The first year that we had the ‘Stretford Arms’ was one of great anxiety to us, as you may be sure. All our capital was invested in the business, and not only all our capital, but a good deal of money that Harry’s friends had lent him to help us to take it. If things had gone wrong with us it would have been dreadful, and I don’t know what we should have done.

It was a great relief to both our minds when, from the first, we found that we had a property which, with care and good management, could be improved. Some properties, especially in our trade, go all the other way, and nothing will save them. There are so many things that will take the business from an hotel, and when they happen no power on earth can stop your going down. You may spend your money, you may advertise, you may work yourself to the bone, but down, down, down you go, and the longer you cling to the hope of things taking a turn, the more money you lose.

Of course, we couldn’t tell what would happen when we took the ‘Stretford Arms,’ and my want of experience in the business made me very nervous. But from the first we began to get confidence, and that is a wonderful thing. When you can see things are going right, you can do a lot that you can’t do when things are wavering or going wrong.

But, though we very soon got confidence, and felt comfortable in our minds, we were just as careful as ever, and we determined not to leave anything to chance. We were very economical ourselves, and we only laid out money on the place a little at the time, knowing how true the old proverb is which says, “Learn to walk before you try to run.”

We didn’t have more servants than we could help, and Harry and I worked like niggers, as the saying is; though Harry, who had seen niggers at work, says it isn’t a good one, for some niggers do just as much as you make them do, and not a bit more.

But after the first year in the ‘Stretford Arms,’ I couldn’t do so much as I had done, because I had my dear little baby boy to think about, and I wasn’t quite so well and strong for a little time after that as I had been before, and Harry wouldn’t let me even do what I might have done.

He said my health was far more precious to him than anything else in the world, and that we’d much better pay a few pounds a year extra in wages than a lot of money in doctor’s bills. So after baby was born we had a nurse for him, and another housemaid, and a few months after that, when business kept on improving, and we found that we were getting a nice little hotel connection, we took on an odd man. His duties were to clean the boots, to carry the luggage up and down, to look after the pony, and, when we weren’t busy, he filled up his time with odd jobs and in the garden.

We were very glad we had him, for a nicer, civiller, more obliging fellow I never met with. It was quite a pleasure to ask him to do anything, because you saw at once that you had pleased him by giving him a chance of showing how useful he could be. There aren’t many of that sort about, so that we were lucky to get him.

He came to us in this way. We had been talking about having an odd man, and getting rid of the boy who looked after the pony and did the boots, etc., because the boy was the plague of our lives, and we never knew what he was going to be up to next. He was a boy named Dick, that we took on to oblige Mr. Wilkins, who recommended him as a smart boy; and there was another reason, which was that his grandmother, a very decent old woman, who lived in the village, couldn’t afford to keep him at home, and wanted him out somewhere where he could sleep on the premises.

We took him, and he certainly was smart. He had been educated at a good charity school (as I was myself, so I’ve nothing to say against that), but, unfortunately, he’d learnt to read and write and nothing very much else. He couldn’t cipher, and his writing was very bad, and his spelling not over grand. So he couldn’t be got into an office, and his poor old grandmother was worrying herself into the grave about what to do for him, when Mr. Wilkins mentioned him to Harry, and Harry, who’d just bought our pony, took him.

He was a nice-looking lad, and always very respectful, and spoke nicely, though using words above his station and in the wrong place; but there was no reliance to be placed upon him, and he forgot things he was told to do over and over again.

For a long time we couldn’t make out what made him so slow over his work, and so careless; but we found it out at last. He was a great reader, and took in a lot of trash, written for boys, about pirates and highwaymen, and all that sort of thing, and his head was filled with romantic nonsense instead of thinking about his work.

Harry found it out first one day going into the stables, when nobody had seen the boy for an hour, and finding him sitting down comfortably in one of the stalls smoking the end of a cigar, and reading “The Boy Highwayman.”

Harry boxed his ears for smoking in the stables, and was so mad with him he told him to go; but the boy began to cry, and Harry said he would give him another chance, but read him an awful lecture, saying he might burn us all down in our beds, and telling him if he read such rubbish he would come to be hanged.

