“You have him,” repeated Tony. “Well, what of him?”
“He's a jailer, sir,—yes, a jailer. I won't say he 's the chief,—he 's maybe second or third,—but he 's one of 'em.”
“How do you know that?”
“Here's how I found it out;” and he drew forth a blue cloth uniform, with yellow cuffs and collar, and a yellow seam down the trousers. There were no buttons on the coat, but both on the sleeve and the collar were embroidered two keys, crosswise. “Look at them, Master Tony; look at them, and say an't that as clear as day? It's some new regulation, I suppose, to put them in uniform; and there's the keys, the mark of the lock-up, to show who he is that wears them.”
Though the last man in the world to read riddles or unravel difficulties, Tony did not accept this information very willingly. In truth, he felt a repugnance to assign to the worthy country fellow a station which bears, in the appreciation of every Irishman, a certain stain. For, do as we will, reason how we may, the old estimate of the law as an oppression surges up through our thoughts, just as springs well up in an undrained soil.
“I 'm certain you're wrong, Waters,” said he, boldly; “he had n't a bit the look of that about him: he was a fine, fresh-featured, determined sort of fellow, but without a trace of cunning or distrust in his face.”
“I 'll stand to it I 'm right, Master Tony. What does keys mean? Answer me that. An't they to lock up? It must be to lock up something or somebody,—you agree to that?”
Tony gave a sort of grunt, which the other took for concurrence, and continued.
“It's clear enough he an't the county treasurer,” said he, with a mocking laugh,—“nor he don't keep the Queen's private purse neither; no, sir. It's another sort of val'ables is under his charge. It's highwaymen and housebreakers and felony chaps.”
“Not a bit of it; he's no more a jailer than I'm a hangman. Besides, what is to prove that this uniform is his own? Why not be a friend's,—a relation's? Would a fellow trained to the ways of a prison trust the first man he meets in the street, and hand him over his bundle? Is that like one whose daily life is passed among rogues and vagabonds?”