangle, attoraey-at-law, advanced to the thi'eshold. 
 
 " Eh, Jem ! What 's this 1 A thing from the buttercups ? 
 Where did you pick it up 1 " cried Capstick. Now the wench was 
 no grammarian, yet she seemed to have a born knowledge that 
 " it " apphed to one of the female gender was alike a violation of 
 grammar and good-breeding. Therefore she echoed " it " between 
 her teeth, with of course a significant tossing of the head. 
 
 Jem observed the working of the feminine mind, and imme- 
 diately whispered to the girl — " He 's my master and a member 
 of Parliament ; but the best cretur in the world." Jem then in a 
 bold voice informed the senator that " the young 'omau was come 
 up from the country to go to service at Mr. Snijjeton's." 
 
 " Bless me ! wliat a very strange accident ! Come to Mr. 
 Snipeton's, eh 1 How very odd ! " cried Tangle, feeling that he 
 ought to speak. 
 
 In the meantime Bright Jem, with commendable brevity, whis- 
 pered to Capstick the history of his meeting with the gentle way- 
 faier. " Well, and she looks an innocent thing," said Capstick, 
 his face scarlet with indignation at Jem's story. "She looks 
 imiocent ; but after all she 's a woman, Jem ; and women can 
 look whatever they hke. They 've a wonderful way of passuig 
 pocket-pieces for virgin gold. I don't beheve any of 'em ; never- 
 theless, Jem, run for a coach ; and as Mr. Tangle and myself are 
 going to Snipeton's, we can all go together. I dare say, young 
 woman, you 're tired of walking 1 You look so ; if, as I say, looks 
 are anything. Jem, run for the coach. Come up stairs." And 
 with this mvitation, Capstick gently clasped the arm of the maiden 
 — a little awe-struck that she felt the i^ressure of tliat mysterious, 
 solenm creature, a live member of parliament — and led her, 
 ascending, to his room. Mr. Tangle followed, much scandalised 
 at the familiarity of the legislator ; and fortifying himself with
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 315 
 
 the determination, not, without a vehement remonstrance, to ride 
 in the same hackney-coach with a maid-of-all-work. 
 
 Mr. Capstick had, he was accustomed to declare, furnislied liis 
 room with a vigiLant eye to his duties as a member of parliament. 
 Over his mantel-jjiece was Magna Charta, fi'amed and glazed. " A 
 fine historic iictiou," he would say ; " a beautifid legend ; a nice 
 sing-song to send men to sleep, like the true and tragical history 
 of Cock Robin chaunted to children." He was wont to chuckle 
 mightily at the passage — a fine stretch of ftmcy he would call it — 
 about " selling or deferring justice," and vow it ought to be written 
 in blood-red letters in the Court of Chancery. " There is fine, 
 grave comedy, in this sheet, sir ; an irony that strengthens the 
 nerves Uke a steel draught. They ought to hang it up on board 
 the Tower Tender ; 'twould make pretty reading for the fi-ee-born 
 Englishman, kidnapped from wife and children to fight, and, by 
 the grace of the cat, to be cut into a hero to vomit songs about." 
 And in this irreverent, rebellious fashion would the member for 
 Liquorish talk of Magna Charta. He called it a great national 
 romance ; and never foiled to allude to it as evidence of the 
 value of fine fiction upon a people. " Because it ought to be 
 true," he would say, " they think it is." 
 
 And the misanthrope member had odd nicknack toys ; and all, 
 as he said, to continually remind him of his duties as a senator 
 and a citizen. He had a model of George the Third's new drop 
 in mahogany. " One of the institutions of my covmtry," he would 
 say, " improved under the reign of my gracious sovei'eign. Some 
 folks hang up the royal portrait. Now I prefer the works of a 
 man to his looks. Every ordinary mornmg I bow once to that 
 engine as a type of the wisdom and philanthropy of a Christian 
 land ; once on common occasions, and thiee times on hanging- 
 days." Besides this, he had a toy piUory ; with a dead mouse 
 fixed, and twirhng in it. " And when I want an unbending of 
 the immortal mind withm me — by the way," Capstick once said 
 to Tangle, " what a bow we do sometimes make of the immortal 
 mind, the better to shoot at one another with — when I want to 
 unbend a little, I place the pillory before me, and pelt the mouse 
 with cherry-stones and crumbs. And you wouldn't believe it, but 
 it does me quite as much good — quite as much — as if the dead 
 mouse was a living man, and the stones and crumbs were mud 
 and eggs." 
 
 There were other fantastic movables which, for the present, 
 we must pass. Mr. Capstick, to the astonishment of Tangle, 
 approached a corner cupboard, takmg therefrom a decanter of 
 wine and a glass. " You are tired, young woman ; and sometimes 
 a little of this— just a little— is medicine to the weary." He
 
 316 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 then poured out the wine ; which the wench obediently swallowed. 
 Had it been the most nauseous drug, there was such a mixture of 
 kindness and authority in the manner of the member of parlia- 
 ment, — the physic must have gone down. 
 
 " ]Mi-. Capstick, one word," said Tangle, and he drew the 
 senator to a corner of the room. " Doubtless, I made a mistake. 
 But you know we have important business to transact : and no, 
 you never intend to go to Mr. Snipeton's in the same coach with 
 that gentleman's maid-of-all-work 1 " 
 
 " She won't bite, -nail she ? " asked Capstick. 
 
 " Bite ! " echoed Tangle. 
 
 " Coach is at the door, sir," said Bright Jem, entering the 
 room, 
 
 " Go you first," said Capstick to Tangle, in a tone not to be 
 mistaken ; " I 'II bring the young woman." And if Tangle had 
 been really a four-footed dog, he would, as he went down stairs, 
 have felt a great depression of the caudal member, whilst the 
 senatorial muffin-maker tript after him with the ignominious 
 maid-of-all-work. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 For some days Snipeton had half resolved to surprise his wife 
 with a present ; a dear and touching gift, — the miniature of her 
 father. Again and again he had determined upon the graceful 
 act ; and as often put the expensive thought aside — trod the weak- 
 ness down as an extravagant folly. And then it would occur to 
 his benevolence, that he might niake a bargain with himself, and 
 at the same time impart a pleasure to his spouse. The miniature 
 wa-s enriched with diamonds ; first-water gems, he knew, for he 
 had lent gold upon them ; though his wife — at the time of the 
 loan she was yet unmanacled — was vinconscious of the ready 
 money kindness. Her father had withered, died, in the clutch of 
 the usurer ; who still cherished the portrait of the dead man — it 
 was so very dear to liim. The picture had been a bridal present 
 to Clarissa's mother ; it had lain warm in her wedded bosom ; 
 though Snipeton, when he grasped the precious security, knew 
 nothing of its history. Well, he would certainly delight Clarissa 
 with this sweet remembrance of her ftither. She knew not of its 
 existence, and would bless and love her husband for his sudden 
 goodness. He would give the wife the miniature ; it w;is settled : 
 he would do it. " What ! with the diamonds ? " cried Snipeton's
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 317 
 
 careful genius, twitching his heartstrings, to pull hini up in his 
 headlong course. "With the diamonds, Ebenezer Suipeton ? 
 Are you grown lunatic — doting ? Diamonds, eternal diamonds, 
 — diamonds everlasting as the sun — the spiritualised essence of 
 Gain — diamonds for one flickering look ; for one sick smile from 
 witheiiug lips ? Have you forgotten the worth of wealth '] Lost 
 man ! are you suddenly dead to arithmetic ? Give diamonds to 
 your wife 1 Pooh ! pooh ! As women love anything that glitters 
 — and as moreover they love Jack-o'-lanthonis just as well as 
 heaven's own stars — don't throw away the real treasure ; but 
 mock it ; sham it ; pass oil a jeweller's lie, and let the picture 
 blaze with the best and brightest paste. He 's a fool who tlirows 
 peaiis to pigs, and thinks the pork wUl eat the licher for the 
 treasure. He 's no less a fool who showers diamonds upon his 
 wife when, knowing no better, paste will make her just as 
 grateful." And Snipeton gave all his ears to this scoundrel 
 genius, that lived in his heart like a maggot in a nut, consuming 
 and rotting it. There were times, though, when the genius slept ; 
 and then Snipeton — ignorant, unadvised man — was determined to 
 be honest, generous. He would not countenance the fi-aud of 
 false setting. No ; his bird of Paradise ; his lamb ; his darling 
 Clarissa ; the queen flower in his life's gai-den — for she was this 
 and all of these — should have the diamonds. Besides, if given to 
 her, they were still his own ; for according to the sweet rights of 
 a husband, property so bestowed — vidth no parchment to bind it — 
 might at any tune be reclaimed by the lawful lord. After all, it 
 was but lending his wife the diamonds ; though — gentle simpleton ! 
 — she might still be tickled with the thought that they were wholly 
 hers. 
 
 It was the morning after the visit of Crossboue ; and 
 Snipeton seated betimes at his cottage window — his eye fii-st 
 wandering among some flowers — his wife's only children as he once 
 bitterly called them — and at length fixed upon the labours of a 
 bee that toiled among the blossoms, taking sweet per-centage for 
 its honey bank : it was at such a time that Snipeton again pondered 
 on the diamonds. Again he revolved the special pleading of his 
 thrifty genius : again attended to the counter-reasoning of his 
 aff"ections ; allowing that he had them, and again allowing that 
 afiections do reason. He watched the bee— conscientious porter ! 
 —load itself to its utmost strength, and then buzz heavily thi'ough 
 the casement. The insect had taken all it could carry. ^ Wise, 
 frugal, man-teaching insect. No : Snipeton would not give the 
 diamonds. He would keep all he could : in his own grasp. _ All. 
 And the determination, like a cordial, mightily comforted him. 
 At this moment Clarissa entered the room from hev chamber.
 
 318 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Suipeton suddenly rose as to an angelic visitor. His wife looked 
 so beautiful — so very beautiful. With such new sweetness in her 
 face ; such beaming mildness in her eyes ; there was such grace 
 in her motion, that love and vanity swelled in the old man's heart ; 
 and his hand strangely trembled as it greeted her. His pi'udential 
 genius was on the sudden paralysed and dumb. Clarissa looked 
 at her husbiuid, as he thought, never before so lo\ingly — and for 
 the moment, the miser glowed \\ath the prodigal. 
 
 " Why, you ai-e bettei-, love ; much better. Even Crossbone's 
 talk has revived you. Ha ! and we '11 have this horse, and 
 straightway : and — and the rose of my life will bloom again. 
 Look here, my love." It was done : even at the last, one spasm 
 of the heart it cost, but it was over. The miniature — that 
 diamond-circled piece of ivory and paint — was in Clarissa's hand. 
 Astonished, happy, she said no word, but kissed the sudden gift ; 
 again and again kissed it, and her tears flowed. " I have often 
 thought — indeed, have long determined to give it you," cried 
 Snipetou. 
 
 " Thank — thank you, dear sir. Indeed, you have made me 
 very happy," answered his wife. 
 
 His wife ! Did she answer like his wife ? Was it the voice of 
 his twin soul — did the flesh of his flesh move with her lips 'I Was 
 it his other incorporate self that spoke ? Did he listen to the 
 echoes of his own heart ; or to the voice of an alien ? When the 
 devil jealousy begins to question, how rapid his interrogations ! 
 
 " I tell you," said Snipeton, " I repeat — I have all along deter- 
 mined that you should have it ; in good season, have it. Your 
 father's picture, who with so great a right to it ? He told me 
 'twas once your mother's. She wore it, till her death. Poor 
 thing ! He must have loved her vei-y dearly. Wlien he spoke 
 of her, and never willingly, he would tremble as with the ague." 
 Clarissa bowed her head ; was silent ; and again kissed the 
 picture. "This fondness — these tears, Clarissa, must — if spirits 
 know such matters — be precious to your fathei', now once more 
 joined with your mother in heaven. Why, what 's the matter ? 
 So pale — so lily white ; Avhat is it, love 'I " 
 
 " Nothing, sir ; nothing but the surprise — the joy at this gift," 
 faintly answered Clai-issa. 
 
 " Well, I see it has delighted you. I hoped so. Much 
 deliglited you : very much. You have kissed the picture fifty 
 tunes, Ckrissa. Is it not fifty — or have I falsely counted ? Tell 
 me. Filly — is it not 1 " 
 
 "I cannot tell, sir," replied- the wife, timidly. "Can they— 
 ought they to be counted ? " 
 
 " Why — but then, I am a cold arithmetician — I can count
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 319 
 
 tlieni ; at least, all that fall to my lips. Can you not tell the 
 number vouchsafed to the gift '/ Strange ! I can count, ay, 
 every one, bestowed upon the giver." Mournfully, and with some 
 bitterness did Snipetou speak. His wife, with a slight tremor — 
 suppressed by strong, sudden will — approached him. Pale, shud- 
 dering victim ! with mixed emotions figliting in her face, she 
 bowed her head, and placing her cold arms about the old man's 
 neck, she closed her eyes, and kissed his lips. 
 
 " Indeed, sir, I thank you. Pardon me ; indeed I thank you 
 for this and all your goodness." She felt relieved ; she had paid 
 the demanded debt. 
 
 And Suipeton — poor old man ! — was he made happy by that 
 caress 1 How much real love was in it 1 How mucli truth ? 
 How much hypocrisy ? Or at the best, enforced obedience 1 It 
 came not from the heart : no ; it wanted blood and soul. It was 
 not the fiery eloquence of love, telling a life's devotion with a 
 touch. It was not that sweet communing of common thoughts, 
 and common affections ; that deep, that earnest, and yet placid 
 intercliange of wedded soul with soul. In his heart, ae in a 
 crucible, the old man sought to test that kiss. Was it truth, or 
 falsehood ? And as he pondered — how mysteriously are we 
 fashioned ! — a thing of forty years ago rose freshly to his mind. 
 What brought it there 1 — yet, there it was. The figure, the face of 
 one who with j^roved perjury at his lips kissed the book, swearing 
 the oath was true. 
 
 Clarissa saw her husband suddenly dashed with gloomy thoughts. 
 They reproached her ; and, instinctively, she returned to the old 
 man's side, and laying her hand upon his brow — had the hand 
 been a sunbeam, it had not lighted the face more suddenly, brightly 
 — she spoke to him very tenderly : " Are you not well, sir 1 " 
 
 " Quite well ; always well, Clarissa, \^ath you at my side — with 
 you as even now." And she looked so cheerful, yes, so affection- 
 ate, — he had wronged her. He was a fool — an exacting fool — with 
 no allowance for the natural reserve, the unconquerable timidity, 
 of so gentle a creature. " And, as 1 was saying, you are better ; 
 
 much better ; and we 'II have this horse ; and but, Claiy, 
 
 love, we have forgotten breakfast." Eesolved upon a full meal, 
 Snipeton moved to the table ; and Avhilst he strove to eat, he 
 talked quite carelessly, and, by the way, of a matter that a little 
 disturbed him. "And how do you find Mis. Wilton, eh, 
 dearest 1 " 
 
 Clarissa, with troubled looks, answered—" Find her, sir ? Is 
 she not all we could -wish 1 " 
 
 " Oh, honest, quiet, and an excellent housekeeper, no doubt 
 Do you know her story ? "
 
 320 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 •• Story, sir I " and Clari.ssa trembled as she spoke. " What 
 storv ? " 
 
 " Her story ? H;vs she not one I Everybody, it 's my opinion, 
 has ; but liere 's the rub : everybody won't tell it, can't tell it, 
 mustn't toll it. Is it not so ? " 
 
 " It is never my thought, sir ; my wish to question your expe- 
 rience. You know the world, you say. l\)r my part, I never 
 wish to know it. My hope is, to die in my ignorance." 
 
 " True ; you are right ; I would have it so. For it is a know- 
 ledge that — but no matter. My learning sliall serve for both. 
 Well, she never toKl you her story l " With this, Snipeton looked 
 l)iercingly at his wife, who at tii-st answei-ed not. At length she 
 asked, " Do you know it, sir \ " 
 
 "No : but it is plain she h;us a story. I am firm in the faitli." 
 '' Some grief — some sacred sorrow, perhaps," said Clarissa. 
 " We should respect it : should we not ] " 
 
 " Why, grief and sorrow are convenient words, and often do 
 duty for sin and shame," cried Snipeton. 
 
 " Sin and shame are grief and soirow, or should be so," replied 
 Clarissa, mournfully. 
 
 "Humph! WelJ, yiei-haps they are. However, Mrs. Wilton's 
 story is no atfair of ours," said Snipeton. 
 " Assuredly not," cried Clarissa, quickly. 
 
 " But her melancholy is. 'Tis catching ; ;uid infects you. Her 
 bad spirits, her gloom, seem to touch all about her with mildew. 
 A bad conscience — or a great grief — 'tis no matter which, throws 
 a black shadow about it ; and to come at once to my meiuiiug, 
 Clarissii, I thuik Mi-s. Wilton had better quit." 
 
 " Oil, sir ! " exchumed Clarissa. " 'Twould break lur heart — it 
 would indeed, sir." 
 
 " It 's wonderful how long people live, ay, and enjoy themselves, 
 too, with broken hearts, Cliu-iss;u I Ve otlen thought broken 
 he;u"ts were like broken china : to be put nicely together again, 
 anil — but for the look of the thing — to be quite as useful for all 
 house-work as before. Now Mi-s. Wilton's heart " — 
 
 " Do not speak of it. If — if you have any love for me, sir " — 
 cried Claris.sa. 
 
 " Jf I have love ! Well, what think you ''' Have I not — even 
 a few minutes since — given good proof?' it was somewhat 
 distuitefnl to the old nuui, that after the gift of such diamonds, his 
 loVe could be doubted. He had better have listened to his good, 
 his wise, his jirofitable genius, and ]>resented paste. How many 
 wives — howevi'r badly used and industriously neglected — would 
 still bestow their love ! Now he, even with ditunonds, could not 
 buy it. For his wife to doubt his love, was to refuse her onvh.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 321 
 
 Tliis his philosophy made certain. And this after the dia- 
 monds ! 
 
 " Nay, I am sure of your love, sir ; certain ; most confident," 
 said Clarissa, very calm in such assurance. " And therefore know 
 you will refuse me nothing. Eh, dear sir 1 " 
 
 Again Snipeton's heartstrings j-elaxed ; again, listening to the 
 music of the enchantress, his darker thoughts began to pass away, 
 and his soul enjoyed new sunlight. "Nothuig — nothing," he said, 
 " that is Jiealthful." 
 
 " Then promise me that Mrs. Wilton shall i-emain. Indeed, 
 yon know not how much I have learned of her ; how much she 
 loves me ; how much she respects you." 
 
 " Respect is a cold virtue, I know, Clarissa ; very cold. Now, 
 with her 'tis freezing. I sometimes think she looks at me, as 
 though — but I '11 say no more. She blights your si)irits ; darkens 
 your thoughts with her sorrow or her sin, or whatever it may be ; 
 and, in a word, she shall stay no longer. I am resolved." 
 
 " Blights me ! Darkens my thoughts ! Oh, sir, I would you 
 heard her talk. I would yon knew the pains she takes to make 
 me hapijy ; to make me cheerful ; to place all things in the 
 liappii'st light, shedding, as she does, the beauty of her si)irit 
 over all. Doubtless, she has suffered, but " 
 
 " But — but she goes. I am i-esolved, Clarissa ; she goes. 
 Eesolved, I say." 
 
 And Ebenezer Snipeton struck the table with his fist ; and 
 threw himself back in his chair, as he believed, a statue of 
 humanity, hardened by resolution into flint. And very j^-oud he 
 felt of the petrifaction. Nor lightnings, nor thuuderbults should 
 melt or move him. 
 
 Clarissa — her suit was for a mother— rose from her chair, and 
 stood beside her husband. She threw her arms about his neck. 
 Flmt as he Wixs he felt they were not so lumpish, clay-like as 
 wlien last they lay there. " Dear sir, you '11 not refuse me this ? 
 You '11 not refuse me 1 " And Clarissa for once looked full in the 
 eyes of her husband. 
 
 " Eesolved," said Snipeton thickly ; and something rose m his 
 throat. " Eesolved." 
 
 "No ; no. You must promise me — you shall not leave me 
 without," and the arms pressed closer ; and the flint they 
 embraced became soft as any whetstone. " You ^nll not deprive 
 me of her solicitude— her aifection ? " Snipeton answered nut ; 
 wdien Chu-issa — in such a cause what cared she for tlie s;icritice ? 
 — stoojiing, kissed her liusband with a deep and fervent atfection 
 for her mkher. And the statue was suddenly tunied to thrill u)g 
 flesh : had the old man's heart been stuck with thorns, his wile's 
 
 Y
 
 322 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 lips would have drawn tliem all away, and made it beat with 
 burning blood. The man was kissed for an old woman ; but he 
 set the rapture to his own account, and was directly rich with 
 imaginary wealth. Need we say the man consented ? "What 
 otherwise could strong resolution do ? 
 
 A new man, wdth a newer, brighter world beaming about him, 
 Snipeton that day departed from his rustic home to St. Mary Axe. 
 His wife seemed to travel with him, he was so haunted by her 
 looks of new-born love. And now he hummed some ancient, 
 thoughtless song ; and now he smacked his lijjs, as with freshened 
 recollection of the touch that liad enriched them. The mist and 
 cloud of doubt that had hung about his life had passed away, and 
 he saw peacefulness and beauty clearly to the end. And these 
 thoughts went with him to his dai-k and dismal city nook, and 
 imparted deeper pleasures even to the bliss of money-making. 
 
 This once, at least, St. Giles was in luck. A few minutes only 
 after Snipeton's arrival, with his new hapj^iness fresh upon him, 
 the young man presented himself with a letter from Crossbone. 
 " He looks an honest fellow ; a very honest fellow," thought 
 Snipeton, eyeing him. " 'Tis a bad world ; a wicked world ; 
 yet, when all 's said, there are some honest people ; yes, there 
 must be some." And this charitable thought enhanced for the 
 nonce St. Giles. He could not have come in hapjiier season. 
 " Humph ! and you have known Mr. Crossbone some time ? To 
 be sure, he told me, from a child And your father was killed, 
 trying to do good ? That 's hard ; plaguy hard ; for people ar'n't 
 often killed hi that humour. And you 've been kind — very kind 
 to your mother 1 Well, that 's something ; I think I may trust 
 you. Yes : you may consider yourself engaged. When can you 
 come ? " 
 
 " Directly, sir," said St. Giles ; who had been duly impressed 
 by Crossbone with the necessity of obtaining Snipeton's patron- 
 age ; it was so very essential to the happiness of his lordship. 
 " Be vigilant, be careful," thus had run the apothecary's counsel, 
 " and his lordship will make a man of you ! " What a golden 
 prospect for one who, with the hopes and worthy desires of a man, 
 knew himself to be a social wolf in the human fold ; a thing to be 
 destroyed, hung up ; a wholesome example to runaway vagabonds. 
 To be made a man of, what a load must he lay down ! What a 
 joy, a blessing, to stand erect in the world— and be allowed to 
 meet the eyes of men with confiding looks ! Now, he crept and 
 crawled ; and felt that his soul went upon all-fours. Now, he at 
 times shrunk from a sudden gaze, as from a drawn knife. And 
 his lordship would make a man of him ! Glorious labour, this ; 
 divine handiwork ! And there is plenty of such labom-, too, in
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 323 
 
 this broad world, if we had but the earnest-hearted workers to 
 grapple with it. How many thousand thousands of human 
 animals ; creatures of outward humanity ; beings on two legs, are 
 yet to be made men of ! Again, what is a man ? You, reader, 
 may possibly ha\e a pretty correct notion of what he is, or ought 
 to be : now, Mr. Crossbone's ideal of a perfect man was but of a 
 perfect rascal. He would make a man as he would have made a 
 gin, a trap ; the more perfect the snare, the nobler the humanity. 
 And in this sense was St. Giles to be elevated into a man, for the 
 direct advantage of the young lord, and the supjjlementary benefit 
 of the apothecary. And St. Giles himself — it must not be for- 
 gotten — ^had some misgivings of the model-excellence after which 
 he was to be fashioned. It just passed through his brain that 
 the man he was to be made, might be a man, if not nearer to the 
 gallows than himself, at least a man more deser\ing (if any 
 deserved it) the elevation. There seemed to him new peril to be 
 made a man of. Yet, what could he do ? Nothing. He must 
 wait ; watch ; and take the chances as they fell. 
 
 Snipeton read the letter. Nothing could have fallen out so 
 luckily. A friend of Crossbone's — a man of honour though he 
 dealt in horseflesh — had a beautiful thing to sell ; a thing of lamb- 
 like gentleness and beauty. The very thing for Mrs. Snipeton. 
 A mare that might be reiued with a thread of silk. Moreover, 
 Mr. Snipeton might have the beast at his own price ; and that, of 
 course, would be next to no price at all. 
 
 " Do you understand horses, my man 1 " asked Snipeton, as he 
 finished the letter. 
 
 " Why, yes, sir," answered St. Giles ; and he must have 
 answered yes, had the question been of unicorns. 
 
 "Well, then" — but at this moment, Snipeton's man brought 
 in the names of Capstick and Tangle. To the great reUef of 
 St. Giles, he was ordered into an adjoimng room, there to wait. 
 He withdrew as the new visitors entered. 
 
 " Mr. Snipeton, this— this "—why did Capstick pause ?— " this 
 gentleman is Mr. Tangle, attorney " — 
 
 " Solicitor," was Mr. Tangle's meek correction. " It 's of no 
 consequence, but — solicitor." 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! It isn't my way, sir. I always say ' attorney,' 
 and then we know the worst," said Capstick. 
 
 " I have heard of Mr. Tangle. We never met before— but his 
 reputation has reached me," sneered Snipeton. 
 
 " Eeputation, sir," observed Capstick, " is sometimes like a 
 polecat ; dead or alive, its odour will spread." 
 
 " Very true ; it is ; it has," was the corroboration of Snipeton ; 
 
 and Tangle, though he tried to smile, fidgetted uneasily. 
 
