"You had better leave tricks of that sort alone, Black John," I said in a friendly tone, stepping back and picking up a dirty little packet wrapped in a greasy piece of The Morning Post.
Inside three or four wrappers of the same sort I found the strangest object I had ever seen.
It was a large black diamond, of a flattened oval shape, tapering at the ends. It was set in a broad gold rim of the same form as the stone, and, to make its likeness to a tortoise more complete, a head was introduced, together with a little stumpy tail, and four knobs underneath, to represent feet,—all of gold. In the head shone two green precious stones for eyes.
"Oh, no; it won't be of much use to me, I can see," said Black John, resignedly. "I suppose I am in for another year or two."
He exhibited a subtle humour, while he tramped along to the town between the two policemen. The effects of just-from-prison libations did not seem quite to have left him.
"Ours is a hard sort of a profession, sir," he continued confidentially. "I think it's just as well to be a convict all one's life. Then one wouldn't get such frights at night. Such a one as I had last night!"
"Were you frightened, then, last night, in the Drammen Road?" I asked sympathetically.
"Frightened, indeed! What would you say, sir, if you were busy rooting about in a house at night, when you thought all was quiet and still, and an old ourang-outang in a shirt were suddenly to appear before you with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, firing away at you till the bullets whistled about your ears?"
In this kind of jocular strain he talked until we reached the town, where we parted.
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