These men, old in crime, already recognised him as their master.
“Yes,” he replied, calmly, “you must make up your minds to go into the country, or to cross the herring pond. You are too well known in London to remain here with safety.”
“Well, we must hook it, I s’pose,” said Miles Slann. “There aint no help for it. Look here,” he said, in continuation, addressing himself to his younger companion, “you were born and bred in the country, though nobody would believe it, to look at you now. Are there any “plants” to be made there nowadays?”
Mr. Algernon Sutherland crossed his legs in a symmetrical manner, and passed his hands through his flowing locks.
“Umph!” he ejaculated. “I hardly know how to answer your question. In the country dwell a race of men called farmers, who utterly disbelieve in banks, those nefarious institutions which have extinguished highway robbery—the high art of our profession—in order that they may pillage percentage from the million, and, by breaking now and then, utterly ruin the fatherless and the widows. But these farmers, who are honest fellows in the main, ride home from market at a particular season of the year with a twelvemonth’s income in their pockets, which season is the autumn, now close at hand.”
“Oh, aint that fortunate?” cried the Smoucher. “But are there no banks in the country, then?”
“Plenty for gentlemen and tradesmen, and those exceptional farmers who prefer such custody to that of their own clumsy cudgels and rusty blunderbusses. However, they are all compelled to have large sums of money in their houses for the payment of their labourers on Saturday night.”
“Just the place for our money,” cried the Cracksman. “Let’s have a country tour for the benefit of our health. I don’t feel up to the knocker myself, and fresh air is needful. Besides, we aint wanted in London—leastways, if we are “wanted,” which, in course, is likely enough, why it’s as well to give the ‘crushers’ the trouble to run down to our country seat. Ah, ah! If there be kens to crack and heads to break on the main toby we’re all there. What if we do get done for a cramp, and end our days at Tuck-up Fair? There’s no need to say die on a dunghill, or talk without meat or drink. So, Lorry, let’s have somethink that way, if you please.”
“You are a good one for prog and lush,” said the Smoucher. “If you were going to be ‘topped’ to-morrer, you’d ask to die with your mouth full. But take care, old sinner, he who cuts much beef has more belly than brains, and that won’t fit in our trade, you know.”
“Let him have his way,” observed Laura Stanbridge. “He takes pretty good care of himself, and is not likely to starve when food is to be got; but blue ruin’s ruination, and a flash of lightning (a glass of gin) has been fatal to many a man before now.”