 => ' => y2
 
 324 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " You are, perhaps, not aware, Mr. Snipeton, that a petition is 
 to be presented to the House of Commons — my House — for the 
 pui-])ose of turning out its present patriotic member for Liquorish 1" 
 said Capstick. 
 
 " Indeed ! Upon what ground ? " inquired Snipeton. 
 
 " Bribery. "Would you imagine it 1 Could you think it ? 
 Charge me with bribery ! " said the member. 
 
 " Pardon me. Not you ; oh, by no means ! We never do that. 
 We 're not so ill-bred. No, sii*, the crime — ^that is, the statutable 
 crime — for morals and statutes, sir, are sometimes very different 
 things — the crime of bribery is laid at the door of Mr. Capstick's 
 agents. His agents, sir," said Tangle. 
 
 " I had none : none whatever. It is my pride — if, indeed, a 
 man should be proud of an}i;hing in this dirty, iniquitous world — 
 a world of flipflaps and sumersets — my pride, that I was returned 
 purely upon my own merits ; if, indeed, I have merits ; a matter 
 I am sometimes inclmed to doubt, when I wake up from my first 
 sleep. / go into Parliament upon bribeiy ! I should think mj'self 
 one big blotch — a human boil. No ; I can lay my hand upon my 
 breast — :just where I carry my pocket-l)ook — and answer it, before 
 the world, — except the price of the hackney coach that carried 
 me to the House, my seat didn't cost me sixjaence." 
 
 " Ha, Mr. Capstick ! " cried Tangle, half closing his eyes ; 
 " you don't know what friends you had." 
 
 " Yes, sir, I do ; for I 've been intimate with them all my life. 
 Integi'ity, honour, out-speaking " — Capstick paused ; and the 
 next moment blushed, as though detected in some gross fault. 
 The truth is, he was ashamed of himself for the vain-boasting. 
 Integrity and honour ! Sui^posing that he had them — what then ? 
 Was it a matter to make a noise about ? Capstick blushed ; then 
 hurriedly said — " I beg your pardon. Go on with the bribery." 
 
 " And so they want to turn you out, eh 1 " cried Snipeton. 
 " The house of St. James can't swallow the muffin-maker. Ha ! 
 ha ! I can only wish you had been a chimney-sweeper. 'Twould 
 have been a sweeter triumph." 
 
 " I am quite contented, ]\fr. Snipeton," said Capstick, majes- 
 tically, " as it is. Not that, as one of the social arts, I despise 
 chimney-sweeping. By no means. For there may be cases in 
 which it would not be such dirty work to clean folk's chimneys, 
 as to sweep theii- pockets." 
 
 " True ; very trae," said Snipeton, who never selfishly took a 
 sarcasm to himself, when, as he thought, so many of his fellow- 
 creatures equally well deserved it. " And so to the bribeiy. We 
 must meet this petition." 
 
 " I thought so ; and therefore waited upon 'Mr. Capstick to
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 325 
 
 offer my professional sei-vices. You see, sir, I have peculiar 
 advantages— very peculiar. For although, by that unfortuuate 
 and most mysterious robbery of the gold, the bribery— on the 
 part of his lordship— was limited, rather limited ; nevertheless, I . 
 have here, sir,— here "—and Tangle tapped at his breast—" such 
 facts, that " — 
 
 " I see," said Snipeton ; " and you 'II turn yourself inside out 
 to oblige us ? " 
 
 " I am a free agent ; quite free. Being no longer his lordship's 
 legal adviser— you wouldn't think that that paltry box of gold 
 could have parted us : but so it is— there is no gratitude in the 
 great ; — being, as I say, free, sir ; and in the possession of 
 secrets " — 
 
 " If you want a cheap pennyworth of dirt you can buy it — you 
 can buy it," said Capstick. 
 
 " Mr. Capstick ! " exclaimed Tangle with a darkly solemn face, 
 "Mr. Capstick" — but the attorney thought it not profitable to 
 be indignant ; therefore he suffiered a smile to overflow his cheek, 
 as he continued — " Mr. Capstick, you 're a wag." But Tangle had 
 in this a secret consolation : for in his legal opinion he had as good 
 as called the muffin-maker " thief and housebreaker." Tangle 
 then proceeded. " Wbat I shall do, I shall do for justice. And 
 public justice, with her scales " — 
 
 " Bless my soul ! I 'd quite forgot the girl. Mr. Snipeton, your 
 maid-of-all-work from Kent is below. A droll business. Quite an 
 escape, poor thing ! But she '11 tell your wife all about it," said 
 Capstick. 
 
 " Your pardon. Just one minute ; " whereupon Snipeton 
 repaired to St. Giles. " You know my house ? Mind, I don't 
 want all the woi*ld to know it. Well, make the best of your way 
 there, and — stop. Come down stairs." And Snipeton left the room, 
 St. Giles following him. St. Giles — so Snipeton determined — 
 should at once escort the wench to Hampstead. Another minute, 
 and to the joy and ill-concealed astonishment of the pair, the girl 
 saw in St. Giles the wanderer and vagrant to whom she had given 
 the shelter of a bam — and he beheld in his new fellow-servant, 
 Becky, the soft hearted maiden of the Lamb and Star.
 
 326 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIT. 
 
 " "What is it you look at so earnestly ? " asked Mrs. Wilton : 
 and Clarissa, -with a flushed cheek, placed the miniature in 
 her bosom. Snipeton had just quitted the house — for we must 
 take back the reader to that point of time — and Clarissa sat, with 
 her heart in her eyes, gazing at the youthful features of her 
 father. As she looked, with fond curiosity comparing those 
 features, in their early bloom and strength, tempered with gentle 
 frankness ; as she gazed upon their manly, loving openness, and, 
 ■wdth her memory, evoked that melancholy, care-worn face, that, 
 smiUng on nought beside, would always smile on her, she felt — 
 she shuddered — but still slie felt anger, bitterness towards her 
 mother. Her eye, reading that face, could see where pain had 
 given a shai'per edge to time : could see where, in the living face, 
 care had doubled the work of years. Surely, she thought, so fair 
 a morning promised a fairer night. That glad and happy day 
 should have closed with a golden sunset, touching with solemn 
 happiness all it shone upon, as slowly from the earth it passed in 
 glory. These were the daughter's thoughts as she heard her 
 mother's voice. A momentai'y resentment glowed in her cheek — 
 darkened her eyes. 
 
 " Clarissa ! " 
 
 " It is nothing — a — a present from Mr. Snipeton — from my hus- 
 band," said Clarissa coldly. Her mother took her daughter's hand 
 between her own. AflFectionately pressing it, and with all a 
 mother's tenderness beaming in her face — the only look hypocrisy 
 could never yet assume — she said, " It is well, Clarissa — very well. 
 It makes me happy, deeply happy, to hear you. I think it is the 
 first time you have said ' husband.' " 
 
 " Is it so ? I carmot tell. The word escaped me. Yet I — must 
 learn to speak it." 
 
 " Oh, yes, Clarissa. Make it the music of your life ! Think 
 it a charm tliat, when pronounced, makes all earth's evils less — 
 doubling its blessings. A word that brings with it a sense of joy; 
 a strength ; a faith in human existence. A word that may clothe 
 beggary itself with content, and make a hut a temple. You may 
 still pronounce it. Oh, never, never may you know what agony 
 it Is, to forego that word. The living makes it a blessing ; and 
 the dead sanctifies and hallows it." 
 
 Clarissa felt conscience-smitten, stung with remorse. All heed-
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 327 
 
 lessly, cruelly, she had arraigned her mother ; thoughtless of the 
 daily misery that wore her : regardless of the penitence that 
 corroded and consumed her. " Forgive me," she said : " fonnve 
 me, mother. I will lay this lesson to my heart. I will learn 
 to speak the word. You shall still teach me its sustaining 
 sweetness." 
 
 " A most iinfit teacher ; most unfit," said the mother, \vith an 
 appealing look of anguish. " Your own heart will best instruct 
 you." And then, with resolute calmness, she asked : " What is 
 this present 1 " 
 
 " You shall not know to-day ; by-and-by, mother. And I have 
 a present, too, for yov;," said Clarissa ; and she looked so light, so 
 happy, that her mother for the first time dared to hope. Did the 
 young victim feel at length the wife ? Would that seeming life- 
 long sorrow pass away, and the sunshine of the heart break in 
 that clouded face 1 
 
 " I will be patient, child ; nay, I will promise what you will, I 
 feel so grateful that I see you thus cheerful — happy. Shall I not 
 say, hajjpy, Clarissa 1 " 
 
 " Oh yes ; very happy," answered the wife ; and a sudden 
 pang of heart punished the treason of the lips. " But I must not 
 be idle to-day, I have so much to do." And Clarissa seated her- 
 self at her work ; and the mother silently occupied herself. And 
 so, hour after hour passed, and scarce a word was spoken. At 
 length Dorothy Vale, with noiseless step and folded arms, stood in 
 the room. 
 
 " They be come," said Dorothy, with unmoved lace, rubbing 
 her arms. 
 
 "Who are come V asked Clarissa. 
 
 "Why, Becky be come, and a man with her," answered 
 Dorothy ; and — it was strange — but her voice seemed to creak 
 with suppressed anger. 
 
 " I am glad of that," said Clarissa ; " tell the girl to come to me 
 — directly, Dorothy." 
 
 Dorothy stood, rubbing her withered arms with renewed 
 purpose. Her brow wrinkled, and her grey, cold eyes gleamed, 
 like sharp points, in her head ; then she laughed. " She w;is 
 brought up in the workhouse : and to be put over my head ! Well, 
 it 's a world ! The workhouse ; and put over my head ! " Thus 
 muttering, she left the room. In a moment, Becky— possessed 
 with delight, swimming m a sea of happiness— was curtseying 
 before her new mistress. Now, were we not assured, past all 
 error, that it was the same country wench that half laughed at, 
 half listened to, the flatteries of the deceitful Gum, we should deny 
 her identitvwith that radiant piece of flesh and blood, that, glowing
 
 328 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 A^ith felicity, bobbed and coiitiniially bobbed before Mi-s. Snipeton. 
 Certainly, there is a subtle power of refinement in happiness : a 
 something elevating, purifying, in that expansion of the heart. 
 Sudilen bliss invests vriih sudden grace ; and gives to homeliness 
 itself a look of sweetness. The soul, for a brief time, flashes forth 
 with brighter light ; asserting itself — as human pride is sometimes 
 apt to think — hi the vulgarest, oddest sort of people. And so it 
 wjis with Becky. To be sure, all the way from St. ]\Iary Axe — 
 hanging, and sometimes at puddles and crossings, with all her 
 weight on the arm of St. Giles, she liad felt the refining process 
 hinted at above. St. Giles had talked on what he thought 
 inditferent mattere ; but the weather, the shops, the passers-by — 
 whatever his silver tongue dwelt upon — became objects of the 
 dearest interest to the hungry listener ; who now laughed, she 
 knew not why, from her over-brimming heart ; and now had much 
 ado to check her tears, that — she knew it — had risen to her eyes, 
 and threatened to flow. She walked in a region of dreams ; and 
 intoxicating music broke at every footstep. Could it be true — 
 could it be real — th?t that wayfaring, wTetched man ; that unhajipy 
 creature, with all the world hooting at him, chasing him to destruc- 
 tion, like a rabid cur, that vagabond, to a svispicious world, dyed 
 in murderous blood, was the trim, handsome — to her, how beau- 
 tiful I — young fellow walking at her side; and now and then 
 smiling so kindly upon her that her heart seemed to grow too big 
 with the blessing 1 And oh — extravagant excess of happiness ! — 
 he was to be her fellow-servant ! He would dwell under the 
 same roof with her ! Now she was steeped in bliss : and now, 
 a shadow fell upon her. Yes : it could not be. The happiness 
 was too full ; all too complete to endure. 
 
 And yet the bliss continued — nay, increased. Mrs. Snipeton, 
 that creatJire of goochiess ; that angel of Becky's morning dreams 
 — gave smiling welcome to her new handmaid ; greeted her with 
 kindest words ; and, more than all, looked cordially on St. Giles, 
 who could not remain outside, but sidled into the room to pay his 
 duty to his handsome mistress. The sweetness with which she 
 spoke to both seemed to the heart of Becky to unite both. The 
 girl's aff"eetion for St. Giles — until that moment unknown to her in 
 its strength — appeared sanctioned by the equal smiles of her lady. 
 
 At this juncture, anew visitor — with a confidence which he was 
 wont to wear, as though it mightily became him — entered the 
 room, jjassing before the slow domestic, leisurely bent upon herald- 
 ing his coming. Mr. Crossbone was again in presence of his 
 patient ; again had his finger on her pulse ; again looked with 
 professional anxiety in Mrs. Snipeton's face ; as though his only 
 thought, his only mission in this world was to continually act the
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 329 
 
 part of her healing angel. " Better, much better, my dear Mre. 
 Snipeton. Yes ; we shall be all right, now : very soon all right. 
 And I have brought you the best ruedicme in the world. Bless 
 me!"— and Crossbone stared at Becky— "the little wench from 
 the Dog and Moon." 
 
 " Lamb and Star, sir," said Becky. " Wonder you 've forgot 
 the house, sir ; wonder you Ve forgot Mrs. Blick and all tlie 
 babies." 
 
 " I think it was the Lamb and Star," said Crossbone ; but 
 when we consider that the apothecary had already promised him- 
 self a carriage in London, can we wonder that he should have 
 forgotten the precise sign ; that he should have forgotten the poor 
 children (weeds that they were) who owed to him an introduction 
 into this over-peopled world ? " You are a fortunate young woman, 
 that you have been promoted from such a place to your present 
 service. One always has one 's doubts of the lower ordei-s ; never- 
 theless, I hope you '11 be grateful." And the apothecaiy looked 
 the patron. 
 
 " I hope she ool," said Dorothy, with a sneer ; and as she turaed 
 from the room, she went muttering along — " She was born in the 
 workhouse, and to be put over my head ! " 
 
 " I have gi-eat faith in Becky ; she '11 be a good, a prudent girl ; 
 I am sure of it. You may go now, child, to Dorothy. Beai- with 
 her temper a little, and soon she '11 be yoiu* friend." And with 
 this encouragement, Becky left her mistress, seeking the kitchen, 
 hopeftil and happy, as pilgrims seek a shrine. In a moment she 
 had resolved with herself to be a wonder of fidelity and patience. 
 And then for Dorothy, though the girl could not promise hei-self 
 to love her very much, nevertheless, she detennined to be to her 
 a pattern of obedience. " She may walk over me if she likes, and 
 I won't say nothing," was Becky's resolution ; should Dorothy, 
 from the capriciousness of ill-temper, resolve upon such enjoy- 
 ment ; walking over people, giving at times, it must be owned, a 
 strange satisfaction to the tyi-anny of the human heart. Now 
 Becky, though she had at least nine thousand out of the nine 
 thousand and three good qualities that, accorchng to the calcula- 
 tion of an anonymous jihilosopher, fall, a natural dower, to the lot 
 of woman, was not ordinarily so much distinguished by meekness 
 as by any other of the nameless crowd of good gifts. Ordinarily, 
 any attempt " to walk over her," would have been a matter of 
 extreme difficulty to the stoutest pedestrian ; but Becky was mol- 
 lified, subdued. Her heart was newly opened, and gushed with 
 tenderness. She felt herself soothed to any powers of endunince. 
 The house was made such a hapj^y, sei'ious place to her by the 
 presence of St. Giles. He would live there ; he would be her
 
 330 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 daily sight ; her daily music ; and with that thought, all the 
 world might walk over her, and she would not complain the 
 value of a single word. She was astonisfied at her own determined 
 meekness ; she could never have believed it. 
 
 " And JNIr. Snipeton — excellent man ! — has hired you 1 " And 
 Crossbone looked up and dovm at St. Giles. " I trust, young 
 man, you '11 do no discredit to my good word. It 's a risk, a great 
 risk, at any time to answer for folks of your condition ; but I 
 have ventured for the sake of — of your poor father," St. Giles 
 winced. " I hope you '11 show yoiirself worthy of that honest 
 man. Tliough he was one of the weeds of the world, neverthe- 
 less, I don't know how it was, but I 'd have trusted him with 
 untold gold. So, you '11 be sober and attentive in this house ; 
 study the interests of your master, the wishes of your excellent 
 mistress who stands before you ; and, yes, you '11 also continue to 
 be kind to your mother. And now, you 'd better go and look 
 to the hoi-se that I 've left at the garden gate." St. Giles, glad 
 of the dismissal, hurried from the room. He had coloured and 
 looked coFLfused, and shifted so uneasily where he stood, that he 
 feared his mistress might note his awkwardness ; and thus suspect 
 him for the lies of the apothecary — for whom St. Giles, in the 
 liberality of his shamefacedness, blushed exceedingly. Great, 
 however, was the serenity of Crossbone on all such occasions. 
 Indeed, he took the same pleasure in falsehood that an epicure 
 receives from a well-seasoned dish. He looked upon lies as the 
 pepper, the spices of daily life ; they gave a relish to what would 
 otherwise be Hat and insipid. Hence, he would now and then smack 
 liis lips at a bouncing flam, as though throughout his whole moral 
 and physical anatomy, he hugely enjoyed it : flourished, and grew 
 fat upon it. 
 
 " And now, my dear Mrs. Snipeton — Mrs. Wilton, with your 
 leave, I '11 talk a little with my patient;" and Crossbone, with an 
 imperious smile, waved his hand towards the door. Mrs. Wilton 
 stirred not from her sewing ; said not a word ; but looked full in 
 the face of her daughter. 
 
 " Oh no ; certainly not," said Clarissa ; " Mrs. Wilton has had 
 too much trouble with lier invaUd, to refuse to listen to any 
 further complaints ; though, indeed, sir," said Clarissa signifi- 
 cantly, " I fear 'tis your anxiety alone that makes them so very — 
 very dangerous." 
 
 " Ha ! my dear madam. You are not aware of it — patients 
 am't aware of it — perhaps it is wisely ordered so — but the eye of 
 the true doctor can see, madam — can see." 
 
 " I*r<'^y go on, sir," said Clarissa ; and Crossbone, a little puzzled, 
 needed such encouragement.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 331 
 
 And with erudite discourse did Crossbone strive to entertain 
 his patient ; who endured, witli fullest female resignation, the 
 learning of the doctor. 
 
 St. Giles, leaving the house, hurried through the garden to take 
 charge of the horse. Arrived at the gate, he saw the animal led 
 by a man down the road, at a greater distance from the house 
 than was necessary for mere exercise. Immediately lie ran off, 
 calling to the fellow who led the animal ; but the man, although 
 he slackened his pace, never turned his head or answered a 
 syllable. " Hallo, my man ! " cried St. Giles, " where are you 
 leading that ? " — and then he paused ; for Tom Blast slowly 
 turned himself about, and letting the bridle fall in his arms, 
 stared at the speaker. 
 
 " Why, what 's the matter, mate ? I 'm only taking care o' 
 the gentleman's horse ; jest walking him that he mayn't catch 
 cold. You don't think I 'd steal him, do you ? " asked Blast, 
 winking. 
 
 "What — what brings you here again. Blast ?" sta mm ei-ed 
 St. Giles, scarce knowing what he said. 
 
 '' What bi'ings me here 1 Why, bread brings me here. Bread 
 o' any sort, or any colour ; dry bread at the best ; for I can't get 
 it buttered like some folks. Well, it's like the world. No 
 respect for old age, when it walks arm in arm with want ; no 
 honour or nothin' o' that sort paid to grey hairs, — when ther(4 's 
 no silver in the pocket. Well, I must say it — I can't help it, 
 tho' it goes to my art to say it — but the sooner I 'm out o' this 
 world the better, for I 'm sick of men. Men ! They 're wipers 
 with legs," and the inimitable hypocrite spoke with so much 
 passion, so much seeming sincerity, that St. Giles w;is for a 
 moment confounded by a vague sense of ingratitude ; for a 
 moment he ceased to remember that the old crime-gi"ained man 
 before him had been the huckster of his innocence, his liberty, 
 — had made him the banned creature that he was, breathing a 
 life of doubt and terror, 
 
 " What do you want 1 What will satisfy you ? " asked St. 
 Giles, despairingly. 
 
 " Ha ! now you talk with some comfoi't in your woice. What 
 will satisfy me ? There is some sense in that. Now you remind 
 me of a little boy that was the apples of my eyes, and would have 
 been the very likes o' you, but — well, I won't talk of that, for it 
 always makes my throat burn, and makes the world spin round 
 me like a top. I don't want much. No ; I 've outUved all the 
 rubbish and gingerbread of life, and care for nothing but the 
 simple solids. It 's a wonder, young man, what time does with 
 us. How, as I may say, it puts spectacles to our eyes, and makes
 
 332 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 US look into mill-stones. What will satisfy me 1 Well, I do 
 think I could go to the gi'ave decent on a guinea a week." 
 
 " Very likely ; I should think so," said St. Giles. 
 
 " A guinea a-week, paid reglar on Saturdays. For regularity 
 doubles the sum. I might ha' saved as much for my old age, 
 for the money that 's been through my hands in my time. Only 
 the drawback upon thieving is this, there 's nothing certain 
 in it. No man, let him be as steady as old times, no man as is 
 a thief" — 
 
 " Hush ! somebody may heai- you," cried St. Giles, looking 
 ten-ified about him. 
 
 " I 'm speakin' of a man's misfortun, not his fault," cri§d the 
 immovable Blast ; " no man as is a thief can lay up for a decent 
 old age. Have what luck we will, that 's where the honest fellars 
 get the better on us. And so you see, instead o' having nothin' to 
 do but smoke my pipe and go to the public-house, I 'm obligated 
 in my old age to crviwl about and hold horses, and do anything ; 
 and anything is always the worst paid work a man can take 
 money for. Now, with a guinea a week, would'nt I be a happy, 
 quiet, nice, old gen'leman ! Don't you think it 's in me, eh, young 
 man 1 " < 
 
 " I wish you had it," said St. Giles. " I wish so with all my 
 heart. But give me the bridle." 
 
 " By no means," said Blast. " How do I know you was. sent for 
 the horse 1 How do I know you mightn't want to steal it ? " 
 
 " Steal it ! " cried St. Giles, and the thought of the past made 
 him quiver with indignation. 
 
 " Why, horses are stole," observed Mr. Blast, with the serenity 
 of a philosophical demonstrator. " Look here, now : if I was to 
 give up this horse, what hinders you — I don't say you would do 
 it^ — but what hinders you fi-om taking a quiet gallop to Smith- 
 field, and when you got there, seUing him to some old gentleman, 
 and " — 
 
 " Silence ! Devil ! beast ! " exclaimed St. Giles, raising his fist 
 at the tormentor. 
 
 " No, no ; you don't mean it," — said Blast — " you wouldn't liit 
 a old man like me, I know you wouldn't. 'Cause if you was only to 
 knock me down, I know I should call out, I couldn't help myself. 
 And then, somebody might come up ; p'raps a constable ; and 
 then-— oh ! I 'm as close as a cockle with a secret, I am, when I 'm 
 not put upon, but when my blood 's up, — bless your soul, I know 
 my weakness, I 'd hang my own brother. I should be very sorry, 
 in course, arterwards ; but he 'd swing — as I 'm a living sinner, 
 he 'd swing," and Blast, as he stared at St. Giles, gently smacked 
 his Ups, and gently rubbed his palms together.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 333 
 
 " I ask your pardon ; I didn't know what I said. Here 's a 
 shilling ; now give me the bridle," said St. Giles. 
 
 " I s'pose it 's all right," said Blast, rendering up his charge, 
 and significantly eyeing the coin. " I s'pose it 's all right ; but 
 only to think of this world ! Only to thhik that you should give 
 me a shilling for holding a horse ! Well, if a man could only 
 know it, wouldn't it break his heart outright to look at the bits 
 o' boys that, afore he died, would be put clean over his head 1 
 It 's a good shillin', isn't it ? " 
 
 " To be sure it is ; and an honest one, too," said St. Giles. 
 
 " Glad to hear that ; tho' I don't know it will go a penny the 
 further. I wish the colour had been yellow, eh 'I " 
 
 " I wish so, too, for your sake. Good day," and St. Giles sought 
 to shake his evil genius off. 
 
 " I 'm in no hurry. Time 's no good to me : you may have the 
 pick of any of the four-and-tweuty hours at your own price," said 
 Blast, following close at his side. " And so, they 've turned you 
 over from St. James's-square to the old money-grubber ? Well, 
 he 's very rich ; though I don't think the sops in the pan will be 
 as many as you 'd been greased with at his lordship's. For all 
 that, he 's very rich ; and you wouldn't think what a lot of^Iate 
 the old man 's got." 
 
 " How do you know that ? " asked St. Giles. 
 
 " I dream'd it only last night. I had a wision, and I thought 
 that the mother of little Jingo " 
 
 " Don't talk of it, man — don't talk of it," exclaimed St. Giles, 
 " I won't hear it." 
 
 " I must talk on it," said Blast, sidling the closer, and striding 
 as St. Giles strode. " I must talk on it It comforts me. I 
 dreamed that the j^oor soul come to me, and told me to follow her, 
 and took me into old Snipeton's cottage there, and showed me the 
 silver tankards, and silver dishes, and even counted up the silver 
 tea-spoons, that there was no end of ; and then, when she 'd put 
 all the plate afore me, she vanished off, and I was left alone with 
 it. In course you know what followed." 
 
 " I can guess," groaned St. Giles. 
 
 " How rich I was while I was snoring, last night ; and when I 
 woke I was as poor as goodness. But somehow, my dream 's fell 
 true — I can't help thinking it — since I 've fell in with you." 
 
 " How so, man ? What have I to do with Mr. Snipeton's plate, 
 but to see nobody steals it ? " said St. Giles, firmly. 
 
