"I tell you what it is, Lully," said the Resurrection Man, gloomily, "you're not so wide awake as I am. That fellow has some object in wandering about zigzag and crosswise in that manner. He has got a scent of me; and he's following it up. But at the same time he's afraid that I may have a scent of him; and so he dodges about. It's as clear as day-light—'cause it's just what I should do."
"And you're a downy cove enough, Tony," observed the Lully Prig; "although I do think arter all you've let that damned parley-woo French feller do us about them Bank notes."
"It's very strange the Buffer doesn't return," said the Resurrection Man. "I'd take my davy that he wouldn't chouse us out of our reglars. But time will show. Now look here, Lully,—as you've made that same remark a dozen times since the thing took place,—and just see how the matter stood. We got four thousand pounds clear——"
"Yes—a thousand a-piece," said the Lully Prig, assentingly: "and a precious jolly catch it was."
"Well," continued the Resurrection Man, "the Bank notes were of no more use to us than so much waste paper, because Greenwood was sure to stop them the moment he got back to London: at least I should think so. Now when that French fellow Lafleur offered to let you, me, the Buffer, and Long Bob share the gold, and he would go to France to smash the notes at the money-changer's that he told us about in Paris, and then take his thousand beyond his fifth share of the produce of the notes, it was the best thing we could do to accept his proposal—particularly as he said that any one of us might go with him."
"But if he sticks to the whole sixteen thousand pounds, what a deuced good pull he has over us," observed the Lully Prig.
"So he has," said the Resurrection Man; "and again I tell you that if he hadn't offered to go to France and change the notes, we must have destroyed them in the very chalk-pit where we divided the swag. They were no use to us—but a great danger. It was better to trust to the chance of Lafleur doing the thing that's right; and if he don't, the Buffer will drop down on him, in spite of all the guilloteens[[32]] and Johnny-darmies[[33]] in France."
"Well, we won't quarrel about it, Tony," said the Lully Prig. "You and the Buffer let me in for a good thing; and I ought not to grumble. You see, I've follered your advice, and kept the blunt in a safe place, without wasting it as Long Bob is doing. He's never been sober since the thing took place."
"Where is he now?" asked the Resurrection Man.
"Oh! he's knocking about at all the flash cribs, spending his tin as fast as he can," answered the Lully Prig.