Coglin was conquered at last, and he and Burfoot left the spot arm-in-arm and fast friends for life. Some of these facts came out long after, when I had the tailor in my hands on another charge, and some were given me by Coglin himself. He is in business still, and prospering in a town on the opposite side of the Forth, and Burfoot often goes through to spend a few days there with his firm friend, golfing on a nice links near the place. As he knows all about the baker’s misconceptions and plans for his punishment, and the names are all changed here, I have decided that the giving of the details can do no harm now, and may at the same time teach those seeking revenge that it is possible for punishment intended for another to drop very neatly on to their own shoulders.
ONE LESS TO EAT.
The number of mysterious disappearances in great cities can be calculated upon with almost the same certainty as the death rate. A very few of these are accounted for; a body is found and identified, or a man vanished is found to have been in difficulties, and it is shrewdly or rashly surmised that he has fled to escape the consequences; but the majority of the cases pass into the great unknown, so far as either police or public are concerned.
No. 7 Hill Place, at the South Side, leads to a back court of wretched dwellings occupied by the very poor. At the west side of that court is a block or “land” of houses which are now rather worse than they were at the time of which I write, for a theatre has been built up against the back windows, almost shutting out the light of day from one side of the building. At that time the top windows looked into an auctioneer’s yard, and, having a better share of light than the lower flats, were considered rather respectable abodes for working men. In one of these lived George Mossman, a journeyman baker. The house consisted of two rooms, and had been at one time very nicely furnished; but on the Saturday night of which I write the two places were almost empty, for Mossman had been off work for many months with a poisoned hand, which refused to heal, and so kept him and his wife and family “living on the furniture.” At first Mossman, who was of a cheery, blithe disposition, had made a joke of his disabled hand, and laughingly declared that he had “an income in his hand, but nane in his pouch;” but as month after month went past, and the hand showed no signs of healing, joking was hushed on his lips. Hunger, starvation, and perhaps death stared them in the face; for Mossman shared the common horror of pauperism, and would have dropped dead before he could have applied at the Poorhouse for a dole.
The terrible pinchings which had been endured by that family were scarcely known outside their own door, for it was believed that Mossman was getting an allowance off some sick fund or trade society. There were two boys and three girls, the youngest of these being an infant at the breast, and the eldest only ten; but these children were so drilled and trained by their parents in their own spirit of independence, that not a whisper of the truth reached the neighbours.
“When things are at their worst they begin to mend.” These were the words of the poor, disabled baker to his wife on this Saturday night, but as they did not satisfy hungry bairns, a council was held to accelerate the mending. The house was empty, and the whole family almost naked, so of late they had been seldom outside the house. The general messenger was Johnny, the eldest boy, and he it was who appeared to feel the position most keenly. Johnny was ashamed of his rags, and had a firm opinion that he was a strong, able-bodied man, instead of being the skinny little shadow he was, and that his proper sphere was the sea, to which he had more than once threatened to run away, not returning till he was a captain all covered with gold lace, and with a fair share of the same metal in his pockets for his parents.
“If I was away,” he remarked on the present occasion, “there would always be one less to eat.”
“We might all say that,” said his father, who had grown somewhat sharp and fierce with famine and fretting. “I have thought about it myself often of late. A poor man in trouble and without a friend in the world would be far better out of it.”
This sentiment was received with a strong and general protest, the mother especially having got frightened of late at some of the desperate looks and words of the disabled baker.
“You’re not without friends, if you like to apply to them,” she remarked, after a pause, to let him cool down a little. “There’s Borland, for instance, your old companion.”