 " To be sure ; and yet when there 's so much silver about, and 
 a guinea a week — well, I '11 say a pound, then— a pound a week 
 would make a fellow-cretur hai)py, and silent for life— I said, 
 silent for life " —
 
 334 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 St. Giles suddenly paused, and turned full upon Blast. " Go 
 your ways, man — go your ways. Silent or not silent, you 
 do not frighten me. ^Vllat 1 may do for you, I'll do of my 
 o^vn free will, and with my own money, such as it is. And, 
 after all, I think 't will serve you better to hold your tongue, 
 than " — 
 
 " I wouldn't kill the goose for all the eggs at once," said Blast, 
 grinning at the figiu-e. 
 
 St. Giles felt deadly sick. He had thought to brave — defy the 
 i-ufEan ; but the power of the villain, the fate that with a word 
 he could call down upon his \'ictim, unnerved him. St. Giles, with 
 entreating looks, motioned him away ; and Blast, leering at him, 
 and then tossing up the shilling with his finger and thumb, passed 
 on, leaving St. Giles at the garden-gate, where stood Clarissa, 
 brought there by the earnest entreaties of Crossbone, to view the 
 horse — the wondrous steed that was to endow its mistress with 
 new health and beauty. 
 
 " You may see at a glance, madam, there 's Arab blood in the 
 thing ; and yet as gentle as a rabbit. Young man, just put her 
 through her paces. Bless you ! she 'd trot over eggs, and never 
 crack 'em. A lovely mare ! " cried Crossbone, " all her brothei'S 
 and sisters, I 'm assured of it, in the royal stables." 
 
 " I 'm afraid, too beautiful — much too spirited for me, sir," said 
 Clarissa, as St. Giles ambled the creature to and fro. -Ere, how- 
 ever, Crossbone could make reply — assuring the lady, as he pro- 
 posed to do, that she would sit the animal as secui-ely knd withal 
 as gracefully as she would sit a throne, — Mr. Snii^eton, full of the 
 dust and cobwebs of St. Mary Axe, trotted to the gate. His first 
 feeUng was displeasure, when he saw his wife exposed beneath the 
 open sky to the bold looks of any probable passenger ; and then 
 she turned such a kind and cordial face upon him, that, for the 
 happy moment, he could have wished all the dwellers of the earth 
 spectators of her beauty, beaming as it did upon her glorified 
 husband. It was plain : love so long dormant, timid within her 
 bosom, now flew boldly to her eyes, and curved her lips, with 
 fondest looks and sweetest smiles for her wedded lord. We have 
 before declared that Snipeton had an intimate acquaintance with 
 his own ugliness : unlike so many who carry the disadvantage 
 with them through life, yet are never brought to a pei-sonal 
 knowledge of it, Snipeton knew his plainness : it was not in the 
 power of mirroi-s to surprise and annoy him. And yet, in his 
 old age, he would feel as though his ugliness was, by some magic, 
 lessened, nay, refined into comeliness, when his wife smiled upon 
 him. His face, for the time, seemed to wear her hght. And 
 thus did this new beUef in her affection give the old man a certain
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 335 
 
 faith in Ids amended plainness ; as though beauty beautified what 
 it loved. 
 
 " There, Mr. Snipeton — there 's a treasure. A lovely thing, 
 eh ? " cried the triumphant Crossbone. 
 
 "Very handsome, very; but is she well broken — is she quite 
 safe ? " said Snipeton, looking tenderly at his wife. 
 
 " A baby might rein her. No more tricks than a judge ; no 
 more vice than a lady of quality." 
 
 " Hunijjh ! " said Snipeton, dismounting, and giving his horse 
 to St. Giles. " My dear, you will catch cold." And then the 
 ancient gentleman placed his arm around his wife's waist, and led 
 her from the gate ; Crossbone following, and staring at the endear- 
 ment with most credulous looks. It was so strange, so odd ; it 
 seemed as if Snipeton had taken a most unwarrantable liberty with 
 the lady of the house. And then the apothecary comforted him- 
 self with the belief that Mrs. Snipeton only suffered the tenderness 
 for the sake of appearances : no ; it was some satisfaction to know 
 she could not love the man. " And your new maid is come. She 
 seems simple and honest," said Snipeton. 
 
 " Oh, yes : a plain, good-tempered soul, that will exactly serve 
 us," answered Clarissa. 
 
 " Veiy good — veiy good." And Snipeton turned into the house. 
 He had thought again to urge his dislike of Mrs. Wilton ; to 
 suggest her dismissal ; but he would take another opportimity — 
 for go she should : he was determined, but would await his time. 
 As these thoughts busied him, Mrs. Wilton entered the room, 
 followed by Crossbone. Somewhat sullenly, Snipeton gazed at 
 the housekeeper : and then his eyes became fiery, and pointing 
 to the riband that Clarissa had hung about her mother's neck — 
 the riband bearing the miniature, yet unseen by the weai-er, he 
 passionately asked — "Where got you that? Woman! Thief! 
 Where stole you that 1 " 
 
 " Stole ! " exclaimed Mrs. Wilton, and she turned deathly pale ; 
 and on the instant tore the riband from her neck ; and then, for 
 the first time, saw the miniature. For a moment, her face was 
 livid with agony, that seemed to tongue-tie her, and then she 
 shrieked—" Oh, God ! and is it he ? " 
 
 " Detected ! detected ! " cried Snipeton — " a detected thief." 
 
 "No, sir-; no," exclaimed Clarissa, embracing her parent. 
 " You shall now know all. She is " — 
 
 Clarissa was about to acknowledge her mother, when the 
 ■wretched woman clasped her daughter's head to her bosom, 
 stifling the words. "No thief, su-," she said, "but no longer 
 your servant." And then, kissing Clarissa, and murmuring — 
 " not a word — not one word," the mother hurried from the room.
 
 3.36 ST. GILE.S AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Snipeton liked to be duped. He hugged himself in the know- 
 ledge of his weakness, mightily enjoying it. And so, he suffered 
 his wife to nestle close to his chair — to place her hand upon his 
 shoulder — to look with earnest, pleading eyes upon him — to talk 
 such lluent sweetness, melting his heart ! And whilst Clarissa 
 assured him that, in a playful moment, she had placed the 
 miniature about the housekeeper's neck, that it was a wickedness, 
 a calumny, to think otherwise, — that, in very truth, it would 
 cause her — his wife, the wife he so professed to love — such pain 
 and remorse to think suspiciously of Mrs. Wilton, — Snipeton, 
 that learned man as he deemed himself in the worst learning of 
 the world — that sage, who picked his way through the earth as 
 though its fairest places were all the closelier set with gins and 
 snares, — he would not see the sweet deceit in his wife's face ; he 
 would not hear the charitable falsehood flowing from her lips : 
 no, he would be filled with belief. He would commit a violence 
 uj)on his prudence and blindfold her. She might rebel and 
 struggle somewhat : nevertheless, she should wear the bandage. 
 
 This wise determination still grew in his heart ; in truth, the 
 soil was favom-able to the deceit ; and therefore, next morning, 
 enjoying the amenities of breakfast, Mr. Snipeton assured his 
 wife that— whatever his thoughts had been— he now felt the 
 deei^est, sweetest confidence in Mrs. Wilton. She had shown 
 herself a most considerate gentlewoman, and he should ever 
 resj>ect her for it. " Poor thing ! I never knew anjiihing of her 
 private history — for piivate histories, my deai' " — this tenderness 
 had become almost familiar to the husband — " private histories 
 are very often like private wasps' nests ; things of danger, with 
 no profit in 'em : nevertheless, she always appeared to me too good 
 — ^}'es, too good for her situation. That's always a pity," and 
 Snipeton contmued to breakfast very heartily. 
 
 " True, husband, true," said Clarissa ; " such iuequalities of 
 fortune are very sad." 
 
 " Very inconvenient," cried Snipeton ; " for you see, my dear, 
 people who are too good for their employment, are generally too 
 bad for their employers. There is no such lumber in the world as 
 broken-down gentility. Always out of place — never fit for any- 
 thing. A decayed gentleman, as he 's called, is a nuisance ; that is, 
 I mean, to a man of the world — to a man of business. For you 
 see, there's always impei-tinence in him. He always seems to be
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 337 
 
 thinking of what he has been— you can't get him to tliink of what 
 he is. He becomes your clerk, we 'II say. Well, you tell him to 
 call a hackney-coach, and he sets about it in a mannei' that 
 impudently says to you — ' Once I kept my own carriage ! ' You 
 order him to copy a letter or what not ; and he draws down the 
 corners of his mouth to let you know that — ' Once in liis day, he 
 used to wi-ite cheques ! ' Now this is unpleasant. In the first 
 place one doesn't like any insolence from anybody ; and in the next, 
 if one happens to be in a melancholy, thinking mood, one doesn't 
 like to be reminded by the bit of decay about one, what, for all 
 one knows — for it 's a strange world — one may drop down to one's 
 self A decayed gentleman to a rich man is — well — he 's like a 
 dead thief on a gibbet to the live highwayman. Ha ! ha ! Whafs 
 the matter ? " — asked the mirthful man, for he saw Clarissa 
 shudder at the illustration, though so very tiiithful and excellent 
 to the maker. " To be sure, I 'd forgot ; you've a tender heart — 
 I love you all the better for it — and don't like to hear about such 
 matters. And then again I'd forgot — to be sure, what a fool I 
 am ! " — And then Mi'. Snipeton remembered that, in his virtuous 
 denunciation of bankrupt Plutus, he had forgotten — led away by 
 the dazzling light of simile — the condition of Clarissa's father : 
 had, in the heat of speech, failed to remember that he had bought 
 the bridal victim of the necessities of her parent. But, Mr. 
 Snipeton, as he thought, made immediate amends. For taking 
 his wifei's hand, he pressed it very tenderly ; kissed her, and then 
 repeated — " What a fool I am ! " 
 
 (Now this confession — a confession that the very wisest of us 
 might, without any hesitation make to himself three times a day ; 
 and we much question whether the discipline so exercised would 
 not carry with it more profitable castigation than aught laid on 
 with knotted rope — this confession was not to be expected of so 
 sage and close a man as Ebenezer Snipeton. Some sudden 
 satisfaction must have betrayed him into the avowal : some 
 unexpected pleasure, tripping up habitual gravity, and showing 
 its unthought-of weakness. Much, indeed, did the wife of his 
 bosom, as he would call her — and why not ? for do not rocks Ijear 
 flowers 1 — much did she marvel at the humility of her husband 
 that, even for a moment, placed him on the flat level with other 
 men. But great happiness, like great sorrow, wiU sometimes 
 knock the stilts from under us ; admirable stilts, upon which so 
 many of ns walk abroad, aye, and at home too : though the 
 world, provoking in its blhidness, will often not perceive how very 
 tall we are.) 
 
 " But the truth is, dear Clarissa "— continued Snipeton—" I 
 had a sort of respect for Mrs. Wilton, and though I often spoke 
 
 z
 
 33S ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 of it, I really had not the heart to turn her from the house. I 
 often threatened it : but it 's a comfort to know it — I couldn't 
 have done it. Now she's gone, I feel it." 
 " Gone ! " exclaimed Claiissa. 
 
 "Discharged herself, my dear," said Snipeton, as upon his 
 defence. " I found this upon the breakfast table." Hereupon, 
 Snipeton, unfolding a note, placed it in his wife's hand. Silently, 
 with trickling tears, she gazed upon the paper. " I shall have 
 no objection to give her a character ; none at all : for I feel very 
 easy about the plate. I Ve no doubt, though I've made no inquiry 
 as yet, that all 's safe to a salt-spoon. Not that she tells us where 
 she's gone ; nevertheless, I feel my heart at ease about the pro- 
 perty. Come, come, now — don 't be weak — don 't be silly. You 
 should not attach yourself in this way to a servant. It 's weakness 
 — worse than weakness." Thus spoke Snipeton to his wife, who 
 had sunk back in her chair, and covering her face with her hands, 
 was sobbing piteously. 
 
 At this moment Dorothy Vale moved into the room. " "Will 
 mistress ride to-day, the man wants to know 1 " 
 
 " Yes, she will. Yes, my dear, you will " — repeated Snipeton, 
 moving to Clarissa, and very tenderly placuig his arms around her ; 
 and shuddering, she endured him. " You hear ; let the horses be 
 ready in half-an-hour. Go." And Dorothy went ; but not a thought 
 the faster for the thundering monosyllable discharged at her. 
 " You '11 see me on my way to town 1 Some way ; not far ; no, 
 a mile or so. 'Tis such a morning ; there 's so much heaven come 
 doAvn upon the earth. Such weather ! You '11 take health with 
 every breath. Eh, Clarissa 1 " And again the old man threatened 
 an embrace, when the victim rose. 
 
 " Be it as you will, sir," — said Clarissa — " in half-an-hour I 
 shall be ready." And she left the room. 
 
 Now was Snipeton delighted with her obedience ; and now, he 
 paused in his triumphant strides about the room, to listen. Had 
 she really gone to her chamber ? Ashamed of the doubt, he 
 walked the faster — walked and whistled. And then he was so 
 happy, the room was too small for his felicity : he would forth, 
 and expand himself in the garden. He so loved a garden ; and 
 then he could walk amid the shrubs and flowers, with his eye upon 
 the window that enshrined the saint, his soul so reverently bowed 
 to. . How frankly she yielded to his wish ! Every day — he was 
 quite sure of it — he was becoming a happier and happier husband. 
 He looked forward to years and years of growing joy. To be 
 sure, he was growing old : but still looking onward, the nearer the 
 grave, the less we see of it. 
 
 " If you please, sir," — said St. Giles to his new master, as
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 339 
 
 he entered the garden,—" do you put up both the horses in the 
 city 1 " 
 
 "No : your mistress will come back," said Snipeton. 
 
 "Alone, sir?" asked St. Giles; and the husband, as though the 
 words had stung him, started. 
 
 ^ " Alone ! Why, no : dolt. Alone ! " There was something 
 hideous in the question : something that called up a throng of 
 terrors. Clarissa alone, with the world's wicked eyes staring, 
 smiling, winking at her ! 
 
 " Humph ! I had forgotten. As yet, we have but two horses. 
 Fool that I am ! " A second confession, and yet early day ! And 
 Snipeton, musing, walked up and down the path : and plucking a 
 flower, rolled it betwixt his finger and thumb to assist his medi- 
 tation. She had consented — so kindly, blithely consented to his 
 wish, that it would be cruel to her — cruel to himself— to dis- 
 appoint her. " Now, my man, be quick. Enn to the Flask, and 
 in my name, get a horse for yourself In a day or two, we must 
 see and mount you — must see and light upon a decent penn 'orth. 
 Quick. We musn't keejj your mistress waiting. And harkye ! 
 take my last orders now. When you retui-n, you will ride close — 
 very close to your lady : so close that you may grasp the bridle : 
 the horse may be skittish : and we cannot be too cautious. Obey 
 me ; and you know not how you may serve yourself. Go." St. 
 Giles ran upon his errand, and Snipeton, after a turn or two, 
 after another look at the chamber-window where, it so strangely 
 comforted him, to see, through the curtain, his wife pass and 
 repass — walked towards the stable. He began to hum a tune. 
 Suddenly he stopped. He had never thought of it before ; but — it 
 was a whim, a foolish whim, he knew that — nevertheless he now 
 remembered that his wife never sang. Not a single note. Perhaps 
 she could not sing. Pshaw ! There was an idleness of the heart 
 that always sang — somehow. And thus, for a minute, Snipeton 
 pondered, and then laughed — a little hollowly, but stUl he laughed 
 — at the childishness of his folly. 
 
 Mr. Snipeton was by no means a proud man. He was not one 
 of those incarnate contradictions that, in the way of business, 
 would wipe the shoes of a customer in the counting-house, yet ring 
 up the servant to poke the fire at home. No : he was not proud. 
 He refused not to put his hands to his own snuflers if the caudle, 
 or his own convenience, needed them. And so, entering the 
 stable, and seeing the mare yet unsaddled, he thought he would 
 make her ready. Ajid then he patted and caressed the beast as 
 the thing that was to bear the treasure of his hfe : even already 
 he felt a sort of regard for the creature. He was about to saddle 
 the animal, when he heai-d, as he thought, his wife in the garden. 
 
 z2
 
 340 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 He huiTied out, and found Clarissa, already habited, awaiting 
 him. And still his heart gi-ew bigger with new pride, when he 
 saw his wife ; she looked so newly beautiful. What wondrous 
 excellence she had ! Under every new aspect, she showed another 
 loveliness ! If he could only be sure that so sweet — so gracious a 
 creature loved him — him — so old and — and — so uncomely a man ! 
 And then she wanly smiled ; and he felt sure of her heart : yes, 
 it was beating with, a part and pai'cel of, his own — pulse with 
 pulse — throb for throb — their blood commingled — and their spirits, 
 like flame meeting flame — were one ! 
 
 " Why, Clarissa, love, you never looked so beautiful — ^never 
 — indeed, never," said Snipeton, and the old man felt sick with 
 happiness. 
 
 " Beautiful, master, isn't missus ? " said Becky, and with her 
 opened hands, she smoothed down the folds of the riding- dress, as 
 though it was some living thing she loved ; and then she gazed at 
 the beauty of her mistress, believing it would be wrong to think 
 her quite an angel, and just as wrong not to think her very near 
 one. 
 
 " Your horse is not yet saddled, love," said Snipeton, taking his 
 wife's hand, " not yet, dearest." 
 
 " Bless you, master, now missus is drest, I'll saddle her," cried 
 Becky, and she ran to the stable. Most adi'oit of handmaids ! 
 Equal to tie a bobbin, as to buckle a girth ! And ere St. Giles 
 arrived from the Flask with his borrowed steed — it had a sorry, 
 packhorse look, but as the landlord assured the borrower, was 
 " quite good enough for him ; who was he ? " — the mtu-e was ready. 
 
 " Well, 'twill serve for to-day, but next time we must do 
 better than that," said Snipeton, glancing at St. Giles's horse ; 
 and then he turned to hft his wife into the saddle. Untouched by 
 his hand, she was in a moment in her seat : another moment, 
 nay, longer, Snipeton paused to look at her ; he had never before 
 seen her on horseback. At length the riders went their way, 
 Becky, hanging over the gate, now looking at her mistress— and 
 now, with red, red face and sparkling eyes, bobbing her head, and 
 showing her teeth to St. Giles, domg his first service as groom to 
 Snipeton— and doing it with a sad, uneasy heart : for he felt that 
 he was the intended tool for some mischief— the bondslave to 
 some wrong. And with this thought in his brain, he looked dull 
 and moody, and answered the eloquent farewells of Becky, with a 
 brief, heavy nod. 
 
 " Well, I 'm sure ! " said Becky, as she thought, to her own 
 snubbed soul. 
 
 "Wliat 's tlie matter?" asked Dorothy Vale, who stood rubbing 
 her arms, a pace or two behind her.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 341 
 
 " Nothin'. What should be ? I never lets anything be the 
 matter. Only when people look good-by's, people might answer." 
 
 " Ha ! child," replied Mrs. Vale, with an extraordinary gush of 
 eloquence, — " men upon foot is one thing — men upon horseback, is 
 another." How it was that Mrs. Vale condescended to the utter- 
 ance of this wisdom, we cannot safely say ; for no thrifty house- 
 wife ever kept her tea and sugar under closer lock than did she 
 the truths, unquestionably within her. Perhaps she thought it 
 would twit the new maid — the interloper — brought to be put over 
 her head. And perhaps she meant it as a kindly warning : for 
 certainly, Dorothy felt herself charitably cUsposed. JVIi-s. Wilton 
 Lad left the cottage ; and of course that girl — that chit — could 
 never be made housekeei^er. However, leaving the matron and 
 the maid, let us follow the riders. 
 
 Great was the delight of Sni23eton, as he ambled on, his wife at 
 his side ; her long curls dancing in the air ; the nimble blood in 
 her face ; and, as he thought, deeper, keener affection sjmrkling 
 in her eyes. Never before had he taken such delight in horse- 
 manship : never had felt the quick pulsation — the new power, as 
 though the horse communicated its strength to the rider — the 
 buoyancy, the youthfulness of that time. And still he rode ; and 
 still, at his side, his wife smiled, and glowed with fresher beauty, 
 and her ringlets — as they were blown now about her cheeks, and 
 now upon her lips, how he envied them ! — still danced and flut- 
 tered, and when suddenly — as at some blithe word dropt from 
 him — she laughed with such a honied chuckle, she seemed to him 
 an incarnate spell, at whose every motion, look, and sound, an 
 atmosphere of love and pleasure broke on all around her. Poor 
 old man ! At that delicious moment, every wrinkle had vanished 
 from his brow and heart. He felt as though he had caught time 
 by the beard, and had made him render back every spoil of youth. 
 His brain sang with happmess ; and his blood bm-ned like lava. 
 
 And so rode they on ; and Suipeton little heeded— he was so 
 young, so newly-made — the steed that, with astlmiatic roar, toiled 
 heavily behmd. They crossed the heath, — turned into Highgate, 
 and with more careful pace descended the hill. Every minute 
 Snipeton felt more precious, it was so close to the last, when he 
 must leave, for some long hours, his life of life ! — 
 
 (Now, is it not sad — we especially put the question to the Eve 
 whose eyes may chance to rest upon these ink-stained thoughts — 
 is it not a matter, tears being upon hand, to weep over, to think 
 of love in love's jxaralysis, or dotage ? Love, with cherub face and 
 pale gold locks, may chase his butterflies— may, monkey as he is, 
 chmb the Hesperian timber, pluck the fruit : he is m the gay 
 audacity of youth, and the tender years of the ofibuder sink
 
 342 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 felonies to petty larcenies. But love — elderly love— to go limping 
 after painted fancies— to try to reach the golden apples with a 
 crutch stick, — why, set the offender in the pillory, and shower 
 upon him laughter.) 
 
 We have written this paragraph whilst JVIr. Snipeton— in the 
 kind's highway, and, moreover, upon horseback^kissed his young 
 wife, Clarissa. Although the man kissed the woman through a 
 wedding-ring — a lawful circle, and not a Py ramus and Thisbe 
 chink— we have no excuse for him, save this, it had been dragged 
 from him. She — potent highwayw'oman — had made him surrender 
 his lips by the force of death-dealing weapons. He was about to 
 sepai-ate fi-om her. He took her by the hand — grasped it— she 
 looked in his eyes, and — we say it — the old husband kissed his 
 young wife ! 
 
 " Caw — caw — caw ! " At that very moment — yea, timing the 
 very smack — a carrion crow, flapped its vans above the heads oi 
 man and wife, and hovering, thrice cried " caw — caw — caw," — 
 and then flew to the northward, it might be to tell to gossip crows 
 of human infirmity ; it might be, like coward scandal, to feed 
 upon the dead. However, the married pair separated. He would 
 return early — very early that day — to dinner. And she would 
 gently amble homeward ; and — as she knew she was the treasure 
 of his soul— she would be very careful not to take cold. She 
 would promise him — aye, that she would. 
 
 " Eemember — close — ^very close," said Snipeton, in a low voice 
 to St. Giles ; and then again and again he kissed his hands to 
 his wife's back. " She might look once behind," thought Snipeton, 
 gravely ; and then he smUed and played with his whip. It was 
 not impossible — nay, it was very likely — she was in tears ; and 
 would not show the sweet, delicious weakness to the servant. 
 And still Snipeton paused and watched. How beautifully she 
 rode ! Strait as a pillar ! And how the feather in her hat sank 
 and rose and fluttered, and how his heart obeyed the motion, as 
 though the plume were waved by some enchantress. 
 
 He wished he had taken her with him to St. Mary Axe. 
 "What ! Ride ^vith her through the city 1 And then he recoiled 
 from the very thought of the thousand eyes opened and staring 
 at her — as though by very looking they could steal the bloom 
 they gazed at — recoiled as from so many daggers. Still he 
 watched her. Something made him, on the sudden, unquiet. 
 And then, as if at that moment it had only struck upon his ear, 
 he heard the clanging cry of the crow. Another moment, and 
 he loudly laughed. Was it anj^hing strange, he asked himself, 
 that crows should caw 1 And then agaia he looked gloomier 
 than before.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 343 
 
 He would go home, he thought. For once he would make 
 holiday, doiug double work on the morrow. Yes ; he would 
 not toil in the gold-mine to-day. And now she had turned the 
 lane. It was too late. Besides, business was ever jealous — 
 revengeful. Love her as you would for years, the beldame 
 brooked no after neglect. She would have her dues — or her 
 revenge. And vnth. this thought, Snipeton stuck his spurs to 
 his horse, and rode as though he was riding to Paradise or a 
 hundred per cent. 
 
 " I ask your pardon, ma'am," said St. Giles to Clarissa, about 
 to put her hoi'se to its speed, " but master told me to follow close, 
 and — indeed I ask your pardon — but 'tisn't possible, mounted as I 
 am. I 've had a hard bout to keep up, as 'tis. No offence, ma'am," 
 said St. Giles, very humbly. 
 
 " Oh, no ; we shall soon be at home — 'tis not so far," answered 
 Clarissa ; and her altered look, her mournful voice surprised him. 
 It was plain her cheei'fulness had been assumed ; for on the 
 sudden, she looked wearied, sick at heart. Poor gentlewoman ! 
 perhaps it was parting with her husband. No : that generous 
 thought was banished, soon as it rose. Already St. Giles had 
 more than a servant's love for his young mistress ; she spoke so 
 sweetly, gently, to all about her. And then — though he had 
 passed but one evening with his fellow-servant, Becky — he had 
 learned from her so much goodness of the lady of the house. 
 Again and again he looked at her ; it was plaiu, she had over- 
 tasked her spirits ; she looked so faint — so pale. 
 
 "Dear lady — beg your pardon — but you're not well," cried 
 St. Giles. " Shall I try and gallop after master ? " 
 
 « No — no ; it is nothmg. A little fatigued— no more. I am 
 unused to so much exercise — and — nothing more. Let us hasten 
 home,"— and controlling herself, she put her horse to an amble, 
 St. Giles whipping and spurring hard his wretched beast, to 
 follow, that, nevertheless, lagged many yards behind. A horse- 
 man overtook him. 
 
 " My good man," said the stranger, " can you tell me the way 
 to Hampstead church 1 " 
 
 " I don't know— I 'm in a hurry," and in vain St. Giles whipped 
 and spurred. 
 
