“It’s all right, sur,” whispered McSweeny, with a significant wink; “you’ll have them here for identification in an hour.”
“But how was it done?” cried the gentleman in amazement.
“Done? What trick is there that’s too difficult or dirty for an idle vagabone of a boy?” responded McSweeny with a wise look. “I knew what a scamp he was the minit I smelt tobacco on him,” and McSweeny got out his own pipe ready for lighting when he should be outside the door.
The boy, all the way to his home, was tremulously asking what would be done to him, but his captor smoked away in dignified silence, more terrible to the prisoner than the most voluble of threats. At length the great oracle spoke, and gave the boy to understand that the nature and duration of his punishment would depend very much upon himself—if he agreed to tell how the robbery had been accomplished, and all other particulars, his punishment would probably be extremely light. This gracious concession gave great comfort to the boy, who instantly promised to keep back nothing. They had then arrived at the house in Buccleuch Street.
It was a poor hovel of a room, both damp and dark, being on the ground floor. A woman who opened the door was promptly introduced to McSweeny as the boy’s mother. The boy whispered to her for a moment, and then led McSweeny to the fireplace. A small fire burned in the grate, and on that fire was a pot of broth. The boy lifted down the pot on to the hearth, and, handing an old ladle to McSweeny, told him to “take them out.”
“What a hiding-place!” was McSweeny’s inward comment. “The young scoundrel’s as clever as if he had been wan of my bairns all his life. To think of him making broth of jewels!—begorra, he deserves a prize for fine cookery.”
As he made these comments McSweeny began to rake up the contents of the pot, but found no trace of the magic jewels.
“What do ye mane, ye young spalpeen?” he cried at last, in terrible tones, to the boy and his quaking mother. “Didn’t you say they were here, in the pot?”
“Yes—that’s them,” said the boy, stopping his whimpering to point to a heap of beef bones, with some shreds of meat still adhering to them, which McSweeny had removed one by one from the pot.
“What?” The thought was too humiliating—too horrifying; and McSweeny could find voice for only the one word.