He went on all right for a little while after that, though his work was not done properly; but one day our nursemaid, Lucy Jones, a nice, well-behaved girl of eighteen, came to me and asked me if she could speak to me about a private matter.

I said “Yes,” and then she said she wanted to show me a letter which she had found inside one of her boots when she went to put it on.

I took the letter and read it, and it made my blood run cold. This is the letter, which I kept as a curiosity:—

At first the letter made me so indignant I couldn’t laugh, though it was so ridiculous. I guessed at once who it was had sent it to her by the writing, and its coming in her boots, and the answer to be put back in her boots.

The girl was quite indignant. “I never heard such impudence in my life, ma’am!” she said. “And a bit of a boy like that, too!”

“You’ve never given him any encouragement, I suppose!” I said.

“Never, ma’am. The only time he ever spoke to me on such a subject was when he asked me to walk out with him on Sunday, and then I said he’d better go home and read to his grandmother. Encouragement! I hope I know myself better, ma’am, than to keep company with the likes of him. Why, he’s ever so much younger than me, ma’am.”

“I only asked, Lucy,” I said. “I didn’t suppose you had encouraged him.”

I didn’t, because I knew Lucy had set her cap, so to speak, at a young fellow in the village—a handsome young fellow, too—with a little black moustache, that was quite unique in the neighbourhood; but I asked her, because, having been in service, I know how girls will sometimes encourage forward lads—pages, for instance—being fond of larking, and saying, “Oh, there’s no harm; he’s only a boy.” So I thought I’d just ask Lucy the question.

I saw by her style she was quite innocent in the matter; so I told her to leave the letter with me, and I would speak to my husband about it, and he would decide what should be done.

When I showed the letter to Harry he couldn’t help laughing, though he was very cross. “The young varmint!” he said.

“What are you going to do?” I said. “You must get rid of the boy. He isn’t safe to be about the place with notions like that in his head. I’m very sorry for his poor old grandmother; but he’ll come to a bad end soon, and I don’t want him to come to it here.”

“Oh, I shall give him the sack,” said Harry; “but I’m sorry for him, because it’s the trash he’s been reading that has put this stuff into his head.”

After dinner, Harry sent for Master Dick, and, when the young gentleman came in, showed him the letter, and asked him what he meant by writing such wickedness to our nursemaid.

The boy never changed colour a moment. He looked straight at Harry, and said, “Did she show it to you, sir?”

“She showed it to Mrs. Beckett,” said Harry.

“Then it was very unladylike of her,” said the boy, “and she’s a mean sneak. No man likes his love-letters to be shown about.”

“Love-letters, you young rascal!” cried Harry; “what business have you putting your love-letters in a respectable young woman’s boots? And, besides, this isn’t a love-letter, it’s asking the girl to elope, and it’s full of wickedness about jewels, and a band of daring fellows. What do you mean by it, sir?”

Master Dick looked at Harry a minute. Then he struck an attitude.

“What I do after I’ve left your service, sir, is my own business, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t,” said Harry; “it’s mine, because you’re placed with me by your grandmother, and it’s my duty to see that you don’t do anything to disgrace yourself if I can help it. Whose horses are you going to have ready, pray? And where are you going to get the silks and satins and jewels from? A nice idea, indeed! I’ve a good mind to send for a policeman.”

The boy turned very red at that, and his manner made Harry think he was frightened that something might be found out.

So, instead of dismissing the boy there and then, he gave him a good talking to, and said he should decide what was to be done with him afterwards.

Then Harry came to me, and said, “Mary Jane, there’s something wrong with that boy. I’m afraid he’s been up to no good.”

“Of course he hasn’t,” I said. “He certainly wasn’t up to any good when he wrote that wicked letter to Lucy.”

“It isn’t that only I’m thinking of. I’m afraid, putting two and two together, that he’s been making ready to run away, and that perhaps he’s got what doesn’t belong to him.”

“You don’t mean you think he’s been stealing?”

“Yes, I do,” said Harry; “but the thing is, how am I to make sure? I’ll go and make inquiries.”