 " Humph ! Your beast is not of your mind, any how. 
 'Twould be hard work to steal a horse, like that, wouldn't it V 
 asked the man. 
 
 " Steal it ! " and St. Giles looked full in the speaker s face, 
 and saw it one indignant smUe. Sui-ely, he had met that man 
 
 before. 
 
 " Come, feUow, you know me ? " said the stranger. Once would
 
 344 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 have done me a good turn. T see — now you recollect me. Yes ; 
 we ai-e old acquaintance, are we not ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; 1 know nothing," said St. Giles, but he shook with 
 the lie he uttered. Too well he knew the man who, witli looks of 
 triumphant vengeance, scowled and smiled upon liim. It wjva 
 Eobert Willis ; the murderer loosed from his bomls by the magic 
 tongue of Mr. Montecute Crawley. " I beg, sir, you '11 not stop 
 me. For the love of gootluess, don't, sir," — and St. Giles trembled, 
 as though palsied. 
 
 " For the love of goodness ! Ha ! ha ! For the fear of the 
 gallows, you mean. Now, listen to me ; felon — returned trans- 
 port. Tliat lady must not go back to her home. Nay — 'tis all 
 settled. She goes not back to old Snipetou — the old blootl-sucker ! 
 — that 's flat." 
 
 " Wliat do you mean ? " cried St. Giles, stunned, bewildered. 
 
 " ;My meaning 's plain — jilain as a halter. When we last met, 
 yoii \\ liave put the rope around my neck. Eaise one cry — stir a 
 foot faster than 'tis my will, and — and as sure as green leaves 
 hang from the boughs above you — so surely — but I see you under- 
 stand — yes, you are no fool, Master St. Giles, though Hog-lane 
 was your birth-place and school, and Mister Thomas Blast — you 
 see I know your history — your only teacher." 
 
 " Do what you will ! Hang, gibbet me ! — you shan't lay finger 
 on that blessed lady ! " And St. Giles, throwing himself from his 
 useless horse, ran, like a deer, after his mistress, AVillis, with 
 threats aud curses, following. St. Giles, fintling liis pursuer gain 
 upon him, suddenly stopped, and, as AVillis came up, leapt at him, 
 with the purjiose of dragging him from the saddle, and mounting 
 his hoi-se. In a moment, Willis, beneath his assailant, was rolUng 
 in the dust ; bnt as St. Giles was about to lea}> upon the horse, 
 he was levelleil to the earth by a blow from Tom Blast, who — he 
 was a wonderful man for his age ! — sprajig with the agility of 
 youtli, from a hedge. 
 
 " Wliat ! " cried his early teacher to the prostrate St. Giles, — 
 " you 'il do it agin, Avould you ? Well, tliere never was sich a 
 fellow for stealing horse-flesh ! You was born with it, I s'pose," 
 — said the rutHan, with aliected tommiseratiou, balancing the 
 cudgel that had struck down the vanijuished — "you was born 
 with it, and — jtoor fi^lar — it 's no use a blaming you." 
 
 In a moment, Willis had remounted his hoi-se, and shaking his 
 clenched list over St. Giles, galloped ofl". 
 
 " How now ! " gasped St. Giles, his sense returning, " how 
 now," he cried, opening his eyes, and staring stupidly in the face 
 of Blast, " what 's the matter ? What 's alUhis i " 
 
 "Why, the matter is jest this," said Blast. " Your missus is
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 345 
 
 much too good for your master. That 's the 'pinion of somebody 
 as shall be nameless. And so you may go home, and tell 'eui not 
 to wait dinner for her. It 's wickedness to spile meat." 
 
 '• Tell me — where is she 1 — where have they carried her 1 — tell 
 me, or — " and St. Giles, seizing Blast, was speechless with 
 passion. 
 
 " I '11 jest tell you this much. Your lady 's in very good 
 company. And I '11 tell you this, partic'larly for yourself: 
 if you go on tearing my Sunday coat in that manner, I know 
 where the constable Uves, and won't I call him ! " With this 
 dignified rebuke Mr. Blast released himself from the hands of 
 his captor, who — with a look of stupid misery — suffered liim to 
 walk away. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 And now is Snipeton widowed. Yes : with a living wife, damned 
 to worst widowhood. It would have worn and tortured the 
 spirit within him sometimes to wander from the desk to the 
 churchyard, and there look down upon Clarissa's grave. To liave 
 read, and read with dreamy, vacant eyes, the few tombstone 
 syllables that sum up — solemnly brief — ^the hopes, and fears, and 
 wrongs, and wretchedness ; the pleasant thoughts and aching 
 weariness that breath begins and ends. " Clarissa, wife oi 
 Ebenezer Snipeton, died." — "Words to dim a husband's eyes ; 
 to carry heaviness to the heart ; to numb the soul ; and for a time 
 to make the lone man, with his foot at the treasure-holding grave, 
 feel the whole world drifted from him, and he left lauded on the 
 little spot he looks on. And then breaks small, mournful nmsic 
 from those words : pleasant, hopeful sounds, that will mingle 
 her name with his ; that will nuike him own the dear, the still 
 incorporate dead. The flesh of his flesli, the bone of his bone, is 
 lajxsed into the disgrace of death : it is becommg the nourishment 
 of gi-ass ; and still his heart yearns to the changing form ; still it 
 is a part of him ; and his tender thoughts may, with the coffined 
 dead, love to renew the bridal vow the dead absolves him of. And 
 Snipeton, his wife in her winding-sheet, might so have solemnised 
 a second wedlock. For surely there are such nuptials. Yes ; 
 second marriages of the grave between the quick and the dead, 
 with God and his angels the sole witnesses. 
 
 And Snipeton was denied such consolation. His widowhood 
 permitted uo such second troth. Living to the world, his wife w;ia
 
 346 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 dead to him ; yet, though dead, not severed. — There was the 
 horror : there, the foul condition of disgraced wedlock : the flesh 
 was still of his flesh, cancerous, ulcerous ; with a life in it to 
 torture him. By day, that flesh of his flesh would wear him ; by 
 night, with time and darkness lying like a weight upon him, would 
 be to him as a fiend that would cling to him ; that would touch 
 his lips ; that would murmur in his ear. And let him writhe, and 
 struo-o-le, and, with a strong man's strong will, determine to put 
 awav that close tormentor, it would not be. The flesh was still 
 of his flesh, alike incorporate in guilt and truth. 
 
 But Snipeton is still a happy man. As yet he knows not of his 
 misery ; dreams not of the desolation that, in an hour or so, shall 
 blast him at his threshold. He is still at his desk ; happy ia his 
 day-dream ; his imagination running over, as in wayward moments 
 of half-thrift, half-idleness, it was wont to do, upon the paper on 
 his desk before him. — Imagination, complete and cu'cling ; and 
 making that dim sanctuary of dirty Plutus a glistening palace ! 
 The pen — the ragged stump, that in his hand had worked as 
 surely as Italian steel, striking through a heart or so, but drawing 
 no blood — the pen, as it had been plucked from the winged heel 
 of the thief's god. Mercury, worked strange sorcery ; crept and 
 scratched about the paper, conjuring glories there, that made the 
 old man sternly smile ; even as an enchanter smiles at the instant 
 handiwork of all-obedient fiends. Header, look upon the magic 
 that, cunningly exercised by the Snipetons of the world, fills it 
 with beauty ; behold the jottings of the black art that, simple as 
 they look, hold, like the knotted ropes of Lapland witches, a 
 power invincible. Here they are ; faithfully copied from that 
 piece of paper — ^the tablet of old Snipeton's dearest thoughts, 
 divinest aspirations : — 
 
 " £70,000 "— " £85,700 "— " £90,000 "— " £100,000 "— 
 " £150,000 "— " £1,000,000 ! " 
 
 In this way did Snipeton — in pleasant, thrifty idleness — pour out 
 his heart ; dallying with hope, and giving to the unuttered wish 
 a certain sum in black and white ; running up the figures as a 
 rapturous singer climbs the gamut, touching the highest heaven 
 of music to his own delight, and the wonder of the applauding 
 world. 
 
 In this manner would Snipeton take pastime with his spirit. 
 In this manner was the paper on his desk wi-it and over-writ with 
 promised sums that, it was his hope, his day-dream, would surely 
 some day bless him. And the numerals ever rose with his spirits. 
 When very dumpish — with the world going all wrong with him — 
 he would write himself down a pauper ; in bitterness of heart
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 347 
 
 loving to enlarge upon his beggary, as thus : 000,000,000,000. 
 But to-day, he had ridden with Clarissa ; she had looked so lovely 
 and so loving ; he was so re-assured of her affection ; could promise 
 to himself such honied days and nights that, dreaming over this ; 
 smiling at her flushed face ; and with half-closed eyes, and curvino^ 
 mouth, gazing in fancy at her dancing plume, — he somehow took 
 the pen between his fingers, and made himself a paradise out of 
 arithmetic. — Thus he laid out his garden of Eden, circUng it with 
 rivers of running gold ! How the paradise smiled upon jiaper ! 
 How the trees, clustered with ruddy bearing, rose up ; how 
 odorous the flowers — and what a breath of immortality came 
 fluttering to his cheek ! Snipeton had wi'itten — 
 
 "£1,000,000;" 
 
 and then he sank gently back in his chair, and softly drew his 
 breath as he looked upon what should be his, foreshadowed by 
 his hopes. 
 
 Now, at the very moment — yes, by Satan's best chronometer — 
 at the very moment, Clarissa was lifted from her horse, placed in 
 a carriage, and whirled away from home and husband. And he 
 saw not her face of terror — heard not her shriek for help. How 
 could he ? Good man ! was he not in Paradise ? Let us not 
 break in upon him. No ; for a while, blind and innocent, we will 
 leave him there. 
 
 The reader may remember that Mr. Capstick was threatened 
 with an ignominious dismissal from the British senate, as having, 
 it was alleged, bought an honour that, like chastity, is too pre- 
 cious to be sold. The misanthropic member for Liquorish, in his 
 deep contempt of all human dealings, took little heed of the peti- 
 tion against him ; whilst Tangle called it an ugly business, as 
 though in truth he secretly rejoiced in such uncomeliness. 
 Snipeton, too, looked grave ; and then, as taking heart from the 
 depth of his pocket, said he would " fight the yoimg profligate to 
 his last guinea ; " (and when the weapons are gold, how bloody 
 oft the battle !) Whereupon Capstick relented a little iai his 
 savage thoughts ; believuig that pure patriotism did exist in 
 human nature, and had one dwelling-place at least in the heart of 
 Mr. Snipeton. 
 
 " Turn you out of Parliament, sir ; they might chuck you out 
 o' the window, sir, for what he 'd care, if it waru't for his spite. 
 I 've told you that all along, and you won't see it," said Bright 
 Jem. 
 
 " I am sorry, Jem, that in your declining years— for there 's no 
 disguising it, James— you 're getting old and earthy — cracking 
 like dry clay, Jem," said Capstick,
 
 348 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " I don't want to hide the cracks," interrupted Jem : " why 
 should I ? No : I 'm not afi'aid to look Time in the face, and teii 
 him to do his worst. He never could sjjLle much, that 's cue 
 comfort." 
 
 " I am sorry, nevertheless, that you have not a little charity. 
 If I don't think well of anybody myself, that 's no reason you 
 shouldn't ; on the contrary, it is slightly an impertinence in you 
 to interfere with what I 've been used to consider my own privi- 
 lege." Thus, with dignity, spoke Capstick. 
 
 " All I know is this — and I 'm sure of it — if Mrs. Snipeton had 
 as big a wart upon her nose as her husband, you 'd never have 
 been Member for Liquorish," said Jem, with new emphasis. 
 
 " Eeally, Mr. Aniseed " — for Capstick became very lofty 
 indeed — " I cannot perceive how Mrs. Snipeton's wart — that is, 
 if she 'd had one — could in any way interfere with my seat in 
 Parliament." 
 
 " In this manner," said Jem ; laying one hand flat upon the 
 other. " In this manner. If she 'd had a wart upon her nose, 
 young St. James, when he went to borrow money of her husband, 
 would have behaved himself like a honest young gentleman ; 
 wouldn't have written letters, and tried to send presents, and so 
 forth, till old Snipeton — poor old fellow ! for though he was a fool 
 to marry such a young beauty, there 's no knowiog how any on us 
 may be tempted " — 
 
 " You and I ai'e safe, I think, James 1 " said Capstick, with a 
 smile. 
 
 " I thhik so ; but don't let 's be presumptions. However, 
 that 's no reason we shouldn't pity the unfortinate," said Jem. 
 " Well, old Snipeton wouldn't have been forced to send his young 
 wife into the country, where his young lordship went after her — • 
 I 'vc heard all about it. And then Snipeton wouldn't ha' been 
 jealous of the young gentleman, and then you 'd have been at the 
 Tub, happy with the pigs and the geese, as if they was your own 
 flesh and blood ; and you 'd still ha' been an independent country 
 gentleman, walking about in your own garden, and talking, as 
 you used to do, to your own trees and flowers, that minded you — 
 I 'm bound for it — more than anybody in the house o' Parliament 
 will do." 
 
 " Don't you be too sure of that, Mr. Aniseed. When the Mtaister 
 hears my speech " — 
 
 " Well, I only hope my dream of last night won't come true. 
 I dreamt you 'd made your speech, and as soon as you 'd made it, 
 I thought you was changed into a garden roller, and the Miuister, 
 as you call him, did nothing but turn you round and round. 
 Howsomever, that's nothing to do with what I was saying, —
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 349 
 
 saving your presence, I don't like you to be made a tool 
 on." 
 
 " A tool, ]\£r. Aniseed ! A tool— define, if you please, for this 
 is sei'ious. What tool ? " and Capstick fi-owned. 
 
 " Well, I don't know what sort of tool they send to Parliament ; 
 but, if you 'U be so good, just feel here." Saj-ing this, Jem took 
 oft' his hat, and turning himself, presented the back j>art of his 
 head to the touch of Cap.stick. 
 
 " Bless my heart ! Dear me — a veiy dreadful wound ! My 
 poor fellow — good Jem " — and Capstick put his arm ui^on Jem's 
 neck, and with a troubled look, cried—" Wlio was the atrocious 
 miscreant ? — eh ! — the scoundrel ! " 
 
 " Oh no : he didn't mean nothing. You see, it was last night, 
 while I was waiting for you till the House was up. Taking a 
 quiet pint and a pipe among the other servants, some on 'em 
 begun to talk about bribery and corruption : and didn't they sit 
 there and pull their masters to pieces ; I should think a little 
 more than they puUed one another to bits inside. Well, your 
 name come up, and all about the petition ; and somebody said 
 you 'd be turned out ; condemned like a stale salmon at Billings- 
 gate. I didn't say nothing to this : till Ealph Gum — the saucy 
 varmint, though he 's my own flesh and blood ; that is, as far as 
 marriage can make it " — 
 
 " Marriage can do a good deal that way," said Capstick, smiling 
 pensively. 
 
 " TUl Ralph Gum — he was waiting for the Marquis — cried out, 
 ' What ! Capstick, the mufiin-maker ? ' " 
 
 " I do not forget the mufiins," said Capstick, meekly. " On the 
 contrary ; in ParUament I shall be proud to stand upon them." 
 
 " But he said more than that : ' Why, he 's a thmg we '11 turn 
 out neck and heels ; he 's only a tool ! ' " 
 
 " Oh, a tool ! " cried Capstick, " I am a tool, am I ? Very 
 well ; a tool ! Wliat said you to this ? " 
 
 " Nothing— only this. He was sittnig next to me, and 1 said, 
 — ' You saucy monkey, hold your tongue, or leam better manners,' 
 —and with this, in the softest way in the world, I broke my pipe 
 over his head : whereupon, the Marquis's coachman and footmen 
 all swore you was a tool, and nothing but a tool— and they 
 wouldn't see their hvery insulted, and— I forget how it ended, 
 but there was a changing of pewter-pots, and somehow or other 
 this "—and Jem passed his hand over his bruised head—" this is 
 one on 'em." 
 
 For a few minutes Capstick remained silent. At length he 
 said, determinedly— "Jem, I feel that it would be some satisfaction 
 to me to see this ISIi's. Snipeton."
 
 350 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " What for '( " asked Jem, in his simplicity. 
 
 " Why — well — I don't know ; but if she is really what people 
 sav, there can be no harm in looking on a beautiful woman." 
 
 '" Well, I don't know — but for certain, they 'd never do no harm, 
 if they never was looked upon," said Jem. 
 
 " Jem, you ought to know me by this time ; ought to know 
 that since JVIrs. Capstick died I look upon beauty as no more than 
 a painted picture." 
 
 " Well, that 's all right enough, so long as we don't ask the 
 picturs to walk out o' their frames," answered Jem. " But, sir, 
 in this Parliament matter — and I 'd sooner die than tell a lie to 
 you, in the same way as I think it my bound duty to tell 
 you all the truth, though you do sometimes call me James and 
 Mr. Aniseed, instead of Jem, for doing it — in this Parliament 
 matter, master," — and Jem paused, and looked mournfully at 
 Capstick. 
 
 "Out with it," said the Member for Liquorish. "After the 
 hustings, surely I can bear anything. Speak." 
 
 " Well, then, and you '11 not be offended ? But if ever there 
 was a tool in Parliament, master — now, don't be hurt — ^/o^l, are a 
 tool, and nothing better than a tool. There ! When they were 
 flinging pewter pots about last night, I didn't choose to owti as 
 much ; now, when we 're together, I must say it. Member for 
 Liquorish ! La, bless you ! as I said afore, you 're Member for 
 Spite and Eevenge, and all sorts of wickedness." 
 
 " I certainly will see IVIrs. Snipeton," said Capstick, " and to- 
 morrow, Jem ; yes, to-morrow." 
 
 Li pursuit of this determination, Mr. Capstick — with no fore- 
 warning of his intended visit to the master of the house — opened 
 the garden gate, and proceeded up the path to the cottage, fol- 
 lowed by Bright Jem ; who in his heart was hugely pleased at 
 the unceremonious manner iu which his master stalked, like a 
 sheriff's officer, into the sanctuaiy of wedded love, or what is 
 more, of wedded jealousy : calm, authoritative, self-contained, as 
 though he came to take possession of the dove-cote. Even Dorothy 
 "Vale was startled by the abrupt intrusion ; and looking from the 
 door, and rubbing her arms with quickened energy, begged to 
 know " what they wanted there ? " Ere, however, Capstick could 
 descend to make due answer, Becky ran fi-om the door, with 
 many a voluble " dear heart ! " and " who 'd ha' thought it ! " and 
 " is your honor weU ? " 
 
 " Very well, my maid ; very well," said Capstick. " I should 
 like to see Mrs. Snipeton." 
 
 " La ! now, what ill luck," cried Becky, " she 's gone out a 
 horseback with master ; but she won't be long, if you 'U only be
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 351 
 
 so good as to walk in, and wait a little while ; she 's such a sweet 
 lady, she 'II be glad to see you." 
 
 Dorothy said nothing ; but hugging and rubbing her arms, 
 looked sidelong at the new maid ; looked at her, as one, whose 
 glib tongue had in one minute talked away her place ; for 
 assuredly did Dorothy, even in her dim vision, see Becky with her 
 bimdle trundled from the house, as soon as Mr. Snipeton should 
 learn the treason of his handmaid. 
 
 " I '11 walk about the garden till they come back," said Capstick ; 
 " I 'm fond of flowers ; very fond." 
 
 " They won't come back together ; for Master 's gone to 
 Lunnun ; but the young man, the new servant " 
 
 " Ha ! the young man that took you from St. Mary- Axe," said 
 Jem ; and Becky nodded and coloured. 
 
 " Both of you new together, it seems," observed Capstick, mean- 
 ing nothing ; though Becky, colouring still deeper, thought she 
 saw a world of significance in the careless words of the Member 
 of Parliament. But then it was a Member of Parliament who 
 spoke ; and tliere must be something in every syllable he uttered. 
 That he should couple herself and St. Giles was very odd ; quite 
 a proof that he knew more than most people. 
 
 Capstick had lounged up the garden, Dorothy marvelHng at 
 his ease ; whilst Jem held short discourse with Becky. " And 
 he 's a good honest young man, eh ? Well, he looks like it," 
 said J«m. 
 
 " I never goes by looks, I don't," said Becky. " Talking about 
 looks, how is that dark young man you knocked in the gutter ] 
 Your nevey, sir, isn't he 1 How is he ? " 
 
 " Why, I may say, my dear, he 's in the gutter still, and there 
 let him be. But as for your fellow-servant, I think " — said Jem 
 — " I think he 's an honest young fellow." 
 
 " I should break my heart, do you know — I mean — T should be 
 so sorry — in course I shotdd — if he wasn't. He's so good-tem- 
 pered ; so quiet-spoken ; so willing to give a helpmg-hand to 
 anybody. And yet for all this ; somehow or t'other, he doesn't 
 seem himself. One minute he '11 be meiTy as a moimtebank ; and 
 afore you can speak, his face will go all into a shadow. Can't be 
 happy, I think 1 " 
 
 " Perhaps not," said Jem ; " I wasn't myself when I was about 
 his time of life. Perhaps, Becky, perhaps lie 's in love." 
 
 " Don't know, I 'm sure ; how should I ?" said Becky, turning 
 short upon her heel ; whilst Jem followed his master, at length 
 resolved to narrate to him the history of St. Giles. Again and 
 again Jem had attempted it ; and then stopt, huddling up the 
 story as best he could. For the new dignity of Capstick had
 
 352 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 made bim — as Jem sometimes thought — cold aud cautious ; and 
 after all, it might not be proper to bring together a returned 
 transport and a Member of ParUament. The garden was winding 
 and large ; but Jem could not well miss his master, inasmuch as 
 the orator was heai-d very loudly declaiming ; and Jem, following 
 the sound, speedily came up with Capstick, who, witli his hat 
 upon the ground, his right arm outstretched, and his left tucked 
 under his left coat-tail, was vehemently calling upon "the attention 
 and the common-sense, if he was not too bold in asking such a 
 favour," of a triple row of tall hollyhocks, representing for the 
 time the Members of the House of Commons, and vincousciously 
 playing their parts with great fidelity, by nodding — nodding at 
 eveiy sentence that fell from the honourable orator. " There is 
 nothing like exercising the lungs in the pure air," said Capstick, 
 slightly confused ; and picking up his hat, and falling into his 
 usual manner. 
 
 " I think I should know what it was," said Jem, " calling 
 coaches in a November fog ; just like hallooing through wet 
 blankets." 
 
 " Demosthenes — you never heard of him — but that 's no matter : 
 " Demosthenes," said Capstick, " used to sjieak to the sea." 
 
 " Well ; he 'd the best on it in one way," said Jem ; " the 
 fishes couldn't contradict him. But surely, now — upon your 
 word, su- — you don't really mean to make a speech in Parhament 1 " 
 Capstick's eye gUstened. — " You do ? Lord help you ! when, 
 sir, — when 1 " 
 
 " Why, Jem, I can't answer for myself. Perhaps, to-night — 
 perhaps, to-morrow. If I 'm provoked, Jem." 
 
 " Provoked, sir ! Who 's to provoke you, if you 're determined 
 to sit with your mouth shut % " said Jem. 
 
 " The ti'uth is, Jem, I had resolved to sit a whole session, and 
 net say a syllable. But I shall be aggravated to speak, I know 
 I shall. The fact is, I did think I should be abashed — knocked 
 clean down — by the tremendous wisdom before, behind me, on 
 all sides of me. Now — it isn't so, Jem," and Capstick looked 
 big. " I did think my great difficulty would be to speak ; 
 whereas, hearing what I do hear, the difiiculty for me is to hold 
 my tongue. In this way — I feel it — I shall be made an orator 
 of against my will. By the way, Jem, talking of oratory, just 
 sit down in that arbour, and fancy yourself the House of 
 Commons." 
 
 " Couldn't do it, sir." Capstick imperatively waved his arm. 
 " Well, then, — there, sir," said Jem ; and he seated himself 
 bolt upright in a honeysvickle bower, ana took ofl" his hat, and 
 smoothed down his few speckled haii's ; and put on a face of gravity.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 353 
 
 " That won't do at all," cried Capstick. " I just want to try 
 a little speech, and that 's not a bit like the House of Commons. 
 No ; roll yourself about ; and now whistle a little bit ; and now 
 put on your hat : and now throw your legs upon the seat ; and, 
 above all, seem to be doing anything but listening to me. If you 
 seem to attend to what I say, you '11 put me out at once. Not at 
 all parliamentary, Jem." 
 
 " Shall I shuffle my legs, and drum my fingers upon the table 1 
 Will that do 1 " cried Jem. 
 
 " Pretty well : that will be something," answered Capstick. 
 
 " Or I tell you what, sir ; — if, while you was making your 
 oration, I was to play upon this jew's-harp" — and Jem produced 
 that harmonious iron from his waistcoat pocket — " would that be 
 parliamentary and noisy enough 1 " 
 
 "We'll try the jew's-harp," replied Capstick, "for I have 
 heard much worse noises since I sat for Liquorish. Wait a 
 minute " — for Jem essayed to preludise — " and let me explain. 
 The motion I am going to make, Jem, is to shorten the time in 
 the pilloiy." Jem shook his head hopelessly. " According to 
 the law, as at present operating, the time of the jtillory is one 
 hour. Now, I don't want to be called a revolutionist, Jem ; I 
 don't want to array all the respectability and all the jjroperty of 
 the land against me " 
 
 " Don't, sir, don't ; if you love your precious peace of mind, 
 don't think of it," cried Jem. 
 
 "Therefore, I do not at present intend to move the total 
 abolition of che pillory," said Capstick. 
 
 " You 'd be stoned in the streets, if you did. People will bear 
 a good deal, sir ; but they won't have their rights interfered with 
 in that maimer. Do take care of yourself, pray do. I shouldn't 
 like to see you ir the Tower," said Jem, with genuine tenderness. 
 " Let the pillory alone, sir ; touch that, and folks will swear 
 you 're going to lay your hands upon the golden crown next ; for 
 it 's wonderful what they do mix up with the crowai sometimes, 
 to be sure." 
 
