“Sometimes more and sometimes less,” replied the other; “but ‘the thing’ must always be seen.”
“And by my sowl it is a good thing, and worth the money any how.”
“Where is it?”
“At home.”
“Then if you will bring it here about ten it will be examined, and you will get your money; and since you are a beginner, I may tell you, you had better bring it in a box.”
“And have we not a tea-chest all ready, which howlds it nate, and will not my friend help me to bring it?”
“Well, mind the hour, and be upon your guard that no one sees you.”
And so the man, however much an adult in the common immorality of the world, in this singular crime as yet an infant, left to complete his sale of merchandise. It would not be easy to figure his thoughts,—perhaps more difficult to estimate his feelings,—yet it might be for good that we could analyse these states of the mind, which are nought other than diseases, that we might apply the cure which God has vouchsafed to our keeping; even as that student strove to inquire into the secrets of the body, that he might learn how to deal with the living frame when it is out of order, or, perhaps, hastening to a premature dissolution.
That man was William Burke, and we say this as a historian might have said, that man was Alexander of Macedon, or that Julius Caesar, or that Napoleon—all equally great, or at least great with the difference that the first as yet only desecrated the temple for money, and the others took from it the deity for ambition. Ay, and with this difference also, which time was to shew, that while there have been many slaughtering kings, there never was but one William Burke.