“Why, don’t you see, sir—the servants—the servants; they’re at the bottom of this. They’ve taken the chance while we were there to steal the things, knowing the blame would fall on me. You’ve no idea,” he continued, waxing pathetic, “what sweeps have to put up with. There’s scarcely a house we go into that we’re not watched like glaziers on tramp. You can see it in their eyes. It’s hard to be looked at like a thief when you’re doing your best to earn an honest living.”
“Are you quite sure now that the boy you had with you mightn’t help himself if he got a dacent chance?” suggested McSweeny, by way of appearing to sympathise with the sweep.
“Him? Why, he’s my own son!” exclaimed the sweep, as if that quite settled the matter. “But he’s just out in the square there playing at the bools. I’ll send for him, and you can question him yourself.”
This was done, and the sooty apprentice appeared, and denied all knowledge of the missing articles.
McSweeny, on the invitation of the father, somewhat gingerly searched the sooty clothes of the boy, but found nothing. He then performed the same office upon the father, with a like result. The wife also turned out her pockets for inspection, and then McSweeny settled himself to the not very agreeable task of searching the house. The furniture was poor and scanty, and the floor an earthen one, so there was no great difficulty in the task. But there was soot everywhere. It was on the floor, on the shelves, in the very beds, and so pervaded the whole atmosphere of the house that McSweeny had soon drawn such a quantity into his nostrils that he would willingly have paid half-a-crown down for the pleasure of sneezing his own head off. He went gaping, and blinking, and sputtering over the place till he had searched every part but the soot cellar. Before that he paused ruefully. I firmly believe he would have shirked searching that altogether, and that the resolve was showing itself in his face, when the cunning sweep affected to make a suspicious movement or two with his hands near the partition, as if in the act of dropping something into the soot.
“What’s that you’re after now?” cried McSweeny, starting round sharply and dragging forth the sweep’s hand.
“Nothing—oh, nothing, sir,” was the glib reply; “I was only feeling how high the soot is.”
McSweeny suspiciously lifted a candle, held it over the partition and peered down into the soot-bin at the spot, but could see nothing to indicate that any article had been dropped. This partition was about two feet and a half high and immediately behind it the soot was fully a foot deep, sloping up thence to the back wall to a height of about three feet. Against that wall several sacks of soot were piled, and resting on one of these sacks was the end of a spar of wood which reached across the soot to the wooden partition, upon which the other end rested. This plank was evidently used as a standing-place from which they could conveniently empty their soot-bag after a morning’s work. McSweeny thought it possible that there might be a hide of some kind behind these soot bags, and, candle in hand, clambered up on the partition and thence on to the spar bridging the soot. As he stepped across the frail bridge he had to turn his back for a moment to the innocent-looking sweep, and knew no more until he had dived down nose foremost into the sea of soot.
He always declared that the sweep had shoved the end of the plank from the partition; but when he scrambled to his feet among the soot, sputtering, gasping, and sneezing enough to rend himself, there was Sandy standing gravely by him with a look of earnest and sorrowing condolence on his grimy face. The wife went into fits of laughter over McSweeny’s appearance as he stood in the soot, with his face and beard thickly coated with the soft black, and only his well-rubbed eyelids beginning to show white through the sable covering, but she was solemnly rebuked and sworn at by her demure-faced husband.
“Eh, sir, to think that the plank should have slippit just when it wasna wanted to slip,” cried Sandy, handing McSweeny a sooty rag with which to clean his face and clothes; “but it’ll dae ye nae herm, sir, nae herm. Soot’s a healthy thing, sir—healthier than clean water.”