Harry went and asked the other servants, and the people about the place, a few questions, and at last he found out that Master Dick had been seen going pretty often into a shed where we kept some empty cases and lumber. So Harry went to it quietly, and turned it thoroughly over, and then he came on a box hidden away that aroused his suspicions. He broke the box open, and inside it he found an old pistol and a belt, and a pair of his old sea-boots, that must have been taken from our spare room upstairs, and an old red flannel shirt, and a lot of penny numbers about boy pirates and highwaymen, and right at the bottom of the box two pairs of my best stockings and some old bows of ribbons, and one or two trifles like that, which the young rascal had evidently taken at different times when he had been at work about the house.

Harry came and told me, and said he supposed the pistol and the belt, and the red shirt, and the boots were for the young gentleman to dress himself up in when he took to the road or to the sea, whichever it was to be, and my stockings and the bits of ribbons were the satins and jewels, etc., which he was going to present to Lucy, if she consented to elope with him, and be the bride of the chief of the “band of daring fellows,” which was himself, viz. Dashing Dick.

“Oh, Harry!” I said, “how shocking! Who would believe that a boy, decently brought up, could be so wicked!”

Of course, after we found he had taken things, we couldn’t keep him, even if we had looked over that letter to our nursemaid, and so Harry went to his grandmother and told her that our place didn’t suit her boy, as he had too much liberty, and then he told her that the boy had taken one or two little things, and he must be punished. We shouldn’t, of course, give him into custody and ruin him for life for my stockings and Harry’s boots, but that sort of thing, if not checked in time, would go on till it became wholesale robbery.

The old lady was very much upset, and said, what could she do, as the boy was quite beyond her control. So Harry said he would try and think, but he should give the boy notice, and send him home, as he couldn’t have him about the place. If he overlooked it, it would be an encouragement to the boy to go on in his evil courses.

That evening, after his work was done, my young gentleman was told he wouldn’t be wanted any more, and Harry made him come into the kitchen and unpack his box before all the servants to try and make him ashamed of himself. The other servants laughed at the pistol and the red shirt, but Harry told them it was no laughing matter, as the young lad would come to ruin the way he was going on; and then he discharged him and gave him a most severe lecture, telling him to think himself lucky he wasn’t given into custody.

But the boy was very sullen and defiant, and though he didn’t say anything to Harry, as he was going he turned to Lucy, who was in the kitchen, and he said, “This is your doing, and you shall pay for it.” And he gave her such a glance with his eyes as he went out of the door that the girl came to me and said she was quite frightened.

“What nonsense, Lucy!” I said; “it’s only his brag. It’s something he’s picked up out of one of the wretched tales he has been reading.”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” answered Lucy; “it’s my belief that he’s off his head; and I’ve heard of boys doing dreadful things when they’re like that. I sha’n’t feel safe till he’s out of the place.”

I talked to the girl, and told her not to be a goose; but she quite made up her mind that the young imp meant to do her a mischief, for showing his letter to me and Harry.

* * * * *

That night, just as we were shutting up, a man from the village came with a message from Dick’s grandmother to say her boy had been home, put on his Sunday clothes, done all his things up in a bundle and started off, saying she would never see him again, and please what was she to do. Had we any idea where he was likely to be gone to?

Harry sent word back that he couldn’t say anything; but the best thing was to send up to the police-station, and they might hear something.

The next day, Lucy came to me as pale as death, and said, “Oh, ma’am, look at this,” and showed me a letter which had come for her that morning, and it was this—“You have betrade our captin; deth to informars!” and underneath it was a skull and two cross-bones and a coffin.

“I daren’t go out, ma’am,” she said; “I daren’t, indeed. He might be lurking about and jump out on me with a pistol. He used to be always telling stories in the kitchen about highwaymen and their stopping people on the road, and you may depend upon it, ma’am, that’s what he’s going to be now he’s run away. I shouldn’t be afraid of him, but if he’s got hold of a pistol there’s no knowing what might happen. And suppose, ma’am, he was to meet me in the lane while I was out with baby, whatever should I do?”

This was a nice idea, and it made me nervous, too; for I had visions of Lucy fainting, or dropping my baby; or, perhaps, the pistol, if the young rascal had one, going off accidentally, and hitting my baby. So I made up my mind she shouldn’t take baby out, except into the garden, and just in front of the house.

