“Old hand, bless you, yes; he’s been a thief all his life, but he’s a stranger to me, or rather was, but a few days ago. I saw a chap yesterday, who had six years’ penal servitude; met him by chance in the street. He is leading an honest course of life now, and has been doing so for some years. He’s one of the few that have reformed. Well, this old scoundrel, whose arrest for smashing I am bent on I did not know much about. Well, as I was saying, I met the other one, whose name is Kedge. I asked him if he knew anything about my ‘smasher.’”
“Know? Of course,” said he. “Why you know who he is—don’t you?”
“Well, no, I can’t say that I do.”
“He had ten years for breaking into a public-house in Oxford-street sixteen years ago. Well, after his return from transportation, he goes to the public, calls for something to drink, and as he stood in front of the bar he asked the landlord if he kept the house sixteen years before. ‘No,’ says the landlord, ‘I did not.’ ‘Sure on it,’ says Hardy—that’s his name, though he calls himself Mr. Dawes—‘sure on it?’ says he.”
“Quite sure,” says the landlord, “who, I fancy, suspected something was wrong.”
“Well, then, I b’lieve you’re telling a thundering lie. Do you remember charging a man with burglary sixteen years ago?”
“No, I do not,” says the landlord. “I never charged anyone with burglary in all my born days.”
“I’m glad on it,” said Hardy, “for if you’d been the man as got me convicted of burglary, I’d have had yer life—that’s all.”
“You see, Mr. Wrench,” said Kedge, “Hardy wasn’t sartin about his being the same man, and it’s likely enough the landlord saved his life by declaring he was not the person who kept the house sixteen years before. Of course he was greatly altered in his appearance—so much so that the returned convict did not know him.”
“It was lucky for the bung,” observed Shearman.