“I was twenty-five when I put they up there, and that was in the year ’14; and not me nor no one else has fingered them since. Because why? Because it was like as if my past laid in a tomb underneath, and they was the sign that I held by it without shame or desire of concealment.
“In those days I was guard to the ‘Globe’ coach, that run between London and Brighton. We made the journey in eight hours, from the ‘Bull and Mouth’ in Aldersgate to the ‘New Inn’ in North Street—or t’other way about; and we never stopped but for changes, or to put down and take up. Sich was our orders, and nothing in reason to find fault with ’em, until they come to hold us responsible to something besides time. Then the trouble began.
“Now, sir, as you may know, the coachman’s seat was over the fore-boot, and, being holler underneath, was often used as a box for special parcels. So it happened that this box was hired of the owners by Messrs. Black, South, and Co., the big Brighthelmstone bankers, in order to ship their notes and cash, whenever they’d the mind to, between London and the seaside, and so escape the risks and expense of a private mail. The valiables would be slid and locked in—coachman being in his place—with a private key; and George he’d nothing to do but keep his fat calves snug to the door, till someun at the other end came with a duplicate key to unlock it and claim the property. Very well—and very well it worked till the fifteenth of December in the year eighteen hundred and thirteen, on which day our responsibility touched the handsome figure—so I was to learn—of £4000 in Brighton Union bank notes, besides cash and securities.
“It was rare cold weather, much as it is now, save that the snow was shallower by a matter of two inches, and no more bind in it than dry sand. We was advertised to start from the ‘Bull’ at nine; and there was booked six insides and five out. At ten minutes to the hour up walks a couple of Messrs. Pinnick and Waghorn’s clerks from the borough, with the cash box in whity-brown paper, looking as innocent as a babby in a Holland pinifore. George he comes out of the shades, like a jolly Corsican ghost, a viping of his mouth; the box is slung up and fastened in; coachman climbs to his perch, and the five outsides follow-my-leader arter him to theirs, where they swaddle ’emselves into their wraps strait-veskit-vise, and settin’ as miserable as if they was waitin’ to have a tooth drawed. Not much harm there, you’ll say—one box-seat, two behind, two with me in the dickey—all packed tight, and none too close for observation. Well, sir, we’ll hear about it.
“Out of the six insides, all taken, there was three already in place: a gentleman, very short and fierce, and snarling at everything; gentleman’s lady, pretty as paint, but a white timidious body; gentleman’s young-gentleman, in ducks and spencer and a cap like a concertina with the spring gone. So far so good, you’ll say again, and no connexion with any other party, and leastways of all with the insides as was yet wanting, and which the fierce gentleman was blowin’ the lights out of for bein’ late.
“ ‘Guard,’ says he, goin’ on outrageous, while the lady and the young gentleman cuddled together scared-like in a corner, ‘who are these people who stop the whole service while they look in the shop-vinders? If you’re for starting a minute after the stroke,’ says he, ‘dash my buttons,’ he says, ‘but I’ll raise all hell to have you cashiered!’
“ ‘All right, sir,’ I says. ‘I knows my business better’n you can tell it me—’ and just as I spoke, a hackney kerridge come rumbling into the yard, and drew up anigh us.
“ ‘Globe?’ says a jolly, fat-faced man, sticking his head out of it. ‘All right, Cato—’ and down jumps a black servant, in livery, that was on the box, and opens the door.
“The fat man he tumbled out—for all the world like a sheetful of washing a wallopin’ downstairs—Cato he got in, and between them they helped from the hackney and across to the coach as rickety a old figure as ever I see. He were all shawls and wraprascal. He’d blue spectacles to his eyes, a travellin’ cap pulled down on ’em, his mouth covered in; and the only evidence of flesh to be seen in the whole of his carcass, was a nose the colour of a hyster. He shuffled painful, too, as they held him up under the arms, and he groaned and muttered to himself all the time he were changing.
“Now, sir, you may suppose the snarling gentleman didn’t make the best of what he see; and he broke out just as they was a-hauling the invalid in, wanting to know very sarcastic if they hadn’t mistook the ‘Globe’ for a hearse. But the fat man he accepted him as good-humoured as could be.