 " Fear not, Jem. I shall respect the wholesome prejudices of 
 my countrymen ; and therefore shall only move that the time in 
 the pillory be henceforth reduced from an hour to half an hour. 
 That 's gentle, I think ? " 
 
 Jem stroked his chin— shook his head. " I know what they '11 
 call it, sh' ; interfering with the liberty of the subject. No, 
 they '11 say— our forefathers, and their fathere afore 'em, all stood 
 an hour, and why shouldn't we 1 " 
 
 " I am prepared for a little opposition, Jem ; but, just fancy 
 yourself the House, while I speak ray speech. Make as much
 
 354 ST. GILES AND ST. .JAMES. 
 
 noise, and be as inattentive as possible, and tlien I shall get on." 
 Jem obediently buzzed — buzzed with the jew's-harp, shambled 
 with his feet, rocked himself backwards and foi-wards ; and, to 
 the extent of his genius, eudeavoiu'ed to multiply himself into a 
 veiy full House. 
 
 Capstick took off his hat — held forth his right arm as before, 
 with the supplementary addition of a piece of paper in his hand, 
 and again with his other arm supported his left coat-tail. " Sir " 
 — said Capstick, looking as full as he could at Jem, who rocked 
 and shifted every minute — " Sir, it was an observation of a 
 Eoman emperor " 
 
 " Which one 1 " asked Jem. 
 
 " That 's immaterial," answered Capstick. " A question that 
 will certainly not be asked in debate. I take a Eoman emperor 
 as something strong to begin with — of a Eoman emperor that 
 Quifacitper aliunn'''' 
 
 " Hallo ! " cried Jem, holding the jew's-harp wide away from 
 his mouth ; " what 's that — Latin % " 
 
 " Latin," answered Capstick. 
 
 " Well — my stars ! " — said Jem — " I never knowed that you 
 knowed Latin." 
 
 " Nor did I, Jem," replied Capstick smilmgly. " But I don't 
 know how it is ; when a man once gets into Parhament, Latin 
 seems to come upon him as a matter of course. Now go on with 
 your jew's-harp, and make as much noise as you like, but don't 
 speak to me. 'T isn't parliamentary. Now then," and Capstick 
 resumed the senator — " ' it was an observation of a Eoman 
 emperor " 
 
 " If you please, sir, I 've laid some bread and cheese and ale in 
 the parlour," said Becky, breaking in upon the debate. " It 's a 
 hot day, sir, and T thought you might be tired." 
 
 " Well, — I don't know. What, Jem," asked Capstick, smacking 
 his lips, — " what do you propose % " 
 
 " Why," answered Jem rising, " I propose that the House do 
 now adjourn." 
 
 Capstick returned the paper to his pocket, and taking up his 
 hat, said — " I second the motion." After a very short pause, he 
 added — "And it is adjourned accordingly." Whereupon he and Jem 
 turned to follow Becky, who had run on before them, down another 
 path. In less than a minute a shriek rang through the garden. 
 
 " Wliy, that 's the girl ! she 's hurt, surely," cried Jem. 
 
 "Pooh, nonsense," said Capstick, quickening his pace, "it's 
 nothing ; taken a frog for a croco(hle — or something of the sort. 
 Women love to squall; it shows their weakness. It can't bo 
 anything "
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 355 
 
 " Oh, sir— sir— sir— " cried Becky, flying up the garden, and 
 rushing to Capstick,— " they 've stole her— carried her ofT- my 
 dear, dear missus ! " 
 
 " Carried ofl' ! Mrs. Snipetou— the Lady "—exclaimed Capstick. 
 
 " Stole her away by force— oh, my poor master — oh, my dear 
 missus— the yoimg man will tell you all— master's heart will 
 break— my sweet lady ! " And Becky with flowing tears, wrung 
 her hands. 
 
 " Why ? Eh— what is all this 1 " said Capstick to St. Giles, 
 who looked pale and stupified. " Fellow, what 's this ? " 
 
 "I'll tell you all about it, sir,"— said St. Giles. "The lady's 
 horse was swifter than mine — I could no how keep up with 
 her. And when we turned out of Highgate we " — here St. Giles 
 turned deathly pale, and his feet sliding from under him, he fell 
 to the earth. 
 
 " He 's dead — he 's dead," cried Becky, falling upon her knees 
 at his side, and lifting up his head, when her hands were instantly 
 covered with blood, drawn by the cudgel of Blast. On this she 
 renewed her screams ; renewed her exclamations of desjjair. 
 " He was dead — murdered ! " 
 
 At this moment old Snipeton ran, reeling up the path. Dorothy 
 Vale, more by her chalk-like face, than by her tongue, had 
 revealed the mischief to her master. " Missus was gone — carried 
 off — the man was up the garden." His life — nothing but his life 
 — should satisfy the cheated husband. Snipeton rushed to tlie 
 group ; and when he saw St. Giles prostrate, insensible ; the old 
 man, grinding his teeth, howled his curses ; and in very impotence, 
 worked his hands like a demon balked of his revenge. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXV. 
 
 We will not linger with Snipeton. For why cast away sympathy 
 —that essence of our moral being— upon an old, money-loving 
 man, gulled of his youthful wife ? Wherefore pity him, made, 
 by the lucky boldness of hired knavery— retained and j^aid by 
 scounch-el cowardice — the living joke of the best society, shaking 
 its sides at the best of clubs 1 Had the miserable man been left 
 upon the road, with out-turned pockets, and a medicable bruise 
 or gash or two, why there would have been no jest whatever 
 in the dull mishap ; the robbery and the wound might have 
 passed among the serious things that lengthen even careless 
 faces. But how diflerent the casualty ! A man- an old man— 
 and the quintessence of the di'ollery lay in his wrmkles— had 
 ^ A A 2
 
 356 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 been robljed of Iiis other self ; had had his very being rent in 
 twain, and to think of his loss was rarest comedy — to picture him 
 writhing in the agony of that forced separation was to crow 
 with laughter. Such was the compassion bestowed by men 
 upon the old money-merchant, as rumour, like a wild-goose, 
 cackled as she flew. Therefore, for a time, we will leave Snipeton 
 at his solitary hearth. No ; not solitary. For now the figure, 
 the features of his wife — the run-away ; yes, there was the 
 horror ; there the burning truth that poisoned the wound — were 
 multipHed about him. It would have been some relief to the 
 tortured — a passing breath cooling the damned — to think that 
 beautiful mischief the victim of violence : but no ; she had 
 clubbed her share of cunning ; she had played a free part in the 
 wickedness ; she had fled from him ; and he could hear her 
 laughter at the trick. And then those very numerals — things 
 that in pleasant idleness of heart he had jotted down, as fancied 
 guards and retinue of wealth, to glorify and do homage to that 
 idol of his home — they rose in his brain Hke sparks of fire, and 
 he howled and whined like idiotcy. And at the same time, as 
 we have said, there was gi-eat laughter — very great enjojTneut 
 at the clubs. 
 
 The scene is shifted — night has passed away. For a time poor 
 Snipeton sat with his eyes ujion the hand of the clock as though 
 he watched a dagger aimed to strike him. And the hand moved 
 from hour to hour ; and then, in deep night, as one on whom 
 despair had fastened, not to be loosed biit at the grave, he sat iu 
 silent, sullen misery. 
 
 The scene is shifted. We are miles away in pleasant Surrey. 
 In an old house — old as the gnarled elms and oaks that majes- 
 tically stand, the sylvan guards, around it — is Snipeton's stolen 
 wife. That house is the abiding-jjlace of the luckless horseman 
 thrown from his steed at Hampstead, and duly tended by Cross- 
 bone, and duly robbed by Blast. Accident and sickness save a 
 world of ceremony, and the patient and the surgeon were in 
 briefest season, fast friends. You may grow a friendship quick 
 as a salad, that like the salad, shall serve the required purpose ; 
 and so it was vnth the intimacy sprung up 'twixt Shoveller and 
 Crossbone. Shoveller was pleased to call himself — a man of the 
 world. We say pleased ; for he proclaimed his title, as though 
 it was one of honour to be mightily proud of He would say, 
 " I am a man of the world ;" indicating that he was wholly and 
 entirely of the world : that he dealt with facts ; hard facts ; 
 hard and real as the world he felt with his soles ; and quite a 
 different matter from the misty, cloudy world, that swam above 
 his head.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 357 
 
 Aud Crossbone was also a man of the world. Heuce, lie felt 
 himself drawn towards Shoveller, even as two dead logs in a pond 
 are attracted together. In the very dawn and roseate blush 
 of their friendship, Mr. Shoveller had informed Crossbone that he 
 was the owner of a snug, retired nook, buried away amid trees in 
 a wild patch of country; a solitary house, without, as he observed, 
 the cui'se of neighbours. He had seen so much of town-hfe in his 
 days — at times, too, mixed so veiy actively amongst the company 
 of London— that now and then, he felt it absolutely necessary to 
 the preservation of his health, nay, even of his life— to be turned 
 out to a bit of grass. Ajid as Mr. Shoveller spoke, the face of 
 Crossbone was lighted from an inner light ; for his fancy glowed 
 vsdth a pleasant picture — that of Mrs. Snipeton spuited from hei 
 chastised lord, justly punished for the offence of marriage — and 
 dwelling, like a wood-dove, for a timely season at least, in that 
 l^leasant hermitage. 
 
 Briefly, Mr. Shoveller offered his house and household devUs — 
 for his lai'es had cloven feet and barbed tails — to the service 01 
 Mr. Crossbone ; who, without offence to the spirit of hospitality, 
 in the prettiest manner hinted at hard jjayment at an early day. 
 V/hereupon, Mr. Shoveller professed his readiness to engage a 
 dear and valued friend or two (he had a large bosom for friends, 
 that man ; and coidd, upon occasion, have lodged all Newgate) 
 to form an escort for the lady, from the perils of the journey. 
 And l^Lr. Shoveller kept his word ; it was his pride to do so : and 
 the greater the mischief to be done, the more binding did he ever 
 hold the engagement. 
 
 It was the morning after the service accomplished by Mr. 
 Shoveller, and he and Crossbone walked in the little orchard : 
 walked as friends should walk, newly knit together by rascal 
 wi-ong ; they both took such pains to be at ease. " A sweet place, 
 here : a very sweet place," said Crossbone. 
 
 " Why, yes ; the grass is as green here as anywhere ; the birds 
 sing as well, and the flowers axe as fresh ; but what of that ? " 
 answered the philosophic Shoveller, " I never care to brag." 
 
 " No man of the Avorld does," said Crossbone. " Bless me ! 
 what a crop of apples you '11 have ! " 
 
 " And pears, and plums, and cherries," said Shoveller, slowly ; 
 and then he added, " Mrs. Snipeton has a devilish pretty mouth. 
 And to think her lips should keep so red ; when, I doubt not, 
 winter has touched them so often. Ha ! ha ! Poor little kitten : 
 how she pouted ! Well, if I love to see anything, it is now and 
 then to look upon a pretty wom;m in a tearing rage." 
 
 We know not what recollection dai-kened Crossbone's mind— he 
 had known the sorrows of widowhood, and jjcrhaps felt them anew
 
 358 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 — but he gazed with mixed sadness and surprise at Mr. Shoveller, 
 " Taste is ever}i;liing ; it 's the salt of life ; -nithout it we should 
 be as like one another as snails ; and for what I know, have just 
 as much enjoyment. Nevertheless there is a taste that grows 
 into a disease ; and, pai'don me, my dear friend, if I think a taste 
 for a lady in a rage, is a taste of that very sort. Now cannibalism 
 is only a taste, nothing more. Nevertheless, though — as men of 
 the world — we may flay one another, we resjiect the decencies of 
 life, and stop there." Thus spoke Crossbone. 
 
 " It is such a pretty sight " — said Shoveller, returning to the 
 picture — " to see what they Avould do, with what they only do. 
 When I lifted her from her horse, her little white hand grasped 
 me, as it would tear me to bits. ' Don't madam,' said I ; ' T 'm 
 ticklish, and shall laugh : ' and when I put her into the carriage, 
 and placed myself beside her, she looked at me, as though she 
 thought her eyes burning-glasses that must make tinder of me ; 
 and worked her precious lips, as though they were crossbows 
 shooting twenty deaths at me. And then — but I asked her pardon 
 like a gentleman — and then I laughed — I couldn 't help it. Oh, I do 
 love a woman in a rage ; it gives the ]3retty thing such animation ; 
 turns so much that seems china-work into real flesh and blood." 
 
 " And nails," Crossbone was about to say : but with an after- 
 thought he waived the subject as painful, and observed — " You 
 don 't think it possible Mrs. Snipeton can see me here ? Because, 
 ray dear friend, I must not be known in this business ; that is, 
 unless professionally." 
 
 " Do you see that hand 1 " said Shoveller, exhibiting his right 
 palm close under Crossbone's eye. 
 
 " Perfectly well ; I once studied chiromancy — that is, as a boy 
 — and I can see that your hand was made " 
 
 " For roasted chestnuts." 
 
 Crossbone stared. 
 
 " Nay, nay, you are, you know it, a man of the world. The 
 chestnut is in the house there ; and this is the hand — the paw of 
 poor puss — that you, knowing pug that you are — that you have 
 used to " 
 
 " Now, my dear friend," exclaimed Crossbone, apprehending 
 the intended application, " if I thought you thought so, I assure 
 you it would make me very unhappy. Very unhappy, indeed. 
 Vou see, mine is a very difiicult, a very delicate part. For to- 
 morrow, I must see Mr. Snipeton." 
 
 " And, perhaps," said Shoveller with his best gravity, "perhaps 
 prescribe for him." 
 
 " Should his condition require it " — assented Crossbone — " pre- 
 scribe for him."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 359 
 
 "Well, as you know the seat of his complaint,"— and Shoveller 
 jerked his head towards the house — "no one better— you'll have 
 but little trouble with him. Poor old mau ! Don 't bleed liim 
 much. Ha ! ha ! " 
 
 " Don 't sport with surgery. It has been my weakness — 1 
 may say, very unprofitalile weakness — to have too much respect 
 for my profession. I love it so dearly, I can 't suffer a joke 
 upon it. Hark ! " cried Crossbone, and he turned towards the 
 road and hstened — " hark ! Confess me a wizard, now. That 's 
 a horse." 
 
 " Well, in the worst of times, you couldn 't have been burned 
 for that prophecy," said Shoveller. 
 
 " Yes ; but a horse that carries a lover. There 's a beating 
 heart at full gallop and — cUd I not say so?" and Crossbone reced- 
 ing behind a shrub pointed to young St. James as he slackened 
 his pace at the house. " Now, my dear fi"iend, I must leave you ; 
 I must wait upon his lordship. You know your promise — I mean 
 — our bargain 1 The house " 
 
 " Is his lordship's," cried Shoveller ; and that man of the 
 world looked very wise. "The house, and all that 's in it. I know 
 true hospitality ; especially, when paid for. I have the honour, 
 Doctor Crossbone " 
 
 " Not yet ; no diploma just yet," said Crossbone, meekly ; and 
 with a faint smile. 
 
 "Oh, it's coming fast, now. Wlien rascality — not, my dear 
 friend, that I mean rascality — I would speak as a man of the 
 world — when rascality succeeds, dignity as a matter of course 
 jnust follow. Therefore, again Doctor Crossbone, I have the 
 honour to wish you a good morning ; and more, the unbounded 
 gratitude of your excellent and noble employer." With this 
 wish, gravely delivered, and a dignified movement of the hat, 
 Mr. Shoveller resigned his place of host to the apothecary, and 
 struck down the garden, away into the fields ; perhaps to medi- 
 tate on life, and all its doings. 
 
 Ere the reader could learn this much, Crossbone was at the 
 side of his lordship, who, dismounting, resigned his horse to Ealph 
 Gum : and that very intelligent youth looked at Crossbone, and 
 then looked at the house, as though his moral sense took a good, 
 hearty sniif at some mysterious mischief, and enjoyed it hugely. 
 
 " Your lordship," said Crossbone, " shall not the horses be put 
 up ? There 's stabling — " 
 
 " No : at least, not for the present. He has his orders," 
 said St. James, who was then bowed into the house, and Gum, 
 buried in thought, walked the horses down the road. It was 
 very certain that his lordship was committed to some piece of
 
 SCO ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 ple;i:5aut kuavery ; aud the young man felt flattered that, ever 
 so humbly, he had been permitted to mix in it. Wages must be 
 raised. 
 
 Crossbone led St. James into a large low room, plainly, but 
 solidly appointed. The oaken furniture was black and shining 
 with age and huswifery ; and a few pictures on the walls 
 — portraits of long-since forgotten churchyard earth — looked 
 coldly, gloomily, on the intruders. The yoimg lord seemed 
 ill at ease ; Uke one who had given up his conscience to the 
 keeping of another, yet feared to call him to account for 
 the trust. Now he glanced mooflily at Crossbone, and now 
 with his whip, beat at his boot. But Crossbone — happy in 
 his triumph ! — marked it not. He had succeeded in so great 
 an attempt ; he had such a radiant captive to adorn his victory, 
 that he marked not the ingratitude of the man so undeservedly 
 made happy. Crossbone expanded himself, body and soul, that 
 he mif'ht receive all the blessings to be poured down upon him. 
 And at length his lordship, looking full at his benefactor, observed, 
 "WeU, sir?" 
 
 Crossbone winced a little ; only for a moment. And then 
 vigorously smiling, and bowing, and throwing ajiart his arms, as 
 if with the action he would open his very heart, said, " My lord 
 — ^my dear lord — if, on this happy occasion, you will allow me to 
 call you so — I congratulate you. At length, you are in the very 
 house " 
 
 " And whose house may it be 1 " questioned St. James, glancing 
 to and fro. 
 
 " Oh, for that matter, my lord, your lordship's own ; that I have 
 settled — your own, so long as you shall deign to use it. You are 
 master " — and Crossbone laughed like a tickled demon — " master 
 of the house, and all the house contains." 
 
 " And that, Mr. Crossbone, doesn't seem to promise much," 
 said the ungrateful nobleman. 
 
 Crossbone smiled, as conscious knowledge may be allowed to 
 smile, and with his left-hand fingers coaxed his chin. He then 
 mincingly approached St. James, and like one about to speak a 
 spell ineffable, said " Mrs. Snipe.ton " — and then the apothecary 
 paused, and stared. As well he might : for that very ardent 
 young nobleman, the Lord St. James, did not spring to his feet, 
 re-echoing the silver name. No : his lordshijj — gravely as he 
 would have sat in Parliament, had not the democratic misan- 
 thropic muifin-maker defeated him — his lordship for the second 
 time, made answer " Well, sir 1 " 
 
 " Mrs. Snipeton, my lord, is at this moment in this house," 
 cried Crossbone, with the emphasis of an injured man.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 361 
 
 " Is it possible ? " exclaimed St. James, aud his blood rose to 
 his face. 
 
 " Permit me to observe, my lord "—said Crossbone, naturally 
 affected, hurt by the placidity of his patron — " that to devo- 
 tion, and fidelity, with a little intelligence — for true wisdom 
 never brags — I defy my enemies to say it of me — all things are 
 possible. Mrs. Snipeton is here ; here, my lord, without " — aud 
 the apothecary chuckled at the thought, it was so droll — " without 
 Mr. Snipeton." 
 
 It was very strange— very odd — what could liis lordship be 
 made of? He showed no sign of an attempt to snatch the 
 apothecary to his arms ; in the gratitude of that waiTu embrace, 
 forgetful, for one fleeting moment, of the world and its ceremonies 
 that ought to make the gap between them. No : as though his 
 lordship was sitting for a statue of patriotism, or stoicism, or any 
 other virtue to be wrought in stone for a very miserable posterity 
 ■ — for as the world, upon the best authority, with every generation 
 gets worse and worse, iu due time, the demi-gods of one age will 
 of course become the Ti'oglodytes or Cretms of another — as though 
 we say, his lordshijj had posed himself for a sculptor, to go down 
 a seated giant to future dwarfs, so did he listen to the tremendous 
 intelUgence uttered by Crossbone. Is gratitude extinct 1 — thought 
 Crossbone ; passed from the world with its dragons and griflins ? 
 Crossbone was not a man to weep : nevertheless, he believed he 
 felt a. moistening of the eyes, as he looked upon the extra- 
 ordinary indifference of his friend and jiatron. Would he never 
 speak 1 
 
 At length liis lordship somewhat relieved his faithful vassal. 
 " Mrs. Snipeton here 1 Alone 1 Without her husband, you say I 
 And how is this 1 " 
 
 " You know not, my lord — no, and you never shall know — the 
 pains I have taken, the danger I have risked, to insui'e your happi- 
 ness in this matter. You never shall know it." 
 
 " And was the lady earned off by force ] " Crossbone paused. 
 " Answer me, man : was violence used 1 Speak," cried St. James. 
 
 " Why, that is — gentle violence. The — the sort of violence 
 that is not displeasing to any of the sex. Just a violence that is 
 nothing more than comphmentary to the dear thhigs : enough to 
 keep up appearances ; not a bit beyond." 
 
 " She struggled — screamed — and — " 
 
 " Yes ; there were all the graces, all the etceteras, and little 
 flourishes used on such occasions ; but, as I say, not a whit more, 
 my lord, than enough to keep up appearances. The lady felt that 
 she was being torn — yes, torn is the word with the world — torn 
 from an old, and ugly husband ; aud submitted to the operation
 
 362 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 with proper fortitude. But for appearances, as I say, she 'd have 
 squealed no more tlian a rose-bud j^uUed from a bush — a nectarine 
 twitched from a tree." 
 
 " Come, sir," — and young St. James smiled, though somewhat 
 sourly, — " you shall tell me all about it." 
 
 Never did veteran tell the story of his laurels Avith greater 
 relish than Crossbone felt as he narrated the history of his con- 
 quest. " You see, my lord, I knew your heart was set upon this 
 matter ; and therefore, though there are people in the world who 
 may affect to lift their eyebrows at the transaction, therefore, 
 urged by a sudden friendship for your lordship — if you will permit 
 me to use the delightful word — I was determined to gi'atify you. 
 But it was necessary for both of us, that I should go waiily to 
 work. Hence, in my professional capacity, I threw in the pre- 
 scription of horse-flesh, that I might get the ladj'^ from under her 
 husband's roof. This settled, my next care was to secure a sweet, 
 sequestered spot, far from the meddling intrusion of a scandalous 
 world ; and fortune, seconding my wish, flung the owner of this 
 house into my hands, — a j^liaut, easy man, my lord, who knows 
 the worth of money. By the way, my lord, your servant — I mean 
 the fellow you gave me as a follower — is, by no means, a man for 
 our work. When the woman was in our power — ^that is, in the 
 power of my friends, for it would have spoilt all had I mixed 
 myself in the matter — the rascal would have fought for her, when 
 he was levelled by as pretty a blow, 1 am told, as ever fell to the 
 lot of a fool. We must get rid of him, my lord, that 's plain. 
 Well, my lord, my friend Mr. Shoveller — " 
 
 " And who is Mr. Shoveller 1 " asked St. James, diily. 
 
 " Oh, the OAvner of this quiet little castle. A snug, silent 
 retreat, is it not, my lord 1 " 
 
 St. James cast no complimentaiy look at the walls, and then 
 motioned Crossbone to continue. 
 
 " My story," said the apothecary, with commendable spirit, 
 considering the coldness of his hearer, " my story is now soon 
 told. The lady had left her husband on his road to London — to 
 St. Mary Axe, my lord ; you know the den — strewed with the 
 bones of young spendthrifts, though we can't see 'em, my lord — 
 well, she had left him, and her rascal servant, mounted on a 
 wretched horse — Shoveller, deep fellow, had taken care of that 
 — could not keep up with her, and to bring the story to an 
 end, there was a little squeaUng — just for appearance — when 
 Mrs. Snipeton was safely lifted into a carriage. The horses 
 tore along — and here she is." 
 
 " You are a bol<l practitioner, Mr. Crossbone," said St. James, 
 with a disturbed look : a look that showed perplexed thoughts
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 363 
 
 — increasing hesitation. " And there was not much violence ? " 
 added the young lord, slowly. 
 
 " Just as much as I have said, my lord ; nay, hardly that. 
 The truth is, I believe — indeed, I am sure — the pretty creature 
 knew — for women have shrewd guesses in such matters — knew 
 where she was coming — knew whom she was to meet — and so, 
 yes, so, my lord, behaved herself accordingly." 
 
 " Well, it may be. I wish I could think it," muttered 
 St. James. 
 
 " You may soon assure yourself, my lord. The lady is, I say, 
 in this house. After much toil and trouble and — but, as I have 
 said, I won't brag, it isn't my way — she is here — under this root 
 — up stairs" — for the coldness of St. James made Crossbone 
 emphatically precise — " and, in a word, my lord, here is the key." 
 
 As the apothecary suddenly presented that domestic implement 
 to St. James he unconsciously recoiled from it as from some 
 mortal mischief " A prisoner — locked up ! " cried the young 
 man. 
 
 " "WTi}', my lord, after so much ado to cage the bird, think you 
 I 'd leave the door open ? " Thus spoke Crossbone, and with an 
 impatience a little disrespectful of his hearer's rauk. But, it must 
 be confessed, even by the most ceremonious, that when a man 
 for the sake of friendship and a little alloy of gold, risks the 
 reward of felony, it is somewhat trying to the spiiit to be met 
 with the blank face and wandering eye of the gentleman assisted. 
 Crossbone felt smitten to the soul as he stiU felt the key between 
 his fingers — still saw the young nobleman regard the piece of cold 
 iron as iron, nothing more ; and not the instrument that, with a 
 turn, would open a gate of Paradise. And then pride — it was 
 very natural — arose in the breast of the apothecary ; and with a 
 cold, thick voice, he said — " What am I to understand, my lord 1 
 Will you take the key, or will you " — the alternative was tremen- 
 dous — " leave it alone ? " 
 
 Instantly, St. James snatched the key, and Cror-sbone felt lighter 
 by many a hundred weight. " Upstairs 1 " cried St. James. 
 
