Alf was lost, irretrievably lost, and no one who knew him at the farmhouse could recognise him as the boy who gave such trouble to Mr. Jamblin. He was so completely metamorphosed, personally as well as mentally.
We have had, during the progress of this work, occasion to give the reader some little insight into the lives and careers of juvenile and adult pickpockets.
Alf Purvis was the most accomplished one of the whole fraternity. He had a certain amount of education, was quick-witted, aristocratic in his appearance, and was, therefore, a dangerous person to be let loose on society. He had, moreover, for his accomplice a woman, even more dangerous than himself—a sort of harpy or beautiful demon, if such a term can with propriety be applied to one of the softer sex.
Alf Purvis frequented places of fashionable resort, and had the faculty of obtaining an entrance to select coteries in a manner which was altogether unaccountable.
He was, in short, the George Barrington of his day. His manners were so soft and winning that he was able to deceive and hoodwink his betters.
It is terrible to think of the change which had come over the farmer’s boy.
Let us pay a visit to the house at the back of Regent-street. It was one of those hours of the night in which honest folk are asleep, and fools revel, and thieves work.
The vermin of society, like the vermin of the woods and fields, shun the light of Heaven, in which they see the effulgence of an Omnipotent power.
A man, with his face muffled by a cloak, was walking quickly through the courts and alleys which join Regent-street to Piccadilly.
The last of these passages ended in a mews, which we have already described.