Peace encountered a man at Lewisham one night, who had passed Nunhead, and was obliged to walk back. The two had a most interesting conversation upon botany, in which science Peace seems to have laid magnificent foundations for studying, having selected for culture, in a plot of thirty square feet, several hundreds of choice plants.
The pony went out from Peace’s stables at most unearthly hours, and sometimes the neighbours woke up when it returned. One night the driving in at the gate was furious, and the pony knocked over the gate, and made such a racket that the attention of No. 120 policeman was drawn to the circumstance.
The policeman was on the threshold of discovery but suspected nothing. Peace unquestionably had just returned from an expedition with spoils, but when he saw the officer he blandly invited him in, although it was one o’clock in the morning, and lifting up the lid of a long box, he explained that he had been engaged in perfecting an invention for raising sunken vessels, which he and a Mr. Brion were about to patent.
“And you know it would not do to let people know about this in the day-time,” added the convict, upon which the policeman drank his health, and hoped he didn’t intrude, and assisted Mr. Knight, the milkman adjacent, to re-adjust the gate on its hinges. On another occasion the convict was surprised while occupied at two o’clock in the morning in his back yard.
The milkman had returned home with his waggon, and was astonished to discover old Peace at work in the garden digging.
“It’s only me, Mr. Knight,” said Mr. Peace, as he heard a door grate, and discovered the milkman scanning his midnight toil. The milkman went nearer, and perceived that Peace had dug a hole long enough and deep enough for a grave, and Peace explained that the exhumed earth was intended for potting, and that the hole would do for manure from the stable.
But Peace played it on the milkman some time later than this to a prodigious extent.
“Poor Tommy” died, and was lamented with bitter lamentations by his bereaved master, and a few days afterwards the bland Peace, with a truly sympathetic manner, went to the milkman, and said, “Mr. Knight, I see your stable is very damp, and I don’t like to see any animal treated to damp quarters. Since ‘Tommy’ died I have had no use for my stable, and you might as well put your pony in there, where it is dry, and you know I am a man of means, and will take every care of him. In fact I am very fond of animals.” The milkman had commiseration for his beast, and stabled him in Peace’s stable.
The convict consideratedly said he would not charge anything, and he showed an interest in his charge by providing a new bucket for the pony, and supplying good litter. But in the mornings the milkman noticed that his pony was often bespattered thickly with mud, and was eating hungrily from the manger.
No. 48.