 "Upstairs, my dear lord" — answered Crossbone — "along the 
 passage, and the first door to the right." St. James quitted the 
 room ; and the apothecary sank in a chair, one heap of thank- 
 fulness. Deluded man ! He had httle cause for thanksgiving ; 
 but then, he knew not as St. James mounted the staii-s what 
 virtuous resolution accompanied that good young gentleman ; 
 knew not that his noble friend— the friend for whom he had 
 worked so hardly, had risked so much— turned, loatlnngly from 
 him, as from so much moral carrion. Again and again had the 
 visionary carriage-wheels rumbled in the ears of Crossbone : again
 
 364 ST GILES AND ST JAMES. 
 
 had he seen himself the court physician ; again had he laid his 
 finger on that most wondrous mechanism, a royal pulse, — and 
 now, whilst St. James trod the stairs, the day-dream came full 
 and glowing on the rapt apothecary ; and he sat in clouds of 
 happiness. 
 
 Now and then it is well for the peace, the self-complacency of 
 folks — determined to consider themselves very worthy individuals 
 — that the world is a world of masks ; that thought, the face of 
 the mind, may laugh or frown unseen behind that vizor of flesh 
 bestowed upon all men. Indeed, it is only by means of such 
 vizors that the masquerade of human life is candied on ; for when 
 the mask flrops, earth ends. Had it been othervvise, could Cross- 
 bone have looked upon the mind of St. James, he would have 
 given up all thoughts of carriage-wheels, and possibly — Uke many 
 a disapi^ointed varlet — felt an instant yearning for virtue, if 
 assured with bodily safety. With Newgate suddenly frowning 
 upon his soul, he might have welcomed his old abode ; and 
 thought more tenderly of the human weeds of earth, all careless 
 of its flowers. But Crossbone was denied this knowledge ; and 
 therefore sat happy in his ignorance ; still listening to the lies of 
 harlot fortune. And her silver tongue so beat upon his brain — 
 with such sweet harmony possessed him — that it was not until she 
 had twice spoken that Crossbone heard the syllables of a real 
 woman ; and then fortune was silent, and melted away in a 
 golden mist, and the apothecary saw Mother Daws — for so she 
 was afl'ectionately named by Shoveller — standing at the door. 
 
 It was diflicult to think her of the sisterhood of Eve. However, 
 the mind was fain to submit to the tyranny of petticoats, and — 
 though not without a struggle — believe theii- bearer, woman. 
 There was that about her would make a reasonable man, with 
 afi'ectionate thoughts for the past, think tenderly of the times 
 whsu that old, human husk with blinking eyes and mumbling 
 tongue, would have been to the world no more than a Cliristmas- 
 log ; a thing to cast upon a fire, to make men merry -with. In 
 those good times, not a cow would have suffered that woman to 
 approach her, but would have inexorably refused the eventide 
 milk ; not a porker would have caught her eye, but would have 
 obediently sickened and died of the vvitch. Heavy, sedate hay- 
 stacks, at the step of that old woman, would have taken a thousand 
 wings and flown upon a sudden hurricane. And, worse than all, 
 impudently, most irreverently taking to herself the form of a hare^ 
 she would have led poor Squire October's hounds some twenty 
 miles and more, and then have vanished in a flash of light. She 
 would have fed little children ujion a diet of crooked pins, and 
 blasted the hopes of butter-churns. And now, Mother Daws was
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 365 
 
 an ugly bunch of an old woman, and nothing more ! And thus it 
 is, by the presumption and hard usage of man, Time — like a 
 venerable sire, fobbed by unfilial sons — is WTonged, — in his old age, 
 cheated, and debarred of dearest rights, and wholesomest anmse- 
 ments. We have long since taken witches from him ; and there 
 are men who, after all his losses, would deprive him of the gallows ! 
 What, in time, will be left to Time ? 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVI. 
 
 " You didn't call ? " said Mrs. Daws ; and Crossbone looked a 
 savage assent. " The gentleman 's gone up-stairs," added the 
 unmoved woman ; for it was not in the face or words of tyrarmic 
 man to shake her. "Well, I only say what I said when you 
 brought her here — I know what I know." 
 
 " To the devil with you, and all your knowledge at your back ! " 
 cried Crossbone, and he jumped from his seat, and strode towards 
 the door. There he paused ; and from his lips dropt that manna 
 of life, good counsel. "I tell you what. Mother Sulphui-tongue ; 
 let me advise you neither to see nor hear. — At youi- age, you 
 ought to be ashamed of yourself, not to be blind and deaf too." 
 And Crossbone quitted the house, and strolling down the lane, 
 turned into a little wood ; possibly to think of the reward awaiting 
 him ; possibly to add to his knowledge of herbs and simples. As 
 to Mrs. Daws, she looked full of slumbering desti-uction ; and 
 with a passing smile of conscious mischief, she betook herself 
 to household affairs, calmly, patiently awaiting her time. She 
 would wash up the breakfast-things, and well contemplate her 
 measures. 
 
 We left St. James upon the stairs. In a moment he was at 
 Clarissa's hamber-door. Detennined upon ranking the amplest 
 atonement within his power, he had resolved to restore the lady 
 to her injured husband. Yes ; he would himself lead her back to 
 Mr. Snipeton's home ; and, confessing the part that his weakness 
 had consented to in the plot which, whilst unacted, seemed of sucli 
 light account, — beg the good man's pardon. Pled.ging his noble 
 word never again to offend, he would cure himself of the lui- 
 lawful passion by foreign travel ; or he would fall in love with 
 another woman. At all events, he was determined to make a 
 sacrifice ; and would croM-n himself, the conqueror of his own 
 passions. What a \'ile, base, inconceivable scoundrel was that 
 dirt-eating apothecary ; how atrocious was the part he liad
 
 366 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 jdayed ; how degrading the association of a moment with him ; 
 anti then, how satisfactory, how truly ennobhng to confess a fault, 
 tlie confession coupled with a determination of future amendment ! 
 And these varied thoughts possessed young St. James, as pausing, 
 with the key in his hand, he was about to open the door : he 
 Hstened ; all was silent. "Well, there was nothing strange in that. 
 Again he listened : no, she was not sobbing — there was no sound 
 of grief Perhaps, she was fast asleep. There was an air of 
 peacefulness — of repose — in all things, that even confused him. 
 After all, he had possibly wronged the apothecary : the man had 
 been a little over-zealous ; nothing more. Still, all was silent. 
 He listened : yes ; he thought — or then tried to think — that he 
 heard a low breathing, as of deep slumber. Grief never slept so 
 soundly — a torn heart sank not so suddenly to rest. It was plain, 
 he had been too precipitate ; that is, in his determination to 
 restore the woman to her husband. She might, in her heart, 
 despise him for his pusillanimity. In her heart, she might rejoice 
 at the violence that supplied her own want of courage by beai-ing 
 her away. And then, what a jest wovild it be for the world — for 
 his world — should he think to play the moralist ! He might be 
 nicknamed Scipio for life. Still there was no sound, save that 
 of lowest breathing. What a simpleton he had nearly sho^vn 
 himself ! There could be no doubt that the woman loved him ; 
 and, the step taken, was profoundly happy for her deliverance. 
 Placing the key in his pocket, St. James descended the stairs to 
 have some further talk with the apothecary ; the ill-used man 
 who had suffered in the hard judgment of his noble friend. 
 
 Now, whilst St. James, following Crossbone, takes counsel of that 
 wise, worldly man, we will return to the Honourable Member for 
 Liquorish ; all the time tremendously indignant at the violence 
 offered to Snipeton's household gods, and resolved, at the cost of 
 any exertion or peril, to revenge it. 
 
 Mr. Capstick left Suipeton late in the evening, having exacted 
 from him a promise that he would attend a council to be held at 
 the senator's lodgings, in Long Acre, early next morning, should 
 no news be obtained of the fugitive ere then. In the meantime, 
 Capstick, advised hj Bright Jem, had summoned Jerry "Whistle, 
 that meekest of human bloodhounds, to assist them. Late at 
 night, Mr.Wliistle had been acquainted with all the circumstances. 
 Whereupon, he had played with his watch-chain, and observed — 
 " This sort of cajjer, you know, JNIi". Capstick, is very often a put-up 
 thing ; very often, indeed. And I must say it, the evidence is all 
 against the 'oman. Yes, I must say it, against the 'oman." 
 
 " But you have heard that the young man says she was carried 
 off ? " said Capstick. " He '11 swear to it."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 367 
 
 " No doubt on it, so far as he could see ; very honest young 
 man, that ; I hope, too, he '11 take care of himself. Still, it 's 
 against the 'oman, and it 's my 'pinion, any jury would so find it. 
 Why, bless my heart, Mr, Capstick, and have they sent you to 
 Parliament, and saving your presence, do you know no more of 
 life than that ? Why, look you here. The young 'oman, they 
 say, is like a full-blown rose, and the old man 's as wrinkled as a 
 prune ; there 's a yoimg nobleman, too, in the case, and — well, 
 weU ; depend upon it, if we find her out — and I 'm safe to do that, 
 or my name 's not Whistle — she '11 not thank us for our pains, 
 I 'm bound for it." And Whistle went his way. 
 
 Now, Capstick, though he would not confess it to himself, was 
 nevertheless shaken in his faith by the officer : he spoke with 
 such a weight of official experience. " Jem, I don't believe a word 
 of it ; Mr. Whistle has seen so much of the black of Ufe, poor man, 
 he can't believe in any white at all — eh, Jem 1 " 
 
 " He has seen a good deal, sir ; good deal. Wonder he doesn't 
 look quite worn out, and quite wicked," said Jem. " For I don't 
 know how it is, though wickedness and misery ain't catching, to 
 look at 'em, nevertheless they do seem to leave a sliadow in a 
 man's face ; a something that 's a part on 'em. I know now, 
 when I 've been digging among the flowers — ha ! I wonder who's 
 looking at them precious carnations, now ? I 've always felt as it 
 I 'd got some of their brightness about me. A man that looks 
 upon tulips, and roses, and flowei-s of all sorts all his life, — ^why, 
 it 's quite plain, he catches their good looks as I may say ; for 
 that 's the beauty of flowers, they always look happy and good- 
 tempered ; bits of innocence that almost seem to make us innocent 
 while we stare at 'em." 
 
 " This is not a time to talk of such trumpery, Jem," said Cap 
 stick : and Jem winced at the contemptuous word, which, to say 
 the truth, came from the throat, and not the heart of the speaker. 
 " My opinion is, that Mrs. Snipeton has been carried off by ruffian 
 violence. I hope I don't think too well of anybody — I trust not 
 — I never did in all my life, and I 'm not going to begin now ; but 
 I must believe her to be a guiltless, ill-usetl gentlewoman. And 
 then the man was knocked down in her defence — and, by the way, 
 I was going to speak to you about that young man." 
 
 " Yes, sir, to be sure ; he 's now searching all comei-s, and 
 swears he '11 find his mistress, if he dies for it. A nice, honest 
 young fellow that, sir," said Jem. "Has it all in his face, 
 hasn't he 1 " 
 
 " Why, to say the truth, I think he has ; that is, he looks too 
 honest. People who 've so much of it in their faces, people who 
 somehow make a show window of theii- countenance— well, some-
 
 368 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 how, I distrust 'em. Wliei-e does he come from ? Who were his 
 pai-ents / Has lie got a character, and did the parson of the 
 parish sign it ? If he hasn't, I don't believe in him. The fact is, 
 1 *ve been too easy all my life ; and will never take a man's 
 character again if it isn't written in a good bold hand, and pro- 
 pei-ly authenticated. "Wlio is he ? Ever since he called at the 
 Tub— well, those bees have a nice time of it, they have ; they 
 hav'n't to go down to the House — ever since then, he 's been flitting 
 about me, as if he was some mysterious puzzle of a vagabond 
 that — why, Jem, what are you lookuig so hard at ? What 's the 
 matter, man ? " 
 
 " Well, SU-, I must say it ; though you are a member of Parlia- 
 ment — heaven help you in all your misfortunes, say I — ^you 
 hav'n't grown the wiser on that account. Don't you remember a 
 poor little piece of a dirt of a boy called St. Giles 'I " 
 
 " Certainly ; one of the things raised to be hanged ; one of the 
 little rascalities of life reai'ed up that respectable folks may seem 
 all the more respectable ; one of the shades of the fine picture oi 
 life, bringing out the bright colours all the stronger. It's a 
 pity they didn't hang him. Mercy 's a bungling virtue, after all, 
 Jem ; and nine times out of ten, does just as much harm as 
 mischief itself Well, what of St. Giles 1 " cried Capstick, quite 
 relieved by his burst of cynicism — quite refreshed with his own 
 vinegar. 
 
 "^Vliy, you know, he was transported for life. A long time 
 that, sir, for fourteen to look for'ard to," said Jem. 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ; he went to a fine place, Jem : Botany Bay ; 
 lovely climate ; six crops of peas in a year ; pine-apples for a 
 penny ; and cockatoos so plenty, they put 'em in pies instead of 
 pigeons. St, Giles — he ! he ! — a great man now, I 've no doubt. 
 Shouldn't wonder if he hunts kangaroos with fox-hounds, and 
 drives a coach-and-four." 
 
 " Well, with any chance of that, I should say he 'd never come 
 back agin," said Jem, very gravely. 
 
 " Back again ! Why, Mr. Aniseed, are you ignorant of the laws 
 of your country ? " cried Capstick, his eye twinkling. 
 
 " I am," cried Jem ; " and when I know what a lot of wicked- 
 ness is in some of 'em, I can't say that I 'm not glad I don't know 
 any more : saving your presence, agin, as a member of ParUa- 
 ment, and a maker of the same." 
 
 '• Well, then, you do not know, perhaps, that if St. Giles was 
 to put his foot in merry England, they'd hang him for the imper- 
 tinence ? Are you aware of that interesting fact, Mr. Aniseed ? " 
 cried Capstick. 
 
 " Wliy, without any conceit, T should hope I did know that
 
 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 309 
 
 much. But you see, sir, love of country is stroug ; though I J. .n't 
 know why it should be," said Jem. 
 
 " Nor I. But a man's love for his country is very often like a 
 woman's love for her husband ; the worse the treatment, the 
 deeper the affection. To be sure, we 're all of one family — all 
 men ; and that, I suppose, is why we quarrel and go to war so 
 often. And a droll family we are, too, Jem. I declare, Jem, 
 when I sometimes sit and look at that globe — for since I was 
 made a member, of course I could do no other than buy a couple, 
 one for the earth and one for the stars ; in case anything should 
 come up about boundaries of — " 
 
 " Of what ? The stars ? " cried Jem. 
 
 " No ; not of the stars. And — though I wouldn't answer for 
 an}i;hing an Act of Parliament coukln 't meddle with — when 1 sit 
 and look at the globe, I do think that the family of man, as we 
 call ourselves — even while we 're grinding swords to cut some of 
 the family's throats — the family is, after all, a droll lot. I often 
 do pity my millions of brothers. When I 'm in bed, I think there 's 
 my brother in Greenland going to turn out in the snow, to catch 
 a seal for dinner. And there 's my brother in Kaffirland making 
 himself a very handsome sash of sheejj's entrails. And there 's my 
 brother m India laying down his body for wheels to roll him into 
 paste. And another Oriental brother standing upon one leg for 
 twenty years, that he may pass to Brama as a cock passes to 
 sleep. . And there are thousands of other brothers notching, 
 cuttmg, tattoomg fraternal flesh in all shapes and all patterns. 
 And there is a brother on the banks of the Bosphorus going 
 home from the purchase of a fiftieth wife, thinking no more of the 
 bargain than if he had bought a tame rabbit. And there are 
 crowds of other gluttonous brothers dancing round a brother tied 
 to a stake, ere he shall be roasted — dancing round him, and, with 
 sparkling eyes, anticipating the tit-bits of the lining animal. And 
 there is another brother dymg, with a cow's tail in his liand, as 
 though that tufty queue tied heaven to earth, and he coukl climb 
 to bliss upon it. And there are millions of brothers playing such 
 tricks, and, what is worse, permitting such tricks to be played 
 upon them, that sometimes, Jem, I do feel ashamed of the iamily. 
 I do. And then I have wished myself— since I have a liabit of 
 walking upon two legs, and any other manner of going would be 
 inconvenient— I have wished myself, Jem, an old, gi-ave, patriarchal 
 baboon, deeply buried in some forest ; some tliick, imjiorvious, 
 abiding-place — some green garrison, made unajiproachable by 
 spikes'' and thorns, and matted canes and reeds, and all the 
 armoury that nature grows, to guard her solitudes. Yes, Jem ; 
 sometimes when I have been out of humour with my family— that 
 
 B B
 
 370 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 most quarrelsome biped lot — I have wished myself, as I say, an 
 old baboon." 
 
 " Well, I never did that. But I do recollect this," said Jem. 
 " Once, when T was a little boy, and had been licked for dt>ing 
 nothing, but saying I was hungry, and standing to it, — once I did 
 wish myself a monkey, at a parlour window in a square, eating 
 cherries like any Christian, though at the time they couldn 't ha' 
 been less than a shilling a-pound. I did wish that, and thought 
 it very wicked arterwards ; but I never did, in my proper senses, 
 wish myself a baboon, straddling about with a young tree for a 
 walking-stick, like I 've seen 'em in the pictur-books, I never 
 did wish that." 
 
 " That only shows you want ambition, Jem. But to return to 
 our love of country, Jem, and young St. Giles." 
 
 " Well, all I was going to say is this. Suppose he was here — 
 what would you do ? " asked Jem. 
 
 " Do ! As a law-maker, respect the laws. Give up the mis- 
 creant, of course," said Ca23stick. 
 
 " You couldn 't do it, sir ; no, you couldn 't do it," cried Jem 
 with despaii'ing emphasis ; and Capstick, though he tried to look 
 astonished at the contradiction, cared not, it was plain, to pursiie 
 the argument. 
 
 Early the next morning, Mr. Whistle made his appearance at 
 Capstick's lodgings ; and Mr. Whistle was so calm, so self-pos- 
 sessed, apparently so content with himself and all the world about 
 him, that it was clear he had passed the last night in a manner 
 most profitable to the ends of justice. With the customary flower 
 in his month, he still hummed a tune, still played with his watch- 
 chain. He seemed perfectly happy ; his heart was wai'med with 
 a great secret. 
 
 '■ Well, Mr. Whistle, about this most unfortunate lady," said 
 Capstick. " Any news ? " 
 
 " News ! To be sure. She 's all right," cried Whistle. 
 
 " Eight ! " echoed Capstick. " Carried off— torn away from 
 her husband — and all right 1 Mr. Whistle ! " 
 
 " This is i-ather a serious business ; not at all a common matter, 
 Mr. Capstick. A very nice and delicate affair, I can tell you : 
 and for this reason " — said Whistle, with his finger at his nosej — 
 " there 's no])ility in it." 
 
 " Nobility ! That makes it more atrocious," cried Capstick. 
 " That nobility should violate the laws — " 
 
 " Well, I don't know," observetl Mr. Whistle ; " as they 're born 
 to make 'em, pei'haps they think they 've the best right to do what 
 they like witli 'em. Howsomever, it will be a difficult job ; a very 
 difficult job," and Whistle shook his head.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 371 
 
 " I can't see it. You say— at least I undei-stand as much— that 
 you have got good scent of the runaway ? " 
 
 " Scent ! What did I come into the world for ? I was made 
 on purpose for the work. In course I have. Before I went into 
 my blankets last night, I could almost have sworn where to put 
 my hand upon 'em ; and afore I got up this morning, I was moral 
 certain of it : and it 's turned out as I thought ; in course, as I 
 thought." 
 
 " Well, then, Mr. Whistle," cried Capstick, " there 's no time to 
 be lost ? " 
 
 " We 've the day before us," answered the officer ; " and we 
 musn 't spoil it by too much hurry, you see." 
 
 But here Mr. Whistle was interrupted by the announced 
 arrival of Mr. Snipeton's servant ; and St. Giles, pale and 
 haggard, presented himself. He winced, and the colour flew 
 to his cheek as he saw the officer, who — still chewing the 
 flower-stalk — looked calmly, nay kindly, upon the returned 
 transport. 
 
 " Well, young man," said Whistle, " and what news do you 
 biing 1 " 
 
 " None at all, sir : none. I Ve not been ofi" my legs all night ; 
 and I can heai' nothing — nothing," said St. Giles. 
 
 " Humph ! I believe you know one Crossbone, an apothecary I 
 He was Mrs. Snipeton's doctor down in Kent, eh ? Perhaps I 'm 
 wi-ong, but I 've heard so," said Whistle, and he looked with a 
 shrewd, magpie look at the interrogated. " And I believe this 
 Mr. Crossbone is the friend of a young nobleman, somewhere 
 about St. James's-square, eh ? And it was the apothecary, I think, 
 who recommended you to good Mr. Snipeton '] " 
 
 To all these questions St. Giles silently assented. 
 
 "Pray, my man," cried Whistle sharply, "do you know a 
 gentleman, by name Thomas Blast 1 " 
 
 " No," cried St. Giles, quickly ; and then he coloured at the 
 falsehood. " Why do you ask 1 " he stammered. 
 
 "Nothmg: I thought you might have known him. Ilowsomever, 
 it seems you don't ; and as his acquaintance isn't to be bragged 
 of, why "—added Whistle, with a sidelong look,—" why you 
 don't lose nothing." 
 
 Capstick, who for the last few minutes had been shifting his 
 feet, and vigorously biting his thumb, here cried out, " Well, but 
 Mr. Whistle, it strikes me that we should immediately commu- 
 nicate with Mr. Snipeton. That wronged, that worthy man— " 
 
 "Left his home a little after daylight, sir," cried St. Giles. 
 " I 've been to Hampstead, sir. He 's gone, nobody knows where." 
 
 " Poor man ! " cried Capstick, " let 's hope the best ; but I 'm 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 nfniid he's desperate. What 's to be done, Mr. Whistle ? What 
 do you propose ? Pray speak, sir ; for I'm iu such a flame, sir — 
 pray speak ! " 
 
 " Tlie fii-st thing to be done," said Wliistle, " is to hire a 
 chaise — " 
 
 " Of coui-se, instantly. A chaise and four, Jem ; directly," 
 cried Capstick. " Well, and what next 1 " 
 
 " Well, that I '11 tell you, when tlie chaise comes," answered 
 MHiistle ; and, with this answer, we for a short time leave the 
 party, returnmg to the neighbourhood of the house of Shoveller ; 
 — the house so hospitably surrendered, for so much cash, to 
 ]\Ir. Crossbone. 
 
 In a small room in an old farm-house, about two miles distant 
 from the ])risou of Clarissa, sat a party of three ; two were 
 engaged on ham and eggs, and country ale ; eating, drinking, as 
 though life to them had no other duties. The third sat silent 
 and sad ; %vith a heavy, leaden look, that seemed to see nothing. 
 Now, these three were Tangle, Tom Blast, and Snipeton. The 
 old man had quitted his home to take the earliest counsel of his 
 professional conscience ; and on his road to town had met Tom 
 Blast ; who, as he declared, had risen early that he might seek 
 the disconsolate husband, and jiour into his ear consolatory tidings. 
 Mr. Blast had spent part of the previous night in contemplating 
 the iniquity of the case ; and determining within himself at once 
 the wisest and most profitable conduct. It was plain, that 
 Mr. Shoveller looked upon his merits with a very coutem])tuou3 
 eye, and, therefore, though he had duly assisted at the abduction 
 of the lady, knocking down his young friend with a stern sense 
 of duty and a bludgeon— therefore he felt that he should still 
 best perform his duty to his conscience and his interest by doing 
 seivice to I\Ir. Snipeton. He would, no doubt, pay a good sum 
 for the knowledge of his wife's whereabout ; and therefore Blast 
 rose early, like an honest, thrifty man, to make offer of the 
 pennyworth. And this intention Mr. Blast merely indicated to 
 Snipeton on their first meeting, assuring him that as the day grew 
 older, the information would ripen ; and with this ho])e, Snipeton 
 took Blast with him to the house of Tangle. It was here that 
 Mr. Blast spoke out. It would be his ruin for life — there was no 
 doubt of that — if it was known that he had peached : he would 
 be liunted all over the world, and never know a moment's quiet ; 
 yet he had, he hoped, a conscience ; he had been an unfortunate 
 man, always trjdng to do the right thing, but the world never 
 letting him do it : nevertheless, he wouUl not despair of honesty and 
 a good character , yes, with a quiet, hai)py, comfortable old age 
 to end with. And so, as it was a wicked thing to i)art man and
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 373 
 
 wife, aud he could not think where people who did sucli wickedness 
 could ever expect to go to, he would at once tell Mr. Snipeton 
 where Mrs, Snipeton was for — yes, for ten guineas. Anybotly 
 who did not care to be honest would have asked twenty, but he 
 would say ten at a word ; leaving anything beyond that to the 
 generosity of worthy ISlr. Snipeton. 
 
 " And you are not aware, Mr. Blast," said Tangle, " that at this 
 moment we may take you up for an accessary ; that we may cage 
 you, instead of paying you, eh ? " 
 
 " Well, and what if you did ? " a.sked Blast. " You might lock 
 me up, I know ; but you couldn't unlock my moutli. But it's like 
 the way of the world ; you won't let a poor man be honest, if he 
 would. A fine handsome young gentleman 's run off with this old 
 gentleman's wife, and " 
 
 " There — no matter — hold your peace," cried Snipeton. " You 
 shall have the money" — whereupon Blast immediately held out 
 his hand — " when the — the woman "s found," said Snipeton. 
 
 " I can't give credit, sir ; I can't, indeed ; and for this reason, 
 — ^you see, my character won't let me. Because, supposing I give 
 you up your wife, and you don't give me the guineas, well, I 've 
 such a bad name, and you 're sich a resjjectable gentleman, all 
 the world would be on your side, and nobody on mine." We 
 know not whether this reasoning weighed with Snipeton ; but he 
 counted out the ten guineas upon the table, which Blast duly took 
 up, counting them again. 
 
