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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You wouldn’t steal it, would you?”—a question much in my way.

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

“You’d better not try the experiment.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You seem to have plenty of tobacco,” said I.

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

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

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

“Special shops,” said he; “I won’t have your small green-shop article.”

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

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

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

“In Edinburgh?” said I.

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

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

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

“Ratho?” said I.

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” said I, “you have been upon the sliding scale. You began with a whiff, and you will end with a blast that will carry you to Botany Bay.”

“Yes, yes,” he responded, “I now see that a very small gratification may be fed up into a passion, and that passion to a crime, and then the burst.” And after some time he added, “But maybe the judges may have pity on me, when they know how I was pushed on from less to more.”

“Then they would pity all that come before them,” said I; “all crimes have small beginnings and big endings.”

And so I took him to the Office, where I proceeded to search him, and here is something curious: He wore a kind of bonnet—a Gilmerton bonnet, because it is usually worn by the carters of that village. The article has often a hoop in it, to keep it light on the head; and concealed in the case of the hoop there were a number of plies of the stolen twist. Nor was this all. On pulling up the legs of his trousers, there were discovered three or four ply on each leg, serving the purpose of garters. Then within his neckcloth there were so many plies, that he might have been said to have had a tobacco neckerchief. You might have called him a tobacco idol, fitted for being set up to be worshipped by the votaries of the leaf.

No doubt he admitted afterwards that he had stolen from the shop the other articles amissing, but he asserted that it was the desire to possess the tobacco that urged him to the robbery, and that once being in he had laid hold of whatever came to his hand. I cannot help remarking, that my poor tobacco-fancier paid dear for his quid, in giving for it seven long years of servitude in Botany Bay. I have sometimes wondered whether, when there, he ever took a pipe into his mouth. Not unlikely.