I have not yet noticed Jim Hutson’s knife. It was at this capture that I saw it first, when I emptied his pockets at the Central Office. It was a murderous looking weapon with two blades. The big blade was at least six inches long, but was not fitted with a spring back, or Jim would have looked upon it for the last time, as it is illegal to carry such a knife. Perhaps it would have been well for Jim if such a confiscation had taken place. The knife was of a peculiar make, probably foreign, and had a hole drilled through the buck-horn handle, as for a cord, and most likely had been stolen from some sailor. Across the buck-horn handle Jim had made two deep notches with a file, with a cross cut between, forming the letter H.

This knife, after some joking comments by me, was put away with Jim’s tobacco pipe and other treasures, to be returned to him when his term expired. But before that time came Jim had done something which quickened curiously the interest I already felt in his career. One of the warders had in some way excited the rancour of three prisoners, and they laid their heads together and recklessly resolved to “pitch into him.” By a most ingenious plot they managed to get him alone, and then ferociously attacked him with hammers. Jim, however, had taken a liking to the man, and, happening to be near, he at once, with that bull-dog bravery which had always distinguished him, took the part of the warder. He fought two of them single handed, though a good deal pounded and hurt in the struggle, and was seized with them, by mistake, and hurried off to the dark cell. As soon as matters had been explained by the rescued warder, Jim was brought forth and handsomely complimented by the governor, and from that day till the expiry of his sentence treated with marked lenience and favour. I was over in the jail shortly after this affair, and, chancing to see Jim among the workers, I took him aside for a word. “Jim,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and speaking with great earnestness, “you’re in the wrong line entirely. You are just the stuff a good soldier is made of. Get into that as soon as you are let out. It’ll be a new life—an honest one—and advancement is sure for you. It’s a sheer waste of material to have you herding here with these louts. Rise above them. These cowards are fit for nothing else, but you, you can be a man if you choose.”

While I spoke I saw his eyes—which were fixed somewhat shame-strickenly upon the ground—gradually light up. A new possibility had dawned upon him.

“I think you’re right, sir,” he said at last, very gratefully; then he added with great firmness—“I’ll enlist whenever I get out.”

He meant to do it, and would have done it, but for his mother. What fatality prompted her to veto the whole plan?—to abjure him with tears and clinging love, which were resistless, to remain at home and not trouble himself about the future while he had her to slave for him? She shuddered at the idea of her boy—her youngest, and the last of them all, going into a battle, and recklessly tearing through showers of bullets and walls of steel, as she knew he would do. But, could she have looked into the future, as I can now look back on the past, she would have seen there something more to be dreaded. So Jim continued to loaf about and live upon his wits, and when Joe Knevitt joined him, the old practices came as a natural result. I saw Jim once or twice and tried to reason with him, but his answer was always the same—

“Mother won’t let me list.”

“Then I’ll have you again soon,” I gravely remarked.

“I can’t help it,” was his cool reply, and I suppose he thought the event far off. With the confirmed thief it is always some one else who is to be taken, never himself. Jim had really not over-rated his cleverness. He had grown more cautious by experience, and might have eluded me but for his rock a-head—Joe Knevitt. I believe there was a woman in this rupture—one of those flashy shop girls who sell cigars and tobacco and flirt with everybody, and whom Joe wanted entirely to himself; but the ostensible reason was a difference about their respective shares in the plunder from a certain robbery down at Greenside which puzzled us not a little. There is a certain style in every thief’s work. In any kind of job where Jim’s old plumber experience helped him, he was perfectly at home, and had this affair shown any trace of that, I should have gone for him at once. But there was no trace of violence or tearing down of wood-work, or wrenching or unscrewing. It was a shop, and the door was found locked as usual when the owner entered it next morning and found the most valuable part of his stock gone, and about twenty pounds in silver as well, which he had thought too heavy to take home the night before. I searched the whole shop carefully, and found no trace of the thieves or clue to their identity; and candidly may now confess that I suspected the owner was the thief, that for some purpose he had robbed himself. I was mistaken, of course, for the door had been opened and locked again with skeleton keys made by Knevitt.

Meanwhile Joe and Jim were quarrelling, and Joe proceeded to settle the dispute in a fashion of his own. On the second morning after the robbery, the shop boy in sweeping out the place found a big clasp knife, which he had not noticed before, in a dark corner behind the counter. The knife was shown to his master, and finally brought up to the office to me. The moment it was placed in my hands I exclaimed—“What! did you find that in the shop? How did I miss it when I was there? It’s Jim Hutson’s knife. I’ll soon have the thieves now, and possibly the plunder too.”

Down I went to Jim’s home in College Wynd. He was not in.