 " For sich a beautiful cretur as your wife, it 's cheap, sir ; I 
 must say it, dog cheap." 
 
 " No remarks, fellow," cried Tangle ; "but let us to business 
 directly." Whereupon they left Bed Lion Square ; and, a few 
 hours past, were in the county of Surrey, at the farm-house 
 already named. Their meal finished, Mr. Tangle rose, and with 
 Snipeton held whispering counsel. Then Tangle left the house, 
 recommending Blast to remain with his patron, who was duly 
 advised to watch him, in the fear of treachery. A.nd so two hours 
 passed, when Tangle returned ; and again whispering with Snipe- 
 ton, the husband, with rage newly lighted in his countenance, 
 quitted the house ; Tangle, in his turn, taking charge of Blast. 
 
 To return to St. James. His good genius— shall we say good, 
 for he thought it so ? — led him to Crossbone, who, it will be 
 recollected, had walked forth, it may be to contemplate the 
 pi-ofitable prospects of his future life ; it may be, as we said, 
 to peep and peer in hedge and ditch for health-restoring herb. 
 Crossbone — there was magic in that knowing man — speedily 
 reassured the timid nobleman. Clarissa doated upon him— 
 was only too happy that violence had been used — aud, in a
 
 374 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 word, -what would she think of him if, with the dove in his 
 hand, he again flung it into the sky, when it must needs go 
 home ? Had he, so handsome — so spii'ited a gentleman — no fear 
 of the laughter, the ridicule of the world ? What would the 
 world say of him ? 
 
 Tt was very strange, that the thoughts of the apothecary should 
 80 harmoniously accord with his own. St. James was detennined. 
 He would see Clarissa ; would passionately seize the advantage 
 oflered him. He must be an idiot — a block — a stone to think 
 otherwise. And with this new resolution, St. James returned to 
 the house ; Crossbone promising to follow him. 
 
 " And do you mean to murder the sweet lady 1 " asked Mrs. 
 Daws of St. James, who started at the hard question. 
 
 " Murder ! my good woman ? A\Tiat do you mean ? " And 
 his lordship blushed. 
 
 " You Ve the key of the door, and she ha'n't had no dinner," 
 was the old woman's cutting answer. 
 
 " Here is — stop ! I will myself see and apologise to the lady." 
 Saying this, St. James mounted the stairs, and placed the key in 
 the lock. One moment, reader, ere he turns it. 
 
 An opposite door, unseen by St. James, is ajar ; an eye, gleaming 
 like a snake's, looks from it — looks murderous hate. It is old 
 Snipetou's. Tangle had effectually performed his mission, winning 
 over Mrs. Daws ; no difficult achievement, for the old creature — 
 warped, withered, despised for age and ugliness — had a woman's 
 heart that revolted at the duty forced upon her by her master. 
 Suipeton had resolved to watch from his hiding-place ; to listen 
 to the words of St. James and his wife, that he might distinguish 
 between treachery and truth ; and so he had promised himself 
 that he would sufi"er the interview, and calmly — very calmly — 
 listen. Such was his thought. "Weak man ! St. James was 
 about to turn the key, when Suipeton, with the strength of mad- 
 ness, sprang upon him, and whirled him fi'om the door In a 
 moment, St. James's sword was m his hand ; in the next, through 
 the body of Snipeton ; who, reeling, drew a pistol and fired. 
 St James was scathless ; but the bullet did its mischief : for Tom 
 Blast, rushing up stairs, received the piece of lead — it must be 
 owned, a damaging alloy, to the ten golden guineas. 
 
 And now the cottage is filled with Wsitors ; for Capstick, St. 
 Giles, Bright Jem, and Jerry Whistle — with a couple of official 
 friends — arrive at the door. Snipeton, speechless, with looks of 
 agony and hatred, pomted towards St. James. Whistle at once 
 divined the truth. " My lord, I ax your pardon," said the polite 
 official, " but you 're my prisoner." St. James slightly bowed, 
 and turned away, followed by the two officera.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 375 
 
 " And there 's another," cried Tom Blast, " there "s St. Giles— 
 hoi-se-stealer — returned convict — you know him, Jerry: you 
 must know him — I 'm done for — but it 's something to hang 
 that dog." 
 
 " 'Tis too true, mate," said Whistle to St. Giles, " you must go 
 along with me." 
 
 " With all my heart," answered St. Giles. " I see there 's 
 nothing left me but to die ; I may be at peace then." 
 
 Capstick tiied to speak, when his eyes filled with tears, and he 
 seized St. GUes by the hand, and grasped it. " I knew you — and 
 hoped better — ^but take heart yet, man, take heart," said Capstick, 
 whilst Bright Jem shook his head and groaned. 
 
 " Come in, come in, du'ectly," cried Mrs. Daws, with her hands 
 fast upon Crossboue, then at the threshold. " Here 's the good 
 gentleman killed — murdered." 
 
 Crossbone looked at Snipeton — felt his pulse — and said, "Who'd 
 have thought it i So he is." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 It was but the walk of a few minutes, and the two culprits, 
 St. James and St. Giles, — ^who could have prophesied this com- 
 panionship of guilt ! — duly escorted by the officers, ai-rived at the 
 little public-house, where Capstick and his companions on the 
 iourney had left the carriage. The muffin-maker himself remained 
 behind at the cottage, insisting that Crossbone should not quit 
 the wounded Snipeton ; as, in the avowed ignorance of Capstick, 
 "it was quite impossible that he should be dead." Crossbone 
 could only smile contemptuously at the hopeful man, and look 
 about him, as one looking for an easy escape. " The body is the 
 body of a dead man, sir," said Crossbone. " T think I ought to 
 kuoV : I have not practised so many years not to have an intimate 
 acquaintance with death." 
 
 " Dead ! Bless my heart ! Really dead, and alive but this 
 minute ! " cried Capstick, vacantly. 
 
 " Of course. What do you expect hearts are made of ? The 
 left ventricle— I 'm sure of it— cut quite through," said Crossbone. 
 " So ! a pretty piece of news to tell the Marquis— and that 
 blessed woman,— it %vill kill her— the Marchioness." 
 
 " And the wife of the murdered man ? " cried Capstick—" but 
 dear soul ! she mustn't see this sight : " and he withdrew the key 
 fi-om the unturned lock. " Let us remove the body."
 
 376 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Not Vjy any means," said Tangle. " Quite illegal. Here it 
 must lie for the inquest." 
 
 " Lie here ! Why, man, the poor soul must step across it to 
 descend the stairs. "Here, Jem ; help me to break the law just 
 a little, will you. In that room, Jem ;' in that room." And 
 Capstick and Jem lifted the dead man into the chamber whence 
 he had ruslied upon his death ; Mr. Tangle, during the biief 
 operation, loudly declaring that not for the best fifty pounds would 
 he have a hand in it. " And now, Mr. Crossbone," said Capstick, 
 " we '11 go down stairs to that poor wretch." 
 
 " I really have not any time to waste upon such people now," 
 said the apothecary. " And when I remember that, at this very 
 moment, his lordship may have the greatest need of me, " 
 
 " You don't stir from this house " — and Capstick, with calmest 
 determination, grasped the apothecary's collar — " until you see 
 the man. You don't know what may dejiend upon his life." 
 
 ■' His life ! " exclaimed Crossbone. " Wliy, I 'm much mistaken 
 if it 's worth a sixpenny rope." 
 
 " Perhaps not, as you may value the article ; but as the life of 
 an innocent man may depend upon it, you must save one for the 
 other's. I tell you, sir, you must : and there 's an end of it." 
 With this decision, Capstick led the ajjothecary in custody into 
 the parlour, where Tom Blast, with several of the countiy folks 
 about him, lay writhing in misery — pain giving to his features the 
 most terrible expression. All the hidden wickedness of the man's 
 heart seemed brought into his face, intensified by suffering. Two 
 poor women hovered over him ; whilst other spectators stood 
 apart, contemplating with a curiosity that seemed at once to 
 fascinate and horrify, the terrible show before them. 
 
 Crossbone, still in charge of Capstick, was brought to the 
 woiinded man ; whose eye, flaming with new hate, burned upon 
 the doctor ; and whose voice, rattling in his throat, growled 
 inarticulately like a beast's. Crossbone recoiled from the patient, 
 but was brought back by the grasp of Capstick. " Come, sir ; 
 what do you think of him ? " asked the senator. " There 's life 
 yet, eh ? " 
 
 " A nothing, sir ; I can see it — oh, yes ; a mere nothing. The 
 ball is somewhere here," and tlie apothecary manipulated, with a 
 strong hand, the sufferer. " Can't get at it just now ; but a little 
 medicine — something cooUng — and in a day or two we' 11 extract 
 the lead." 
 
 " You 're sui-e of that, Mr. Doctor 1 Quite sure ? " asked Blast, 
 with a ferocious grin. 
 
 " Quite certain," answered Crossbone. " I '11 pledge even my 
 professional reputation upon it."
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 377 
 
 " Well, then, that 's nothing but right," gasped the wounded 
 man ; still terribly eyeing his professing preserver. " For as the 
 bullet came all along of you — why you can't do better than " 
 
 " A httle light-headed just now," cried Crossbone, as Blast failed 
 in his sentence. " But, my dear sir, smce you take an interest in 
 the person," added the apothecary to Capstick, " I can promise you 
 that in a few days you shall have the bullet now in his body iu 
 your own hands, sir ; and his life safe — that is, understand me, 
 safe from lead. All he wants is quiet — merely quiet." 
 
 Capstick, for a moment, looked thoughtful. He then observed 
 — "Well, then, we must nurse him." And sa}dug this, the 
 senator exchanged a look with Bright Jem, who, with his best 
 significant manner, nodded assent. Leave we, then, for a short 
 time the dead man, lying stark for the coroner, and the wounded 
 ruffian tended by present care for the hope of future benefit. 
 
 ]\Ii'. Whistle, on arriving at the public-house with his prisoners, 
 with many apologies requested his lordship to make himself as 
 comfortable as possible under all the circumstances. It was an 
 ugly business ; very ugly. Had the old gentleman been merely 
 pinked a little, it would not have signified ; but death, downi-ight 
 death, made the afi'air extremely disagreeable. Nevertheless, his 
 lordship had friends who would see that he had justice done him 
 — the best justice — justice that became his station as a nobleman 
 and a gentleman. And reiterating this consolation, Jerry Whistle 
 again apologised that he must call upon his lordship to consider 
 hunself a prisoner ; and, for a time, until it was quite necessary to 
 appear before the magistrate, to accommodate himself to the best 
 room of the public-house. As to the ruflaan, St. Giles — well, it 
 was very odd, Mr. Whistle observed, that things should so fall 
 out — but surely his lordship would be good enough to remember 
 the little vagrant wretch that stole his lordship's featliered liat 
 when quite a baby ; or, if his lordship's memory could not go 
 so far back, at least his lordship must recollect the pony stolen 
 by the youth, St. Giles — he was then, the rascal, fourteen, and 
 must have known better, — and for which he was to have Ijeen 
 hanged ; only, fooUshly enough, he had been sent to Botany Bay ; 
 whence, not knowing when he was really well off, lie had run 
 away, that he might put his head into a halter at Newgate. He 
 must say it : it was odd, that a gentleman Uke his lordship, 
 St. James, and such an old offender as St. Giles, should be, so to 
 speak, iu trouble together. 
 
 " Poor wretch ! " said the nobleman. " And where is St. Giles ? " 
 
 " Why, my lord, he is properly secured iu a bit of an out- 
 house. There 's a nice clean wisp of straw for him and his own 
 thoughts. And, moreover, for though it 's weak, 1 somehow like
 
 378 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 to treat a prisoner like a man — moreover, T have ordered him a 
 pint of beer and some bread and cheese. The county pays for it 
 — and if it didn't, why, though I don't brag, 'twould be all the 
 same to Jerry "Whistle." 
 
 St. James was about to reply to this, when, after a slight, brief 
 knock, the door opened, and Mr. Tangle, with a face of most 
 tremendous woe, and his whole figure full of affliction, crawled 
 into the room. He looked mournfully at St. James, bowed, and 
 deeply sighed. 
 
 " Do you come to reproach me, Mr. Tangle," said St. James, 
 " with the death of your old friend ] " 
 
 " Not I, my dear lord," cried Tangle, quickly, " not for worlds. 
 I would reproach no man in his trouble, much less a gentleman — 
 I beg your pardon, my lord — I should say, much less a nobleman. 
 Besides, allow me to disabuse your lordship's mind. Mr. Snipeton 
 was no friend of mine, certainly not. No two could be less alike 
 — I hope. We were only professionally bound together, nothing 
 more. Ties of red tape, my lord ; ties of red tape — that 's all." 
 
 " To what, then," asked St. James, " may I owe the favour of 
 this visit ? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear lord ! " exclaimed Tangle, at the same time 
 slowly taking his handkerchief from his pocket, and well shaking 
 it ere he applied it to his eyes. " Oh, my lord ! " he repeated, 
 with his face covered. 
 
 " Excuse me, Mr. Tangle," said Whistle, " but I cannot have 
 his lordship distressed after this manner. I 'm a man of busi- 
 ness, whatever the grief may be. Now, if you 've anything to 
 
 say that wiU serve the pris , what am I about ? — his lordship, 
 
 I should say, why, put aside youi- pocket-handkerchief, and give 
 it mouth." 
 
 Mr. Tangle seemed to struggle with himself to obey this 
 injunction. At length, however, he displayed his naked face, 
 and vigorously winking his eye-hds as though to well dry them, 
 he said — " It is not, my lord, for me to forget that I was once 
 honoured with the patronage of your noble house. At a time 
 like the present, when an accidental death — " 
 
 " Yes, I know," said St. James, and he shuddered from head 
 to foot — " I know : the man is dead." 
 
 " He is, my lord," said the consolatory Tangle. " What then 1 
 We all must die." 
 
 " Wliat a blighted wretch am I ! " exclaimed the young man ; 
 " blood, blood upon my hands ! " 
 
 " Not at all, my lord," cined tlie attorney ; " for depend upon it, 
 a verdict must wipe 'em clean. And tliat, saving your loi-dship's 
 presence, that I have ventured to come about." St. James idly
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 379 
 
 stared at him. " There will, of course, be a trial : that is, a form, 
 an honourable form' to clear your lordship. And, my lord, it 
 would be an honour to me in my declining age — at a time, 
 too, my lord, when honour is doubly precious to a professional 
 man — to be allowed to attend your lordship through this 
 unpleasant business." 
 
 " That can't be, very well, can it," asked Whistle, " for won't 
 they call upon you as a witness ? " 
 
 " Impossible. I saw nothing of the transaction, I '11 take my 
 oath " — and Tangle became even enthusiastic in his asseverations 
 — " I '11 take my oath, I saw nothing of it. Will you, therefore, 
 my lord, honour me by your approving commands ? " And Tangle 
 bowed to the floor. 
 
 " As you will, Mr. Tangle ; do what you please," said St. James, 
 indifierently. 
 
 " Thank you, my lord. T am delighted, my lord, at the oppor- 
 tunity — that is, I am grateful, my lord ; particularly grateful ; 
 and now, your lordship " — and Tangle suddenly fell into a solemn, 
 organ-like strain, befitting his words — " and now, to business." 
 
 "Well, business. What is it — what of it ? Do as you please," 
 cried St. James. 
 
 " Oh, my lord, this confidence is, I must say it, affecting. Well, 
 then, my lord, you must have counsel." 
 " Go on, sir." 
 
 " Permit me, then, my lord, to recommend — the only man — 
 Mr. Montecute Crawley." 
 
 " Montecute Crawley," faintly echoed St. James ; and at the 
 sound, he was in the criminal court of the county of Kent, and 
 saw that weeping advocate of hapless innocence. 
 
 " Were my own brother in danger — no, I mean, were I myself, 
 — I know no man like Mr. Crawley. Bless you, he has all the 
 heartstrings of the jury in his fingers, like the fellow with Punch, 
 and pulls 'em just which way he likes. He 's safe for office- 
 nothing can keep him out of it. As I heard a young barrister 
 say only a week since, ' Crawley,' says he, ' will take the turn of 
 the tide, and float into office on his ovm tears.' Wliat a speech 
 he will make about your lordship ! Not a dry eye in court, and 
 for what I know, folks weeping outside. Well, then, my dear 
 lord, say Mr. Montecute Crawley. There isn't a moment to lose. 
 In a matter of murder— that is, what the fiction of the law calls 
 murder— he 's in first request. At this moment, for all I know, 
 we may be too late. And should they have him on the other side 
 —pardon me, my lord— though I know your case is admirable, 
 nothing stronger— nevertheless, pardon me, my lord, I must 
 tremble. I say it with respect— I must tremble."
 
 S30 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 " Well, 'Mr. Montecute Crawley, if you will," said St. James, 
 carelessly. 
 
 Ere, the words were well out, Mr. Tangle had caught his 
 assenting client by the hand, and with a fervour more than 
 professional, exclaimed — "Thank you, my lord — bless you, my 
 lord — you have made me a happy man, my lord. I '11 ride myseli 
 for post-horses to Kingston, and before I sleep, depend upon it, 
 Mr. Crawley's clerk has the retainer in his hand. Keep your 
 spirits up, my dear lord, and remember — if I may be so bold to 
 say it — that you live under a constitution in which a nobleman 
 is not to be outraged by the hand of plebeian violence without — 
 without — " 
 
 " Enough, sir — I knov/ Avhat you would say," cried St. James 
 with disgust. 
 
 " It 's very kind of your lordship to say so," and, with his 
 humblest bow. Tangle left the room. 
 
 " We shall not stay long here, Mr. Whistle 1 " asked St. James. 
 " Of course, there is another ceremony ? " 
 
 " To be sure, my loi'd : of course, my lord. We have to go 
 before the magistrate : a matter of form. But every resjsect will 
 oe paid to your lordship. A terrible accident, my lord, but 
 nothing more. Nevertheless, it can't be denied that, just now, 
 uries are getting a sort of spite against folks of nobility, and 
 therefore, my lord, I am glad — yes, I will say it, I am glad — 
 tnat, to prevent any accident, you 've got Mr. Montecute Crawley. 
 Bless you ! He 's such a man for washing blackymoors wliite — 
 got quite a name for it." 
 
 " Will you grant me one favour, Mr. Whistle 1" asked St. James, 
 suddenly rousing himself from deep thought. 
 
 " I wish you could ask twenty, my lord : any favour, except — 
 of :ourse, your lordship knows what I mean — any favour 
 out that one. Never lost a prisoner yet, my lord ; and 
 though I 'd do anything for youi- lordship's noble family, — still 
 I couldn't do that :" and Tangle looked at the door, and shook 
 his head. 
 
 " You misunderstand me, Mr. Whistle ; I have no such pur- 
 pose. Whatever may be the result of this most miserable deed, 
 I must and will await it. The favour I would ask is this. 
 Can you let me have some conversation with — with my fellow- 
 prisoner 1 " 
 
 Whistle stared. " Fellow-prisoner ! " he echoed. " Well, there 
 isn't a bit of pride in your lordship ! If, of course, you wish it, 
 why, of course, it 's done. But your lordship should recollect, 
 he 's a returned transport, a rebellious convict, that 's again flown 
 in the face of his mother country by coming back to her. As
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 381 
 
 sure as you 're alive, my lord, he '11 be hanged, and — however, it 's 
 for your lordship to choose your own company ; of course." 
 
 " Then I am to understand, ]VIi\ Whistle, that you consent ? " 
 asked St. James, a little impatiently. 
 
 " To be sure ; whatever your lordship wishes — in reason. Here, 
 Wix ;" — and Whistle, opening the door, called to one of his 
 assistants — " bring your prisoner afore his lordship, and bear 
 a hand with him. Not a bit of pride, I do declare," rej^eated 
 Whistle to himselfj as he surveyed St. James with wonder and 
 admiration. 
 
 St. James, in silence, paced the room, and Whistle continued to 
 contemplate liim as a marvel of condescension ; and then Whistle's 
 thoughts took another current. " To be sure, when the best of 
 people are brought in danger of the gallows, it does a little take 
 the starch of pride out of 'em." This all unconsciously floated 
 through Whistle's brain, as still he looked upon the young noble- 
 man, and with all his might endeavoured to consider him a 
 paragon of humility. 
 
 In brief time St. Giles, in custody of the officer, stood at the 
 door. " Mr. Whistle," said St. James, with the most polished 
 courtesy, " may I request that, for a few minutes, this young man 
 and myself be left together." Whistle was melted, awed by the 
 politeness, yet, nevertheless, looked doubtingly about him. " You 
 can still keep watch through the window. There is but one — one 
 door, too." 
 
 " Of course, your lordship — to be sure ; not that I thought of 
 that — by no means ; " and Whistle, assuring himself that he could 
 keep as certain watch outside the room as within, bowed, and 
 hastily retired. 
 
 " So, young man," said St. James, with a forced calmness, " so, 
 we have met, it seems, in early — very early life." 
 
 " Yes, my lord ; very early," answered St. Giles. " I take it, 
 I remember the matter better than your lordshiii," 
 
 " How so '? " 
 
 " Why, my lord, wretches such as I am, and such as I have 
 always been, have — saving your presence — quicker memories 
 than gentlefolks like you. We take a sharper account of life, for Ave 
 feel it sharper — earlier. I recollect when I was little more than 
 a babe, I may say, robbing your lordship. Well, it was my fate." 
 
 " Not so, St. Giles — not so." 
 
 " How was T to know otherwise ? Who taught me otherwise 1 
 How did I know that I was not made to steal and be whii)]ied for 
 it — and still to steal and — and— be hanged for it ? Your lordsliip, 
 when a child, was — I know it— kind to the boy-thief You said 
 a good word for him ; they told me all about it, and my hear.
 
 382 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 felt strangely enough — softened, I thought. And still I went on 
 — and still you was my friend." 
 
 " And will still be so," said St. James ; " if, indeed, such a 
 miserable creature as I am may promise anything. Now, tell 
 me ; Mrs. Snipeton — did she seem a willing agent ? Was her 
 resistance, when carried off, a real passion ; or was it, think you, 
 but a colourable show of opposition ? " 
 
 " I cannot say, my lord ; that is, I cannot speak from what I 
 saw ; I was unhorsed, struck to the ground, stunned and 
 bleedmg. The worse luck it was so — otherwise, I think, the 
 lady had been now at home, and the old man alive, and your 
 lordship — " 
 
 "Unstained by murder. Oh, that my life could bring back 
 yesterday ! " exclaimed St. James ; and, for the first time, his 
 grief burst forth in all the bitterness of remorse. With his face 
 in his hands, he wept convulsively. 
 
 " I am afraid, my lord," said St. Giles, " I am afraid that 
 man Crossbone has wickedly deceived you. I 'm sure on it ; 
 nothing short of force would have taken the sweet young cretur 
 from her home." 
 
 " You are sui'e of it ? Was she, then, so fond — so tenderly 
 attached to — to Mr. Snipeton 1 " 
 
 " Oh, not so, my lord — not so, so far as I could see : but, 
 somehow, when the old man looked at her as if his own heart 
 was in her bosom, I could see — even for the time I was with 
 'em — I could see she pitied him too much to I'un away from him. 
 Bless you ! she was too good and too — " 
 
 " Enough — we will talk no more of it. I have been gulled, 
 duped — the vain, yet guilty victim of a scoundrel ; and the end is 
 — I am a blood-shedder." 
 
 " I can't say your lordship 's been without blame ; bad as I 
 am, I can't say that. Nevertheless, you didn't mean to kill the 
 old man — I 'm sure you didn't. 'Twas a hot minute, and it 's a 
 bad job ; for all that, your lordship will, I hope, see many happy 
 days to come. Though my time 's short, I '11 pray for that, my 
 lord, with all my soul." 
 
 " I tell you, St. Giles, you shall still find friends in my family. 
 Your life shall still be spared." 
 
 " And what for, my lord ? To be ship]3ed-off again ; to be 
 chained and worked worse than a beast ; to have every bit of 
 manhood crushed ; to have no use for thought but to think curses 1 
 No, my lord ! Fate 's against me. I was sent into the world to 
 be made, as they call it, an example of ; and the sooner it 's all 
 over the better. I was born and suckled a thief. I was whipped, 
 imprisoned, transported, for a thief ; and something better grew
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 383 
 
 up in me, and I resolved to turn upon the world a new face. I 
 was determined, come what would, to live honestly, or die in a 
 ditch for it. Well ; the world wouldn't have it. The world 
 seemed to sneer and laugh at me for the conceit of the thing. 
 I 've been dodged and dodged by the devil, that first sold me ; 
 I 've tried to defy him ; but, as I say, fate 's against me, and it 's 
 no use. I look out upon the world, and I only see one place— one 
 little piece of ground — where there 's rest for such as I am ; and 
 where mercy may be shown to them as tridy repent. I trust to 
 get from God what man denies me." 
 
 " Nay, poor fellow — " 
 
 " Beg your pardon, my lord," said Wliistle, putting his head in 
 at the door, " but the post-chaise is come, and — it 's only a form 
 — but we must drive to Kingston, to the magistrate's." 
 
 " I am quite ready," said St. James, taking his hat. " And 
 your other prisoner 1 " 
 
 " We 've got a cart for him," answered Whistle. 
 
 " Not so," said St. James, " we '11 even ride together." 
 
 " Why, your lordship would never so condescend — never so 
 demean yourself — " 
 
 " Get in," said St. James, opening the chaise-door, and urging 
 St. Giles, who reluctantly entered the vehicle. " There is no 
 condescension for such villany as mine." 
 
 " All right," said Whistle, mounting outside ; " all right — to 
 Kingston." And St. James the homicide, and St. Giles the 
 horse-stealer, were, in close companionship of guilt, driven to the 
 magistrate's, on their way to the county gaol. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVIII. 
 
