When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

"Don't you see, old Mo? He shammed savage to get the irons on his legs, knowing how he might come by a file—which I don't, and it hasn't come out, that I see. Then he spends the inside o' the night getting through 'em, and rigs himself up like a picter, just so as if they was on. So the officer was took in, with him going on like a lamb. Then up he jumps and smashes his man's skull—makes no compliments about it, you see. Then he closes to the door and locks it to enjoy a little leisure. And then he changes their sootes of cloze across, and out he walks for change of air. And he's got it!"

Uncle Mo reflected and said:—"P'r'aps!" Then Aunt M'riar, who had hunted up the glasses without waking the children, reappeared, bringing them; and Uncle Mo found they wouldn't do, and only prevented his seeing anything at all. So he was bound to have a new pair and pay by the week. A cheap pair, that would see him out, come to threepence a week for three months.

The discovery of this painful fact threw the escaped prisoner into the shade, and the Morning Star would have been lost sight of—because it was only Monday's paper, after all!—unless Aunt M'riar she'd put it by for upstairs to have their turn of it, and Mrs. Burr could always read some aloud to Mrs. Prichard, failing studious energy on the part of the old lady. She reproduced it in compliance with the current of events.

For Uncle Moses, settling down to a fresh pipe after supper, said to his friend, similarly occupied:—"What, now, was the name of that charackter—him as got out at the Jug?"

"Something like Mackerel," said Mr. Alibone.

"Wrong you are, for once, Jerry! 'Twarn't no more Mackerel than it was Camberwell."

Said Mr. Jerry:—"Take an even tizzy on it, Mo?" He twisted the paper about to recover the paragraph, and found it. "Here we are! 'Ralph Daverill, alias Thornton, alias Wix, alias!'....

"Never mind his ale-houses, Jerry. That's the name I'm consarned with—Daverill.... What's the matter with M'riar?"

Uncle Mo had not finished his sentence owing to an interruption. For Aunt M'riar, replacing some table-gear she was shifting, had sat down suddenly on the nearest chair.

"Never you mind me, you two. Just you go on talking." So said Aunt M'riar. Only she looked that scared it might have been a ghost. So Mrs. Burr said after, who came in that very minute from a prolonged trying on.