“‘Strong words,’ said I.
“‘And true’ said he; ‘he’d steal your molar tooth while you were laughing at him.’
“‘Let me have him, and try my hand on him, anyway. I’ve got no one just now. Anything is better than nothing.’
“Well I took Tim, and sending for him to my room I locked the door, and sitting down gravely before him explained in a few words that I was quite aware of his little propensities.
“‘Now,’ said I, ‘if you like to behave well, I’ll think you as honest as the chief-justice; but if I catch you stealing, if it be only the value of a brass snuff-box, I’ll have you flogged before the regiment as sure as my name’s Maurice.’
“Oh, I wish you heard the volley of protestations that fell from him fast as hail. He was a calumniated man the world conspired to wrong him; he was never a thief nor a rogue in his life. He had a weakness, he confessed, for the ladies; but except that, he hoped he might die so thin that he could shave himself with his shin-bone if he ever so much as took a pinch of salt that wasn’t his own.
“However this might be, nothing could be better than the way Tim and I got on together. Everything was in its place, nothing missing; and in fact, for upwards of a year, I went on wondering when he was to show out in his true colors, for hitherto he had been a phoenix.
“At last,—we were quartered in Limerick at the time,—every morning used to bring accounts of all manner of petty thefts in the barrack,—one fellow had lost his belt, another his shoes, a third had three-and-sixpence in his pocket when he went to bed and woke without a farthing, and so on. Everybody save myself was mulet of something. At length some rumors of Tim’s former propensities got abroad; suspicion was excited; my friend Delany was rigidly watched, and some very dubious circumstances attached to the way he spent his evenings.
“My brother officers called upon me about the matter, and although nothing had transpired like proof, I sent for Tim, and opened my mind on the subject.
“You may talk of the look of conscious innocence, but I defy you to conceive anything finer than the stare of offended honor Tim gave me as I began.