“I wish the Lord would send in a dacent customer, any how, that could pay his way,” said a second charlie: “if iver I was drier in my life!”
“Feaks!” observed the third, “and it’s myself that has got a cobweb in my throat. But, whisht! boys—look out there! Who knows our luck yet?”
Up jumped one of the smokers, and craning his head over the hatch, communicated the gratifying intelligence that the patrol were coming up with divers delinquents in close custody. The charlies pocketed their pipes, Mr. Bradley mounted his spectacles, while the shuffling of feet, and an uproar of many voices talking and arguing at their highest pitch, joined to the maudlin singing of a noisy drunkard, announced the immediate approach of a detachment of a body whom poor Burns dreaded and denounced—
“That black banditti—the city guard.”
“Here they come,” said the charlie at the hatch: “one man in red, either dead or dead drunk—three shy-looking scamps behind him—and a regular swell in front. Blessed Bridget! is it him? Be the hole in my coat, that’s yourself, Artur French, if ye’r ovir ground. May the davil welcome you, astore!
“Then if it is,” said the irritated commandant, “Artur French, you’ll have a new acquaintance in the morning, before ten o’clock.”
There was no mistake in the identity. A young man dressed in the extreme of fashion pushed through the watchmen with an air of authority, and hopping on the bench where Mr. Bradley had hitherto reposed his person in solitary dignity, seated himself, unbidden, beside this dreaded functionary, and—
“for no inviting did he wait,”
but seized the sacred pewter, and drained the contents to the very bottom.
“How thirsty,” said he, “a shindy makes one! Not bad stuff that, Peter. But, governor, what’s the matter?”—and Mr. French looked steadily in Mr. Bradley’s face, which had assumed what was intended to pass for an expression of dignified displeasure. “If you’re not as sour as a Seville orange to-night! Come, come, old chap, tip us your daddle—give us a grip of your bunch of fives!”