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it down on the

grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had

not seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down this time to

get at what I had, but left me right side upwards while I opened

the bundle and emptied my pockets.

“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.

“Brandy,” said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most

curious manner,—more like a man who was putting it away somewhere

in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it,—but he left off

to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the while so

violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the

neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.

“I think you have got the ague,” said I.

“I’m much of your opinion, boy,” said he.

“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying out on the

meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”

“I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,” said he.

“I’d do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows

as there is over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat the shivers

so far, I’ll bet you.”

He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie,

all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all

round us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen.

Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing

of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said,

suddenly,—

“You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?”

“No, sir! No!”

“Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?”

“No!”

“Well,” said he, “I believe you. You’d be but a fierce young hound

indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched

warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched

warmint is!”

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a

clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough

sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled

down upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”

“Did you speak?”

“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”

“Thankee, my boy. I do.”

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now

noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating, and

the man’s. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the

dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon

and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate,

as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody’s

coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his

mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably I thought, or to have

anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at

the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

“I am afraid you won’t leave any of it for him,” said I, timidly;

after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness

of making the remark. “There’s no more to be got where that came

from.” It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer

the hint.

“Leave any for him? Who’s him?” said my friend, stopping in his

crunching of pie-crust.

“The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you.”

“Oh ah!” he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes,

yes! He don’t want no wittles.”

“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny

and the greatest surprise.

“Looked? When?”

“Just now.”

“Where?”

“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over there, where I found him nodding

asleep, and thought it was you.”

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think

his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I explained,

trembling; “and—and”—I was very anxious to put this delicately

—“and with—the same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn’t

you hear the cannon last night?”

“Then there was firing!” he said to himself.

“I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure of that,” I returned, “for

we heard it up at home, and that’s farther away, and we were shut

in besides.”

“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man’s alone on these flats, with a

light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he

hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling.

Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the

torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number

called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets,

hears the orders ‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and

is laid hands on—and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing

party last night—coming up in order, Damn ‘em, with their tramp,

tramp—I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist

shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day,—But this man”; he

had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being there; “did

you notice anything in him?”

“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what I hardly knew

I knew.

“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly,

with the flat of his hand.

“Yes, there!”

“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the

breast of his gray jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him

down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us

hold of the file, boy.”

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man,

and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank

wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or

minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody,

but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it

than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had

worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much

afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I told him I must go,

but he took no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was

to slip off. The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee

and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient

imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I

stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going.

Chapter IV

I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to

take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no

discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was

prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of

the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen doorstep to keep

him out of the dustpan,—an article into which his destiny always

led him, sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the

floors of her establishment.

“And where the deuce ha’ you been?” was Mrs. Joe’s Christmas

salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. “Ah! well!” observed Mrs.

Joe. “You might ha’ done worse.” Not a doubt of that I thought.

“Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the same

thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear

the Carols,” said Mrs. Joe. “I’m rather partial to Carols, myself,

and that’s the best of reasons for my never hearing any.”

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had

retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a

conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her

eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and

exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross

temper. This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would

often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental

Crusaders as to their legs.

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled

pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome

mince-pie had been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the

mincemeat not being missed), and the pudding was already on the

boil. These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut off

unceremoniously in respect of breakfast; “for I ain’t,” said Mrs.

Joe,—“I ain’t a going to have no formal cramming and busting and

washing up now, with what I’ve got before me, I promise you!”

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops

on a forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took

gulps of milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug

on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains

up, and tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide chimney to

replace the old one, and uncovered the little state parlor across

the passage, which was never uncovered at any other time, but

passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, which

even extended to the four little white crockery poodles on the

mantel-shelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers in his

mouth, and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was a very

clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her

cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by

their religion.

My sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously,

that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working—clothes, Joe

was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday

clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than

anything else. Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to

belong to him; and everything that he wore then grazed him. On the

present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe

bells were going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday

penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had some

general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur

Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her,

to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I

was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in

opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and

against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I

was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to

make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me

have the free use of my limbs.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving

spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside

was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had

assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of

the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my

mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked

secret, I

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