I said to Harry, “It’s a nice thing if we are all to be kept in terror by a bit of a boy, who has read penny numbers, and wants to play at being a highwayman; and something must be done.” Harry said it was all nonsense—the boy was gone, and if he was hanging about the neighbourhood, where was he to get a pistol from? The one Harry had taken out of his box was an old worn-out thing, and wasn’t loaded, and he wouldn’t have the money to get another.

I said, “Oh, I don’t know; he might steal one. I’ve read in the papers about errand boys getting revolvers; and I shall never know a moment’s peace till I know where that wretched boy is. A nice thing, if my nurse goes out one day with baby, and gets shot by the young fiend.”

So Harry went up to the police-station, and they laid a trap to catch my lord. From something one of the policemen had heard, he believed that one of the boys of the village was in league with Dick, and knew where he was hiding. So Lucy was told to get hold of this boy, and tell him that she had thought it over and altered her mind, and she wanted to send a letter to Dick.

The boy was sharp. He said, “I don’t know where Dick is; but, if I see him, I’ll give it to him;” and he took the letter. The letter asked Dick to meet Lucy at nine o’clock the next night up by Giles’s farm, which is up at the top of a lonely road, about half a mile away from the village.

When the time came, instead of Lucy going, one of the policemen in plain clothes went up to the place, and hid behind a hedge. We heard all about it afterwards. After he had waited a little, he saw Master Dick come cautiously along, it being a nice light night, and when he was quite close, the policeman jumped out on him; but, before he could get hold of him, the young fiend had a revolver pointed at his head.

“Oh, it’s a trick, is it?” he said. “I thought it was, so I’ve come prepared.”

“Put that down, you young varmint!” yelled the policeman. “Do you hear? Put that down.”

He told us afterwards he felt very nervous; for that horrid boy pointed the revolver at him, with his finger on the trigger, and he was afraid every minute it might go off.

“Not me,” said the little wretch; “you’re at my mercy now.”

“If you don’t put that pistol down,” said the policeman, beginning to be all of a perspiration, “I’ll give you such a thrashing as you never had in your life.”

“Oh no, you won’t,” said the boy; “you come a step nearer to me, and I’ll blow your brains out.”

With that the policeman began to shout, because he saw he could do nothing. Being a married man, and the father of a family, he didn’t care to have a bullet in him.

But directly he began to shout, the boy called out, “You shout again, and I’ll shoot you dead,” and he put his finger on the trigger again, ready to pull it.

It was a terrible position for our policeman, and he didn’t know what to do. There was nobody about, and he was helpless. Of course he might have made a dash for the revolver; but, as he said, before he could get it, it might have gone off, and then, where would he have been?

The little wretch saw his advantage, and if he didn’t say, as cool as you please, “Now then, Jones” (it was the same policeman who woke us up about our door being open, the night of the burglary at The Hall),—“now then, Jones, take off your watch and chain, and throw them on the ground.”

“I sha’n’t,” said the policeman.

“Oh, very well; then I shall have to make you. I’ll count three, and if you haven’t put them down I’ll pull the trigger.”

“One!”

“Two!”

Poor Jones hesitated. It was ridiculous; but he was in mortal terror of that deadly weapon in a boy’s hands. So he took off his watch and chain and put them down.

“Now, all the money you’ve got in your pockets.”

Jones had drawn his week’s pay, and had a sovereign; but he wouldn’t say so.

“I haven’t got any money,” he said.

“Yes, you have.”

“No, I haven’t. Come, my boy, don’t make a fool of yourself. Put that pistol down and come with me.”

“Not likely! What do you take me for? Come, your money or your life!”

“I haven’t got any money, I tell you.”

“Take off your coat, then!”

“I sha’n’t!”

“Take off your coat, and throw it on the ground.”

“One!”

“Two!”

Again the pistol was pointed straight at Jones’s head. He looked round. It was a lonely place. The farm lay right back across the fields, and he daren’t shout, so he didn’t know what to do. He wished he had brought somebody with him; but it had been agreed he should go alone; because, if several people had gone, the boy’s suspicions would have been aroused, and he wouldn’t have come near enough to be caught perhaps.

