  The individual who rejoiced in the name of Tim the Snammer, was a tall, athletic, well-built man of about thirty-two, and tolerably good-looking. His attire consisted of a shabby bottle-green surtout, a dark waistcoat, and drab trousers; and he wore his hat very far down on his head—probably because it was too large for him, his hair being particularly short, all his superfluous curls having fallen beneath the unsparing scissors of a gaol-barber. "Holloa! Josh, my boy!" cried Tim, as he closed the door behind him. "Why, you are taking it cozie there in bed." "I have been desperate bad, Tim," was the answer; "or I shouldn't lie quiet in such a damned empty garret as this here, you may take your davy. But when did you get out?" "My time was up to-day at eleven o'clock," returned Tim. "I called at the old crib in Castle Street—Thompson's, twenty-three, and stayed with Mutton-Face till now. She told me you'd been ill, and also where I should find you. So I've come round to see you, old feller—and, may be, arrange a little job that I've got in my head. But since you're unable to get up——" "Tim, my boy," interrupted Josh, "I've just had a deuced good supper, and I'm sure of a breakfast and a dinner too, and may be a supper also, to-morrow; and if I ain't well with all that in two days' time, my name isn't Pedler. So, if you've got any thing that'll keep so long, do let me be in it. Matilda, my dear, this is my friend Mr. Timothy Splint, generally knowed as Tim the Snammer: and Tim, this young o'oman is my jomen. We was regularly spliced at the padding-ken by old Barlow; and she's staunch to the backbone. So now you're acquainted with each other; and you needn't be afraid, Tim, of talking secrets. But how goes the gin, Tilda?" "There's plenty left—and I borrowed two glasses of the landlord as I came up," answered the young woman: "so here's one for Mr. Splint." "Call me Tim, my dear," said that individual "We have no misters and missuses among us. Here's your health, Tilda, then—since that's your name: here's to ye, Josh." "Thank'ee. But what plan is it that you've got in your head?" asked Pedler. "I'll tell you in a brace of shakes," returned Splint, smacking his lips in approval of the dram which he had just imbibed. "You may very well suppose that I've no great reason to be pleased with the conduct of that scoundrel Old Death." "The damned thief!" cried Josh. "He sacked the sixteen pounds, and then never made a move to help you when you was had up again afore the beak." "No thanks to him that I wasn't transported," said Tim Splint, with a fierce expression of countenance. "The prigging wasn't proved very clearly, and so I got off with two months at the mill as a rogue and vagabond. But, by hell! I'll have my revenge on the bilking old scoundrel that humbugged you and Mutton-Face Sal. And what's more, I know how to go to work, too." "What do you mean, Tim?" demanded Josh Pedler. "Why, I mean this—that Mutton-Face knows where Old Death is hanging-out," responded the Snammer. "She saw him last night in the Borough; and she dogged him into some crib. This was about eight o'clock. Well, she was determined to see whether he lived there, or not—and she was afraid of raising suspicion and alarming him by making any inquiries: so she watched near the place for a matter of three hours, and he didn't come out. So it's pretty clear he does live there. But to make all sure, Mutton-Face has gone over there again to-night; and she'll watch to see when he comes in, if he does at all—and then she'll stay to see whether he comes out again. If it's all right, you and me will just pay a visit to Old Death; and I'll be bound we shall find something worth the trouble of going for." "Old Death always has money about him," observed Josh; "and I should think that there's no one wants blunt more than you and me, Tim, at this moment." "I haven't a blessed mag," returned Splint. "If it wasn't for Mutton-Face Sal, I shouldn't have had a dinner to eat, when I got out of quod this morning, till I'd prigged the money to pay for one. And after all I've spent in Thompson's padding-kens, I couldn't get a lodging there for love, I know. But Sal has managed to keep herself while I've been lumbered; and now I must begin to keep her again. She's got just enough to carry us on till either this business of Old Death or some thing else turns up: and that's all I care about." "Well," said Josh Pedler, "I hope I shall be able to get up in two or three days; and then I'm your man for any thing you like. But, I say, Tim, what a life this is of our'n, to be sure!" "You don't mean to say you're a-tired on it—do you?" cried Splint, with a species of anxiety and "By God! I wish I could turn honest man, Tim!" exclaimed Pedler, with unmistakeable sincerity. "It's all very well while the excitement of drinking or business goes on; but it's when one is lumbered in bed, as I've been for some weeks, that one feels queer and qualmish, Tim. That's why I always hate to have the least thing the matter with me. I can't a-bear to have time to brew and mope over things. I wish there wasn't no such thing as thought, Tim." "Blest if I didn't often say so to myself when I was cooped up in that cursed prison, Josh!" exclaimed the Snammer. "I tell you what it is. People say we're reglarly depraved—that's the word, Josh—and so they invent treadmills and all them kind of things. But it's quite enow for chaps like us to be left alone with our own thoughts—and there's no denying it. Now my idear is jist this:—Put a man like us into gaol, if you will and don't torture him with hard labour: but let him have time to think. Then, when he comes out, say to him, 'Here's work for you, and a chance to get an honest living.' My opinion is that nine out of ten would awail themselves of the offer. But suppose only one or two did it—why, it must be a blessin' to society to reduce the number of them as preys upon it. What do you think, Josh?" "I can't a-bear to think about it, Tim," returned the invalid thief. "Now, then, Tilda—what the hell are you piping your eyes for? I s'pose you think my friend Splint is a Methodist parson? But he ain't though—and don't mean to be. Damnation! Tilda, leave off blubbering like that—and hand round the gin. There—that's a good girl. Blue ruin is the mortal enemy of unpleasant thinking—and that's why we all takes to it as nat'ral as one does to opium when he's accustomed to it." "I've often thought, Josh," said Tim Splint, after draining the glass which Matilda handed him, "that I should like to go over to America, and bury myself in the backwoods that you hear talked of or read about. I wish I had a chance! And, raly, if we do get a good haul from Old Death, I think I shall try the game. For, arter all—and you and me "And do you mean to say," exclaimed Matilda, wiping her eyes, and speaking with strange energy, "that if you choose to leave off this kind of life, you can't? Why, you'd be happier, Josh, as a labourer with only twelve or fifteen shillings a week, than you are now;—for I never heard so much from your lips as I have to-night." "Who the devil will employ people without characters?" demanded Josh Pedler. "Do you think that if you tried to get a place even as a scullion in a gentleman's family, you could obtain it? No such a thing. Lord bless your dear heart! them as talks most about the depravity of the lower classes, is always the last to give us a chance." "Yes:—and yet we wasn't all nat'rally wicked," said Tim the Snammer. "Some on us was made so by circumstances; and that was the case with me." "How came that about?" asked Josh Pedler, who, being in no humour to sleep, was well disposed for conversation. "Yes:—how came that about?" inquired Matilda, feeling interested in the present topic. "You don't mean to say you would like to hear me tell my story, do you?" exclaimed Tim. "I should, by all means," answered Josh Pedler. "And I too——Oh! above all things!" cried Matilda: "particularly, if you can show——what you said," she added hesitatingly. "You mean to say, if I can prove that I didn't become what I am through my own fault?" observed the Snammer. "Well—I think I can prove it. But you shall judge for yourselves. So, here goes." And, with this free-and-easy kind of preface, the thief commenced his narrative, which we have expurgated of those grammatical solecisms and characteristic redundancies which, if preserved, would only mar the interest and obscure the sense. At the same time, we have kept as nearly to the original mode of delivery as possible. |
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