“Well, I don’t apprehend names,” said I, “only bodies. Then I’m not sure if you are not a spirit, for Janet shewed me your coffin on its way to the Canongate.”
“Perhaps it was Andrew Ireland’s coffin you saw,” said he. “It wasn’t mine, anyhow.”
“Oh, I see,” said I, “it would be Andrew Stewart’s, and I have committed a mistake. No matter; I want to know what you have in your right coat-pocket.”
And at the same instant I held up my hand. My assistant was presently at my side. I saw by the fire of his eye—something like a chimney on fire—that he was bent on resistance, and instantly taking him by the neckcloth with my right hand, I was proceeding to plunge my left into his pocket, when he seized me with his wonted ferocity, and for his pains got himself laid on his back.
“Now, Andrew,” said I, as he lay grinning at me so like another black gentleman when angry, “as sure as you are your mother’s darling, I will take you up and throw you again if you are not peaceable, and behave yourself like a gentleman.”
And getting my assistant to hold him, I took from his pocket three silver screws. It was all up with my ghost, who almost instantly became as gentle as these creatures, even the real white kind, generally are. He got up, and we proceeded to the Office. Nor did all the parts of this remarkable case end here, for, as we passed along St Mary’s Wynd, whom should we meet but Janet Ireland. The moment she saw us, she appeared stupified.
“He is risen again, Janet,” said I, in a kind of whisper, “they forgot to fasten the coffin with the silver screws.”
“And the more shame yours, you thaif of a thousand,” she cried, “to steal the darling boy of a poor widow. Dead! isn’t he worse than dead when in the hands of the biggest scoundrel that ever walked the airth?”
And what, in addition to this ingenuous turn which Janet gave to the story of the white coffin, Janet said or roared, I cannot tell, for we hurried away to avoid a gathering crowd.
I will never forget the look of the Superintendent when I told him that the man before him was the dead and buried Andrew Ireland, the stealer of the hens, the climber through the skylight of the jail, and the robber of the silversmiths’ shop. What puzzled him most was, how, with the conviction on my mind that the lad was dead and buried, I could have recognised him through the soot. He looked at him again and again, nor could he say that, with the minutest investigation, he could say that he recognised the well-known thief who had cost us so much trouble.