“If I say ‘Three,’ I’ll shoot,” said the boy.

The policeman saw it was no use, so he took off his coat.

“Now, your waistcoat!”

Jones had to take off his waistcoat.

“Turn out the pockets!”

Jones turned out the pockets. There was only his pipe and his handkerchief in them.

“Now, turn out the trousers pockets.”

Poor Jones! The sovereign was in one trousers pocket. He turned them out; but kept the sovereign in his hand.

But Master Dick saw the trick.

“Drop what you’ve got in your hand!”

“One!”

“Two!”

Down went the sovereign on the road.

“Now! Right about turn. Quick march!”

“I sha’n’t.”

“If you don’t, I’ll shoot you.”

“You’ll be hanged.”

“I don’t care. I’ll die game.”

Wasn’t it awful? But it was the stuff he had read.

Poor Jones, who certainly is not a brave man, perhaps through having a wife and family, had to give it up as a bad job, turned round, and began to move slowly away.

As soon as he had got a little distance, he turned round, and saw Master Dick pick up the sovereign and the coat and waistcoat, and run away with them.

Jones turned round then, and shouted, and ran after him.

But directly he came close, Master Dick turned round with the revolver.

Jones hesitated.

“If you come a step nearer, I’ll fire,” shouted the boy.

Jones was just turning round to go away again, wondering whatever people would say if he came back into the village in his shirt-sleeves, when, suddenly, a man came along the road in the opposite direction, and before the boy knew what was up, his aims were seized from behind, and the pistol was forced out of his hand. It was Harry, who had gone up to the place to see if anything had happened, and who had seen the last part of the performance at a distance.

And when they had collared the boy, and Jones had put on his coat and waistcoat and got his sovereign back, and was walking Master Dick off to the police-station, Harry picked up the revolver, and looked at it.

It was empty!

Poor Jones went hot and cold, and begged Harry not to say anything about it, because it would make him look so small; and Harry, who would have burst out laughing if the boy hadn’t been there, promised not to tell; and he didn’t tell anybody except me. It must have looked ridiculous. I couldn’t help laughing at the idea myself, the policeman having to take off his clothes, frightened by a boy with an empty revolver.

Master Dick was taken before the magistrates, and tried for sending a threatening letter, and being in possession of a pistol, which, it was presumed, he had stolen from a farmer’s house in the neighbourhood, but nothing was said by Jones about the robbery from him, and the boy was wise enough to hold his tongue.

We all begged hard that he mightn’t be sent to prison, because of the evil company and the stain for life, so the magistrate sent him to a reformatory; and I suppose he is there now.

After that, our nursemaid felt relieved in her mind, poor girl, and so did I. It was not a nice idea to think that Dashing Dick, the boy highwayman, was waiting about for her with a pistol, every time she took baby out for a walk.

That was our first boy, and we didn’t have another. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, especially boys that can read, and get bitten with the romantic idea. It was all very well when they only ran away to sea; but now that they want to be burglars and pirates and highwaymen, it’s awful. You never know what dreadful things they’ll be up to. I knew a boy once that stole a hundred pounds, and bought six revolvers with the money, and stuck them all in his belt, loaded, and rode about the country on a horse, stopping old ladies coming home from market, and making them stand and deliver their purses, and all they had in their baskets, and was only caught through robbing an old lady who had a bottle of gin in her basket, which he drank, and got so drunk that he fell off his horse, and was found lying in the road, with his head cut open, and taken to the station.

I’m sure the trash that’s sold to boys and girls has a lot to answer for, for they read it at a time when their minds are influenced by it, and they haven’t the sense to see the wickedness of it and what it leads to. Lots of girls in service are ruined through the vile stuff they read making them discontented, and wanting to be I don’t know what.

It was after this awful boy of ours had turned out so badly that we determined to have a man, and it was then that Tom Dexter came to us. He is the odd man I was going to speak about, when I left off to tell you the story of Dashing Dick, who wanted our nursemaid to elope with him, and who put his love-letters in her boots when he cleaned them. Tom Dexter was——

* * * * *

Oh, Harry, dear, do you really think it? Money going out of the till! Whoever can it be?