"Well," said I, "this is strange."
"Not at all," said Tom. "Look at your breast-pocket."
I looked and saw a short slit across my breast just above the heart. As I put my hand up, a sovereign, and then another, rolled clinking on to the pavement.
Tom picked them up, and handing them to me, remarked—
"Jasper, you may thank Heaven to-day, if you are in a mood for it. You have had a narrow escape."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, that you would be a dead man now had you not carried that piece of metal in your breast-pocket. Let me see it for a moment."
We looked at it together, and there surely enough, almost in the centre of the clasp, was a deep dent. We were silent for a minute or so, and then Tom said—
"Let us get home. It would not do for us to be seen with this money about us."
We crossed the Strand, and turned off it to the door of our lodgings. There I stopped.