The landlord and landlady of the "Boozing-Ken" on Saffron Hill were busily employed, as we have seen them upon a former occasion, in dispensing glasses of "all sorts" to their numerous customers. The bar was surrounded by every thing the most revolting, the most hideous, and the most repulsive in human shape.
"Well, Joe," said the landlord to a man dressed like a butcher, and whose clothes emitted a greasy and carrion-like smell, "what news down at Cow Cross?"
"Nothink partikler," answered the man, who followed the pleasant and agreeable calling of a journeyman-knacker. "We have been precious full of work lately—and that's all I knows or cares about. Seventy-nine horses I see knocked down yesterday; and out of them, fifty-three was so awful diseased and glandered when they was brought in, that we was obleeged to kill 'em and cut 'em up with masks and gloves on. It was but three weeks ago that we lost our best man, Ben Biddle:—you recollects Ben Biddle?"
"I knowed him well," said the landlord. "He took his 'morning' here reglar for sixteen years, and never owed a penny."
"But do you know how he died?" demanded the knacker, staring the landlord significantly in the face.
"Can't say that I do."
"He died of a fearful disease which is getting more and more amongst human creeturs every day," continued the knacker:—"he died of the glanders!"
"The glanders!" ejaculated the landlady, with a shudder; and all the persons who were taking their "morning" at the bar crowded around the knacker to hear the particulars of Ben Biddle's death.
"You see," resumed the knacker, now putting on a very solemn and important air, "there is more diseased horses sold in Smithfield-Market than sound 'uns. The art of doctoring a dying horse so that he looks as lively and sound as possible to any one which ain't wery knowing in them matters, is come to sich a pitch, that I'm blowed if the wisest ain't taken in at times. We have horses come into our yard that was bought the same morning in Smithfield, and seemed slap-up animals; but in a few hours the effects of the stimulants given to 'em goes off, the plugs falls out of their noses, and there they are at the point of death. Why—if a horse has got four white feet, they'll paint three, or perhaps all on 'em black; and that part of the deception isn't never found out till they're flayed in our yard."
"But about poor Biddle?" said the landlord.