"Jim, do you believe in heaven?"
"No," said I.
"Do you believe in hell?" he asked.
"No," said I.
"I've got a mind to find out," he said quickly, and pointed a big revolver at his teeth. One of the guns in the saloon said: "Let him try it," but I knocked the pistol away, for something in his manner made me think seriously he would shoot.
"You poor brute," I said to him. "I'll put your ashes in an urn some day and write "Dear Old Saturday Night" for an epitaph for you; but it isn't time yet."
It did not take many experiences like the above to make me very leary of night-work; and I went more slowly for some time. I continued to dip, however, more boldly than ever and to do a good deal of day work; in which comparatively humble graft the servant girls, as I have already said, used to help us out considerably. This class of women never interested me as much as the sporting characters, but we used to make good use of them; and sometimes they amused us.
I remember an entertaining episode which took place while Harry, a pal of mine at the time, and I, were going with a couple of these hard-working Molls. Harry was rather inclined to be a sure-thing grafter, of which class of thieves I shall say more in another chapter; and after my recent dangerous adventures I tolerated that class more than was customary with me. Indeed, if Harry had been the real thing I would have cut him dead; as it was he came near enough to the genuine article to make me despise him in my ordinary mood. But, as I say, I was uncommonly leary just at that time.
He and I were walking in Stuyvesant Square when we met a couple of these domestic slaves. With a "hello," we rang in on them, walked them down Second Avenue and had a few drinks all around. My girl told me whom she was working with. Thinking there might be something doing I felt her out further, with a view to finding where in the house the stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly, I easily got the desired information. We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum, at Eighth Street and Broadway, and saw a howling border melodrama, in which wild Indians were as thick as Moll-buzzers in 1884. Mary Anne, who was my girl, said she should tell her mistress about the beautiful play; and asked for a program. They were all out, and so I gave her an old one, of another play, which I had in my pocket. We had a good time, and made a date with them for another meeting, in two weeks from that night; but before the appointed hour we had beat Mary Anne's mistress out of two hundred dollars worth of silverware, easily obtained, thanks to the information I had received from Mary Anne. When we met the girls again, I found Mary Anne in a great state of indignation; I was afraid she was "next" to our being the burglars, and came near falling through the floor. But her rage, it seemed, was about the play. She had told her mistress about the wild Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had shown her the program of The Banker's Daughter.
"But there is no such thing as an Indian in The Banker's Daughter," her mistress had said. "I fear you are deceiving me, Mary Anne, and that you have been to some low place on the Bowery."