The gentleman who had been thus ignominiously ‘chucked out’ slowly pulled himself together, collected his faculties and his hat with difficulty, uttered some violent and abusive epithets, then slowly staggered off down the street with drunken dignity.
I went inside the aforesaid doors. My eyes had not deceived me, for there was the protégé behind the counter in his new capacity of barman and ‘chucker out.’ He signed to me to follow him into the ‘snug,’ and there confided to me that he had got a permanent job for the first time in his life.
‘Here,’ said he, ‘is a bar’ (sovereign); ‘send it along tae Mister Rutherford, an’ tell him I’s alive an’ hearty, an’ that I canna rest till I’s paid for the blankets an’ beddin’ I burnt the other week. Mind,’ says he, ‘ye’re not tae say where I am, but tell him I’ve a situation, an’s givin’ satisfaction.’
‘Well,’ thought I to myself, as I returned to my hotel, ‘if my friend hasn’t reformed the protégé, he has come at all events as near to success as is good for the ordinary mortal.’
THE SPANISH DOUBLOON
Ransacking Jake’s treasury one afternoon, I made an unexpected find—no less than a Spanish doubloon hidden away in an old sporran of a great-uncle of his.
The history of the fox-marked rapier, of the blood-stained tress of hair found at Cawnpore, and of the yellow robe of the Brahmin, I knew already; but the heavy Spanish coin suggested something of a different order.
‘Come,’ said I, holding it up so as to attract his attention, ‘tell me the tale connected with this—something to do with a pirate, or the Spanish Main, I dare swear.’
Jake smiled quaintly as he fingered the coin with deliberation. ‘Weel, it’s a queer tale, sartinly, that’s connected wi’ yon coin, but all I can tell ye is what my aunt telled me langsyne, when she presented it to me on my joining the sarvice, just before I left for India.