Once more “done” by my agile friend, my pride was up, and I must have him by hook or by crook. I knew he was one of those enchanted beings whose love to the old town prevents them from leaving it. It has such a charm for them that they will stick to it at all hazards, even when, day by day, and night by night, they are hounded through closes and alleys like wild beasts, and have, as it were, nowhere to lay their heads. I have known them sleep on the tops of houses, and in crannies of old buildings, half-starved and half-clothed, in all weathers, summer or winter, rather than seek rest by leaving the scenes of their wild infancy. And all this they will do in the almost dead certainty that ultimately they will be seized. I was thus satisfied that Andrew was about the town; and even when, after the lapse of months, I could get no trace of him, I still retained my conviction that he was in hiding.
That conviction was destined to receive a grotesque and grim verification. I was one day at the top of Leith Wynd. A number of people were looking at the slow march of some poor wretch’s funeral, the coffin borne by some ragged Irishmen, a few others going behind. As I stood looking at the solemn affair—more solemn and impressive to right minds than the plumed pageant that leaves the mansion with the inverted shield, and goes to the vault where are conserved, with the care of sacred relics, the remains of proud ancestors—a poor woman, who seemed to have been among the mourners, came up to me.
“And do you see your work, now?” quoth she, in a true Irish accent. “Do you know who is in that white coffin there, wid the bit black cloth over it?”
“No,” said I.
“And you don’t know the darling you murthered for stealing a hen at Paul’s Work?”
“You don’t mean to say,” replied I, “that that’s the funeral of your son, Mrs Ireland?”
“Ay, and, by my soul, I do, and murthered by you. He never lifted up his head agin, but pined and dwined like a heart-broken cratur as he was; and now he’s there going as fast as the boys can carry him to his grave.”
“Well,” said I, “I am sorry for it.”
“The devil a bit of you, you vagabond! It’s all sham and blarney, and a burning shame to you, to boot.”
“Peace, Janet,” said I; “he’s perhaps happier now than he was here stealing and drinking. There are no sky-lights in the Canongate graves, and he’ll not climb out to do any more evil.”