"Your worships, I have no doubt in the world, that at some future time bodies have been taken through that very house!" Whereupon, Sir Richard observed, that the opinion would have had more weight, if the tenses had been less confused. It afterwards appeared, however, that future and former were synonymous terms in this watchman's vocabulary, and so his opinion became intelligible.
Mr. Minshull now asked the pauper printer what he was doing in the burial-ground at that time of night; adding, "I am afraid, my friend, you were there with the intention of stealing dead bodies."
"Not a bit of 'em, your worship—not a bit of 'em," replied the printer—"Lord bless you, Sir!—it was beer, and not bodies, that I was looking for!" He then told his story; from which it appeared that the master of the workhouse had treated him and the other paupers with a modicum of beer on the preceding evening in honour of the season, for it was Christmas-eve; and this small taste stimulating their stomachs for more, little hunchback undertook to forage for some, after the master should be gone to bed. Accordingly, when the master was fast asleep, little hunchback crept down stairs with a subscription of tenpence in one hand, and "the workhouse can" in the other; and with the assistance of the lamplighter's ladder he got out of the yard into the burial-ground. He then pulled the ladder after him, and reared it against a house in which he saw a light; and, tapping gently at the window, it was opened by a gentleman in a white nightcap, to whom little hunchback said, "Beg pardon, Sir! but would you be kind enough to get us half-a-gallon of mild beer, in this 'ere can?" "The gentleman said he would, and welcome," continued he; "and God knows, I was sitting on the top of the ladder, waiting for it, and thinking of nothing in the world but the beer, when the watchmen came and took me."
The magistrate sent for the master of the workhouse, and the several persons implicated, and they confirming the poor printer's story, he was discharged; but Mr. Minshull admonished the master not to let the lamplighter's ladder be used in the same way again, even though he should be obliged to carry it into his own bed-chamber.
MOLLY LOWE.
The following very touching instance of the irresistible force of love was brought under the notice of the magistrate some time in the winter of the years 1823 and 1824.
There lives in the Strand—or there did live at the time above-mentioned—a very respectable young tradesman, whose name has nothing at all to do with this affair;—let it suffice, that he occupied a large and lofty house; and being a bachelor, he employed a housekeeper, whose name was Molly Lowe; and this Molly Lowe is the heroine of our story.
Molly Lowe, then, is a woman of staid and serious demeanour; plain in her person, neat in her dress, past forty, and a spinster. For these reasons, all and sundry, her young master placed implicit confidence in her, and gave up the entire management of his household affairs to her direction. In his opinion Molly Lowe was an immaculate matron, and full proof against every thing—except superfine souchong, with the least drop of brandy in the world in it. But this opinion of his was a very fallacious one,—neither man nor woman, be their age and uprightness what it may, can ever be proof against love. And so it turned out in this instance—
"For Love, the disturber of high and of low,
Who shoots at the peasant as well as the beau,"