This seemed a very unjust world that I had come into, in which Grandfather Nat was in danger of such terrible penalties for such innocent transactions—buying a watch, or getting his tobacco cheap. So I said: "I think people are very wicked in this place."
"Ah!" said my grandfather, "I s'pose none of us ain't over good. But there—I've told you about it now, an' that's better than lettin' you wonder, an' p'raps go asking other people questions. So now you know, Stevy. We've got our little secrets between us, an' you've got to keep 'em between us, else—well, you know. Nothing about anything I buy, nor about what I take in there,"—with a jerk of the thumb—"nor about 'bacca in buckets o' water."
"Nor about the pocket-book, Gran'fa' Nat?"
"Lord no. 'Specially not about that. You see, Stevy, pardners is pardners, an' they must stick together, eh? We'll stick together, won't we?"
I nodded hard and reached for my grandfather's neck.
"Ah, that we will. What others like to think they can; they can't prove nothing, nor it wouldn't be their game. But we're pardners, an' I've told you what—well, what you might ha' found out in a more awkward way. An' it ain't so bad a thing to have a pardner to talk to, neither. I never had one till now—not since your gran'mother died, that you never saw, Stevy; an' that was twenty years ago. I been alone most o' my life—not even a boy, same as it might be you. 'Cause why? When your father was your age, an' older, I was always at sea, an' never saw him, scarcely; same as him an' you now."
And indeed Grandfather Nat and I knew each other better than my father knew either of us. And so we sat for a few minutes talking of ourselves, and once more of the notes in the pocket-book upstairs; till the tramp of the three policemen on the beat stayed in the street without, and we heard one of the three coming down the passage.
He knocked sharply at the bar-parlour door, and Grandfather Nat put me down and opened it.
"Good evenin', Cap'en Kemp," said the policeman. "We knew you was up, seein' a bit o' light." Then he leaned farther in, and in a lower voice, said: "He ain't been exactly identified yet, but it's thought some of our chaps knows 'im. Know if anything's been picked up?"
My heart gave a jump, as probably did my grandfather's. "Picked up?" he repeated. "Why, what? What d'ye mean?"