"By the way," Mr. Brown said, "you was saying something about your not being green, and that you had tried your hand at one or two things. Now, if you have no objections, we should like to know how you've been employed, so that we can judge of your mettle."
The young fellow paused; and I could see that shame was not entirely banished from his heart, for he colored, and then endeavored to crush his feelings with a drink of poisonous spirit.
"What need I care," he exclaimed, at length, a "short life and a merry one for me. A fellow may as well be dead as destitute of money, and when it can't be got by hard work, I'm in favor of taking it wherever I can get it."
"Them's the sentiments," cried the inspector, and then muttered in an undertone, "that have hanged better men than you."
"You see, gentlemen," Jackson continued, the liquor opening his heart, and making him loquacious, "that I began life in Liverpool, in the old country. I was apprenticed to a grocer, but I looked upon weighing coffee and tea as not the kind of employment for a man; so one day I stepped out of the store on board of a ship that was just ready to sail for Melbourne, and started to seek my fortune in this part of the world."
"Didn't you have any capital to begin with?" interrogated the inspector, with a wink of encouragement.
"Well, yes," hesitated the young fellow; "I forgot to say that I had five hundred sovereigns in my pocket at the time I left; and they were intrusted to me by my master to put into the Bank of Liverpool."
"Ah, that was something like," cried the inspector, rubbing his hands. "How old Slocum must have been astonished when he found that you was gone."
"You knew my master, then," cried Jackson, starting up with alarm depicted upon his countenance.
"Of course I didn't know him; but I can read, can't I? Didn't an advertisement appear in one of the papers at Melbourne, offering a reward for the arrest of one Charley Wright. But don't fear us; go on with your yarn. You've made a good beginning."