 " Wilful murder." Two ugly words to be flung in the teeth 
 of a young nobleman. Nevertheless, a Surrey jury, having sat 
 upon the body of Ebenezer Snipeton, returned such verdict — 
 went through such matter of form, as Tangle benevolently ex- 
 plained it away, and young St. James, in Kingston gaol, awaited 
 the opening of the sessions. Happily, however, for his cause, 
 Mr. Montecute Crawley was retained, and from the interest he 
 expressed for the young nobleman himself, and for the house of 
 St. James at large, there was no doubt that the learned counsel 
 would be more than ordinarily pathetic. Kingston gaol was for 
 some weeks the resort of very fashionable people, tender in 
 inquiries touching the health and spirits of the noble oflender ;
 
 384 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 and — we sigh for human depra'vity as we chronicle the wickedness 
 — more than one Kingston innkeeper was known to express a lively 
 hope that " some fine young lord would kill a money-lender every 
 week, it did such a world of good for business." 
 
 And the out- cast, vagabond horse-stealer and returned convict, 
 was not left friendless to count the passing hours between the 
 dungeon and the gibbet. The Member for Liquorish, at least 
 once a week, condescended to visit Kingston gaol, generally 
 accompanied by Mr. Tangle, who, suddenly expressed the ten- 
 terest sort of professional sjonpathy for the offender. Mr. 
 Capstick, the lawj'er, and Bright Jem, were one day some fort- 
 night before the Sessions, at the prison with St. Giles in counsel 
 upon his mode of defence, a subject which the muffin-maker 
 seemed to fondle with growing affection — when they were 
 summoned by the turnkey. 
 
 " If you please, gen'lemen, and you, St. Giles, you're wanted in 
 the infirmary," said the man. 
 
 " With the greatest pleasure — cei-tainly," said ]\Ir. Capstick. 
 " What 's the matter 1 " 
 
 " ^Tiy, the prisoner, Tom Blast " — he had been committed to 
 safe custody to insure his evidence — " wants to die." 
 
 " Well," cried Capstick, " has anybody expressed any 
 objection ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," said the turnkey, " only he says he can 't die 
 comfortable, afore he sees you, sir, and the prisoner, St. Giles, 
 in partic'lai'. He says he wants to make himself as clean as he 
 can afore he goes out 'o the world, and the governor has sent for 
 the magistrate and clerk that all things may be done proper." 
 
 "Vei-y right — most important," exclaimed Capstick. "Come 
 along, St. GUes: well, death's a rare softener. The inexpressible 
 rascal ! Poor miserable wretch ! " and Capstick, duly followed, 
 proceeded to the infirmary. 
 
 Suipeton's bullet liad done its work, although Mr. Crossbone's 
 professional reputation had been duly vindicated, and the lead 
 extracted from the rufiian. It had, nevertheless, left its mortal 
 st^ig behind : Tom's intemperate habits had rendered him, as the 
 doctor familiarly observed to the sufferer, a ticklish subject ; 
 inflami^ation ensued, and Thomas Blast was in a fair way, in his 
 last h«ui', to defeat the prophecy of past envy, and to die in a bed 
 with naked feet. " If I hadn't a drunk so, doctor says I 'd ha' 
 got over it," observed that philosophic scoundrel to the nurse. 
 " It isn't the lead, but the gin. AVell, if gin isn't the devil him- 
 self—cheat him as you may, he 's sure in the end to be down 
 upon us." These moral reflections were deUvered by Blast with 
 the air of a man who, nevertheless, believes that he has strength
 
 ST GILES AND ST. JAMES. 385 
 
 or luck enough in him to beat the devil in the long run, though 
 he does not care to withhold a compliment to the subtlety of the 
 demon. But days wore on, and Tom — in the agony of a hopeless 
 soul — began to execrate the past, and to howl at the future. A 
 day or two, a few hours, and all would be known ! The chaplain 
 of the prison preached repentance, and the culprit writhed at the 
 adjuration as though beneath the lash. It was impossible then to 
 repent ; it was only to add to crime a mockery of goodness. 
 Nevertheless, he would confess. Yes ; he would lift away some- 
 what of the load of lies that stifled his heart ; though it was no 
 use — he knew that — still he would do it. No harm at least could 
 come of it ; and it would be something, at least for him, to do 
 any deed not hurtful to somebody. And so — he would confess. 
 
 "Whereupon the turnkey, by direction of the governor, proceeded 
 to St. Giles's dungeon, and delivered the summons. Death was 
 in Blast's face — death in his eyes — and he mumbled with a dying 
 tongue. His awful look, his silent fight with the mastering 
 power of nature, subdued in St. Giles all thoiight, all purpose of 
 revenge. He saw before him the man who had stamped upon his 
 yielding childhood the ineffaceable brand of infamy — he, the 
 felon reserved for the gibbet, beheld the villain who had in veiy 
 babyhood pre-doomed him — and yet he viewed him with com- 
 passionate, with charitable looks, for he saw a human creature 
 fast subsiding into churchyard clay. St. Giles moved silently 
 to the <:lying man ; and, after a brief mental struggle, revealed 
 by an outward shiver, held forth his hand to his old and early 
 enemy. 
 
 " I can't take it, St. Giles — T can't take it — 'twould scorch me 
 ■ — ^burn me — like — like where I 'm going," muttered Blast ; and 
 still he fought for breath. " Don't speak — nobody — make no 
 noise. And you, sir, God bless you — if I may say God — you, 
 sir, take down what I say ; " and Blast motioned to the magis- 
 trates' clerk, prepared to take the deposition. " Now then," cried 
 Blast, and with an effort, the result of indomitable will asserting 
 its last, he sat up in the bed, and cohtrolled the horrid working 
 of his face, the convulsive movement of his limbs. He looke.1 
 terribly calm as he thus delivered himself — " St. Giles, poor boy ! 
 never stole no horse — I did it — I tricked him into it — I had the 
 money for it — I made a thief of him — and I transported him. I 
 wish I could live to be hanged for it — don't laugh, I do — so that 
 they shouldn't hurt a hair of that poor cretur 's head. It 's been 
 a bad world to him all along, but I 've been the worst devil in it 
 to him — and I know it. I 'm a-goin ' where I must answer for it. 
 There — that's all I have to say. He was wrongfully transported, 
 and had a right to come back agin. If any harm comes to him for 
 
 c c
 
 386 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 it, it's murder, that's all. I've got uothin' — nothin' — ^more to say," 
 and the poor ■wretch feU back in the bed. 
 
 St. Giles sprang forward and had ah-eady one arm about Blast's 
 neck. The dying man unclosed his burning eyes, and, for a 
 minute, gazed intently at his victim. Then his chest heaved and 
 laboured, and -with a loud sob, his heart loosed itself in tears, that 
 trickled down the hands of 1dm, who had been his baby victim. 
 Not a sound, save the sobbing of remorse, was heard. And then 
 Capstick coughed loudly, as was his wont, on strong occasions. 
 Bright Jem shrank into a corner, and plied his arm across his eyes. 
 
 " God bless you, St. Giles — yes, now I can say it, I didn't think 
 I could — God bless you, St. Giles. Whatever fortin 's left for you 
 in this world, you 're all right, you are in — in — " and Blast, as 
 though choking, paused. 
 
 At this moment, an old acquaintance of the reader's, Kingcup, 
 schoolmaster, entered. He was followed by a clean, comely looking 
 child ; no other than that babe of the gutter, little Jingo. When 
 St. Giles, wandering from the town of Liquorish into its green 
 neighbourhood, met Bright Jem, it may be remembered that a 
 minute after young Jingo fell into the hands of his brother. 
 Bright Jem was bound on an eiTand to the schoolmaster ; and St. 
 Giles, revealing himself to his early fi-iend, took with him the 
 vagabond boy, and briefly telling the story of his destitution, of 
 his certain destruction in the hands of Blast, implored and induced 
 the good old man to receive the child. Bright Jem — Capstick was 
 for a time to know nothing of the matter — answering for necessary 
 charges. Kingcup, one of the uru-ewarded heroes of the world — 
 a conscientious village schoolmaster — received the child as he 
 would have snatched him from fire or flood. And the boy, in a 
 biief time, unconsciously vindicated the wisdom, the goodness of 
 Almighty Nature, that does not — however contrary the old- 
 fashioned creed — send into the world crowds of infant villains ; 
 suckling scoimch-els who grow in wickedness as in stature ; and 
 would seem only sent upon earth the better by shadows, to bring 
 out the lights of respectable life. Jingo looked clean and happy ; 
 and had lost that sly, sidelohg, hound-like glance which at the 
 breast he had been taught to copy even from the eyes that gazed 
 down upon him. Early teaching this — but even at this moment, 
 how many the pupils ! 
 
 Bright Jem, saying no word to St. Giles, had written to King- 
 cup to come to the prison with his pupil. 
 
 " Why — who 's that ? " cried Blast, fixing his eyes upon the 
 child ; " it can't be him — no, it can't be. That 's how he would 
 have looked, poor cretur, if— if he 'd had a laother ; if — " Here 
 the boy held forth his hand. Blast seized it, and snatched him
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 387 
 
 close to the bed. At the moment, it was plain death was in the 
 man's throat — was creeping into his eyes ; for he drew tlie boy's 
 face close to his own, and tried — and tiied to read it — and 
 seemed baffled — and still tried. And then he passed his dying 
 hand over the little face, and a smile — a smile of knowledge 
 and assurance — gleamed in the features of the dying man. It 
 was their last living expression : the next instant they were 
 blind clay. 
 
 There was silence for a mmute : and then Capstick, with a 
 loud prefatory cough, observed to the magisti'ate, " The deposition 
 is quite in form, I hope 1 " 
 
 "Perfectly I'ight, sii-. With deponent's mark, and duly wit- 
 nessed. All in foi-m, sir," answered the clerk. 
 
 " I should like to have a cojiy," said Capstick, as he turned 
 away with the magistrate. 
 
 " Certainly ; I can't see any objection. Nevertheless, my dear 
 sir, and though I very much admire your energy in tliis affair ; 
 nevertheless, it would be very wi'ong of you to hope : don't hope," 
 said his worship. 
 
 "I can't help it," said Capstick; " it 's my infirmity : an ail- 
 ment I trust I shaU. carry to the grave." And the muffin- 
 makei', urged by the inveteracy of the disease, walked from the 
 prison with the magistrate, aflirming that it was impossible for 
 any Christian government to hang a man in the face of such a 
 deposition. 
 
 The magistrate paused, smiled, and, making a farewell bow, 
 blandly observed—" Impossible ! My dear sir, you '11 pardon my 
 frankness ; but — I must say it — I wonder that you, as a member 
 of Parliament, don't know better — very much bettei' — than to say 
 impossible. Good morning." 
 
 Time passed, and the trumpets brayed in the streets of King- 
 ston the advent of justice. She had come with nicest balance, 
 to weigh the sins of men — with mercy let us hope somewhere in 
 her train to wait upon her. 
 
 The trial of young St. James took precedence of the trial of 
 St. Giles. This was to be expected. " Betters first," as a simple 
 dwellel- in Kingston observed, in easy gossip, to a neighbour. 
 The trial of a nobleman, and for murder, too, was a great event 
 for the town ; and the small traders and inhabitants, in their 
 artless way, hailed it with all due honour. Stalls— even as at 
 joyous fair time— were set up in the streets ; and gingerbread, 
 and ginger -nuts, were offered to the faint and hungry. People 
 put on their best clothes, and at parlour windows, in public houses, 
 and at street corners, airily discussed the question, " whether his 
 lordship would be hanged or not?" The general opinion,
 
 388 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 however, ran in favour of his lordship's vitality : not from ihe 
 conviction of his merits in the case ; certainly not ; but from 
 a stiif-necked belief in a prejudiced people that " they 'd never 
 hang a lord, though he 'd killed fifty men." And yet, had the 
 good populace paused to think, they might have acknowledged 
 that Tyl)ui'n Tree had borne such fruitage. 
 
 The day of trial dawned. Never before had ostlers been so 
 busy in the town of Kingston. "Never such posting in the 
 memory of man," was an opinion generally held in the stable- 
 yards ; " never so much nobihty and gentry in Kintrston afore," 
 was the satisfied thought of innkeepers at the bar. Nobody could 
 have thought that the murder of a money- lendei' — who, it had 
 been profanely uttered in the street, was better out of the world 
 than in it — would have done so much good for the trade of 
 Kingston. 
 
 Tlie to\\Ti was all life — three parts fashionable life. Beaux and 
 beauties had flocked from London, significantly to testify, by their 
 presence, to the high character of the interesting nobleman aboiit 
 to appear in the dock. The court was opened, and in a few 
 minutes — there was a murmur — a buzz — a profound hush — and 
 young St. James stood a jirisoner at the bar, the jury — twelve 
 worthy housekeepers of Surrey — looking at him as they would 
 have looked at one of the royal lions in the Tower ; a dangerous, 
 but ^^•ithal a very majestic and interesting creature. 
 
 In tlie first quarter of an hour, everybody showed signs oi 
 gi-eatest interest in the case ; then, by degrees, anxiety subsided, 
 and ere half an hour had passed, a sudden stranger, uninformed 
 of the awful business of the time, might have tliought tlie coui't 
 a.ssemljled, merely met for ca.sual talk. However, in due season 
 Mr. Montecute Crawley touched the heart of the assembly. Great 
 was tlie rustling of silk, when he rose for the defence. He rose, 
 he said, with great difficulty. It was plain that he Avas uiwardly 
 wi-estiing with great emotion. Already, the tears seemed very 
 close to his eyes, and, at every instant, might be expected to run 
 over. Tlie learned and lachrymose counsel, in his defence, took 
 a veiy comprehensive view of the case. If ever he had felt the 
 acuteness of pain — the iutensity of suffering from the conviction 
 of hii great inability to grapple with a difficulty, it was at that 
 moment. However, he must not shrink, and would therefore 
 throw liimself upon the best feelings of the jury. The learned 
 counsel said it was impossible that the distinguished nobleman at 
 the bar could have any malice against the deceased, who had 
 brought a violent death upon himself — and he, the counsel, could 
 only fervently hope that the wretched man was well prepared to 
 meet the sudden summons — by the vehemence of his passion. It
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 389 
 
 had been proved in evidence, that the deceased had, from his 
 hiding-place, sprung upon the prisoner ; who, with a liunian 
 instinct, quickened by nobility of blood, drew his weapon, and 
 death ensued. Nobody could regret the issue more than himself; 
 but the jury must bear this in mind. A man — a nobleman — 
 believed himself assaulted by a sudden enemy ; and the law of 
 self-presei'vation — who could deny it 1 — was paramount to any law, 
 with all humility it might be said, made by king, lords, or com- 
 mons. The prisoner was of noble blood. More than a thousand 
 years ago, the blood that beat at the prisoner's heart was 
 ennobled, and — even as a river (he would say, the Nile), flooding 
 from an undiscovered source, widening, deepening on, bearing new 
 glories as it runs, and with increasing and fertilising magniticence 
 enriching the family of man — so might it be said of the blood in 
 the veins of the nobleman at the bar, that from the time whereto 
 the memory of man ran not to the contrary, it had descended from 
 su'e to su'e, blessing and benefiting generation after generation. 
 He, the counsel, would beg the jury to consider the eflect of even 
 an imaginary blow upon such a man — upon one, whose Norman 
 ancestors had leapt on this soil of merry England, making it theu* 
 own — on one whose progenitors had bled at Poictiers, and Creasy, 
 and Marston-Moor, and — but he would not weary the attention of 
 an enlightened jury by too minute an enumeration of tlie debts 
 owed by England to the family of the distinguished individual 
 who,- at that moment unfortunately — he could not but say, unfor- 
 tunately, stood at the bar. No : he would leave the number to be 
 tilled up by the intelligence and imagmatiou, and gratitude— yes, 
 gratitude as Englishmen— of the jiuy. He would only again beg 
 them to consider the eifect of an imaginary blow upon a man whose 
 family had given generals to the held, dignitaries to the court, 
 chancellors to the 
 
 Here the learned counsel— whose eye-lids had for some time red- 
 dened and trembled— burst into a flood of tears, sank ilown upon 
 his seat, and sobbed in his handkerchief. The effect w.-is very tine 
 upon all in court. Ladies plied their scent-bottles, and one or two, 
 less guarded than the rest, violently blew their noses. After a 
 decent time allowed to grief, Mr. Montecute Crawley, putting 
 down emotion with giant will, was again upon his legs. 
 
 He had nothing more to say. With every confidence he left 
 the case of the nobleman at the bar in the hands of the jury ; con- 
 vinced that they would arrive at such a verdict as would to the 
 last day of their lengthened lives contribute to the sweetness :ind 
 soundness of their nightly sleep, and the prosperity and hai-pmess 
 of their waking hours. 
 
 The judge summed up the case with unusual brevity ; and ere
 
 390 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 Mr. JMontecute Crawley had well dried his eyes, the jury returned 
 a verdict — " Not guilty." 
 
 Let us pass the burst of ap])lause that shook the roof; the 
 crowding of friends about the innocent nobleman, no longer a 
 prisoner ; with his almost instantaneous departure for LoTidon in 
 the carriage-and-four, confidently prepared and waiting for him 
 at the prison walls. St. James is a free man. But our story has 
 yet a prisoner — St. Giles. 
 
 The next day was appointed for the trial of the returned con\nct. 
 The court was attended by a few idlei-s. Capstick, Bright Jem, and 
 Becky — herface scalded withtears — werepresent ; and Mr. Tangle, 
 as solicitor for the jjrisoner, was very busy, and spoke in terms of 
 considerable tenderness to the INIember for Liquorish, assuring him 
 that at least heaven and earth should be moved to save St. Giles, 
 "1 tell you, sir," repeated the attorney — "I tell j'ou, I'll move both 
 heaven and earth. My interest can go no farther." 
 
 " Not yet," said Capstick, and his eye twinkled. 
 
 "Silence in the court!" exclaimed the officer, and the trial was 
 continued. 
 
 It was a very matter-of-fact case. The prisoner at the bar had 
 been convicted, when quite a boy, of horse-stealing ; evidence was 
 given of judgment, his identity was proved, and there could remain 
 no doubt — nevertheless, if the juiy had a scruple the prisoner 
 ought to benefit by it — no doubt of the crime of the culprit in the 
 dock. Blast's dying declaration of the innocence of St. Giles was 
 put in ; but the judge, biting the end of his quill, shook his head. 
 
 Mr. Montecute Crawley, not being very well from the wear- 
 and-tear of his emotions on the pre\iou3 morning, albeit retained 
 by order of St. James to defend St. Giles, was compelled to 
 resign his brief to his junior, who would be, Mr. Crawley 
 comfortingly observed, a very promising young man some day. 
 The young gentleman, evidently satisfied himself with his defence 
 of the prisoner, and, indeed, had hardly ceased to acknowledge 
 the encouraging nod of the leader, when the judge, having 
 shortly summed up, the jury, not stirring from the box, returned 
 their verdict — " Guilty." 
 
 There was a heavy- fall upon the floor, and poor Becky, pale 
 as a corpse, was carried out. 
 
 The judge placeil the black cap upon his head. " Prisoner at the 
 bar," said the judge, " you have been tried by a jury of your fellow- 
 countrymen, and have been found guilty of a most heinous crime 
 against the peace of our sovereign lord the king, and the laws of 
 this realm. I am sorry that there is nothing in your case that 
 pleads for the least chance of mercy. Far be it from me to add 
 to your suffering at this moment by any harsh word of mine.
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. ^91 
 
 Nevertheless, it is only due to society that T should briefly dwell 
 upon the career that has brought you to this most dreadful con- 
 dition. It appears that, altogether heedless of the blessings of a 
 Christian society and Christian influences, you, at a very early 
 age, in fact, as a mere child, broke the commandment that says, 
 ' Thou shalt not steal.' Your thefts, I grant, were petty ones ; 
 but robbery grows with growth. You proceeded in your reckless 
 conduct, and were at length — I have the con^^ction before me — 
 condemned to death for horse-stealing." 
 
 " My lord, the deposition ! " cried Capstick. 
 
 " Take that man into custody, if he speaks another word," thun- 
 dered the judge to the officer. Then, after a pause, he contiimed. 
 
 " The deposition shall be forwarded to the proper quarter, but I 
 would solemnly advise you, prisoner at the bar, to indulge in no 
 vain hope upon that head. As I have already said, you were 
 condemned to death for horse-stealing, Avhen the royal clemency 
 intervened, and your sentence was commuted to transportation. 
 You were sent to a country, blest with a salubrious climate and a 
 most fertile soil. And you ought to have shown your gratitude 
 for yoiir deliverance from a shameful death by remaining in your 
 adopted land. However, your natural hardness of heart prompted 
 you to fly in the face of the king's mercy, and to return to this 
 kingdom. The punishment for this crime is wisely ordered hj our 
 law to be death. This punishment you will suff"er. In the time, 
 however, that will elapse ere you are called from this world, you 
 will be attended by a Christian minister, who will instruct your 
 dai-keued mind with the glorious truths of Christianity ; will 
 teach joii their goodness, their abounding mercy, and, above all, 
 their charity for all men. You will have the means of this con- 
 solation ; I imjilore you, make use of them. And now, the 
 sentence of tliis court is, that you be taken to whence you came, 
 and be hanged by the neck until you are dead." 
 
 But, St. Giles was not hanged. No. St. James repeated the 
 good work of his boyliood, and — aided by Capstick, who made 
 his maiden speech in Parliament on the question, calling the 
 attention of the minister to the confession of Blast— St. Giles wa.s 
 pardoned. He married Becky, and lived and died a decent shop- 
 keeper. Indeed, he had so far beaten the prejudices of the world, 
 that long ere he took his mortal departure from his parish, he 
 had been intrusted with the duties of churchwarden. 
 
 St. James, a few weeks after the trial went abroad, made the 
 grand tour, returned, married a duko's daughter, and supported 
 to the utmost the true dignity of his order. St. James had been 
 schooled even by St. Giles : taught the best and highest lesson of
 
 392 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 
 
 life from Ills association with the born outcast and baby felon. 
 The man of conventional nobility had learned to see through 
 "want, and misery, and crime, tlie natural man : still the born 
 ai'istocrat of all created things, however degraded from the 
 hour of his birth by the ignorance and the injustice of our 
 social conditions. And St. James made noble amends in his 
 maturer years for the harmful vanities of his earlier life. Many 
 and many a pilgrimage did he make to the Hog-Lanes, that, 
 Uke hidden ulcers, rot the social body ; still tainting outward 
 beauty with concealed loathsomeness. If St. James learned the 
 solemn truth that to make mau respect his fellow, he must 
 be bred in self-respect. — and that self-respect is not a plant ol 
 darkness, growing and blossoming despite of gloom and filth — (as 
 well look for water-lilies in common sewers,) — if St. James learned 
 this, and learning, laboured to shed abroad the humanising truth, 
 he owed its first knowledge to his fitful companionship with 
 St. Giles ; to his strange association with a wretched being who, 
 first sinned against by society, became the avenging sinner. How 
 much of what our legal and moral codes alike denounce as guilt 
 — ^how much of this smfuluess, has the same inevitable cause 1 
 Hence, our nobleman proved it by all his after life, how much 
 St. James in his brocade, may profitably learn of St. Giles in his 
 tatters. 
 
 Mr. Crossbone, baulked in his hopes of couit preferment, retired 
 to the country, we fear — against his conscience, but in deference 
 to his pocket — to cultivate the weeds of life. He, however, 
 had tlie subsequent satisfaction of transporting Mr. Robert Wilhs 
 for highway robbery ; an operation performed at the cheapest 
 cost to Mr. Crossbone, as the robber pillaged him of only four and 
 two-pence and a tobacco-stoppei'. 
 
 A metropolitan tombstone still attests the pleasing fact, that 
 Mr. Tangle died at the age of eighty-two, " a faithful husband, an 
 affectionate father, and an unswerving friend. His charity was 
 as boundless as it was unostentatious and unkuo%\ai." Thus 
 speaks Tangle's tombstone ; and who — save it may be the 
 recording angel— shall contradict a tombstone 1 
 
 And Clarissa ? She shi-ank from the world ; and lived and 
 died the daily life and death of an outraged, wasting heart. In 
 her happy, hopeful youth, she had been sold to bondage ; a slave, 
 condemned to the most loathsome servitude. Her fetter was of 
 gold — how light, bow small a link ! yet such gold is toothed with 
 canker, and eats into the very core of the heart. And so Clarissa 
 died ; another victim numbered with the thousands gone and — to 
 come. 
 
 Capstick — the man with gall in his words and balm in his
 
 ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES. 393 
 
 deeds — Capstick at the end of the first session, confessed to Brifdit 
 Jem, the proved vanity of Parliament. He would sometimes sit 
 — as he declai'ed — late on a summer's night, and — despite of the 
 real atmosphere about him — could scent the bean-blossom wafted 
 from his garden. He would doze m his seat, and — when an lion, 
 member was making his twentieth repetition of a sound in^ 
 common-place — would dream of the cuckoo calling him home. 
 And so at the end of the first session, Capstick, the late muffin- 
 maker and philanthropic misanthropist, to give due warranty to 
 the .scandal and malice of a few of his neighbours, who declared 
 he only sought parliament that once there, he might well butter 
 his dry bread ; so Capstick took oifice. He became for a time 
 steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, and few men could give better 
 account of their stewardship ; for, retired to the Tub, he culti- 
 vated his garden — whistled to his birds — talked to his bees — and, 
 if mingling amongst men, he had at times a playful t;utness in 
 his words, — his daily acts were full as honeycomb with abounding 
 sweetness. 
 
 Bright Jem shook off ten years as he crossed the threshold of 
 the Tub. And there he lived in simple and affectionate com- 
 panionship with bis old master. And there St. Giles, and 
 St. Giles's wife, and St. Giles's little ones, would make their 
 yeai'ly visit : a visit that caused to Bright Jem his only two 
 anxieties ; namely, that the jaeas might in the opinion of Mrs. St. 
 Giles beat aiiy peas in Covent-gaiden ; and the strawberries might 
 grow bigger and bigger every twelvemonth in the eyes and 
 mouths of the children. 
 
 THE END 
 
 loxnoK 
 saiDSoBT a:»d SVANS, PBIST««S, WnlTKl'KtAS*.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
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