“Ah! People never will be careful in the use of fire-arms. You will do very well now; a little dry lint is all you require, but wash your face frequently with diluted milk.”
“Thank you,” said Gray, receiving fifteen shillings out of his guinea; “should I feel any uneasiness, I will call again.”
“That fellow has been robbing somebody, I’ll be sworn, and been shot at for his pains,” remarked the surgeon when Gray had gone. “Well—well, it’s all one to me, from a peer to a pickpocket.”
Gray felt very much relieved by the manipulation of the surgeon, and he retraced his steps towards a small public-house he had before noticed, and which from its plainness and obscurity, he thought would furnish him a tolerably secure retreat till he could venture out again.
He was dreadfully weary, and the stars were beginning to disappear, while a faint sickly light was slowly spreading itself over the eastern horizon.
A very few minutes’ walk brought him to the door of the house, and he dived down a steep step to enter it. A dim light only was in the bar, although it was one of those houses that keep open the whole of the night, under pretence of accommodating travellers, but really to accommodate thieves, watchmen and police-officers.
“Can I,” said Gray, to a man who was yawning in the bar,—“can I have a bed here, and some refreshment?”
The words were scarcely out of his lips, when he heard a noise behind him; and turning hastily around, his eyes were blasted by the sight of his tormentor, the amateur officer and Shoemaker, who, with a glass of some steaming beverage in one hand, and a pipe in the other, stood glaring at Jacob Gray as if he was some awful apparition.
“Bless me,” he at length found voice to say, “is it you?”
“I have no knowledge of you, sir,” said Gray, while a cold perspiration bedewed his limbs, and he glanced uneasily at the door, between which and him stood the troublesome man.