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My mother was of the pure grit; she learned me and all her children to steal as soon as we could walk and would hide for us whenever she could. At ten years old I was not a bad hand. The first good haul I made was from a pedler who lodged at my father's house one night. "I began to look after larger spoils and ran several fine horses.
"I am not ignorant of your country, pedler, and of the ways of its people; but it is not me that you are to satisfy. Answer to the gentlemen around, if it is not a difficult matter for you to get water to boil at all during the winter months." "Why, to say the truth, lawyer, when coal is scarce and high in the market, heat is very hard to come.
It's pesky full of trouble; dangerous, too. It's so strange! " and the pedler showed himself a little bewildered by the sudden manner in which the subject had been broached. "There's little time to be lost, Bunce: if we don't set to work at once, we needn't set to work at all. Speak out, man! will you join us, now or never, to save the young fellow?"
"Wait, Leonard, wait for me! I am coming!" Upstairs old Nannie was officiating. She was struggling with Leonard's kit, which resembled, she thought, more the rummage box of a gypsy pedler than the luggage of a gentleman. The young officer had taken off his great-coat and was standing with his back to the hearth.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" said the Pedler, and forthwith Gabbing Dick stepped out of the shadows, brooms on shoulder and bulging pack upon his back, at sight of which the leafy tumult of his approach was immediately accounted for. "So it's you, is it?" he repeated, setting down his brooms and spitting lugubriously at the nearest patch of shadow. "Yes," I answered, "but what brings you here?"
This man was a pedler in quite a small way, making but a narrow circuit, and carrying no more than an open basket full of essences; but some go out with wagon-loads. He himself contemplated a trip westward, in which case he would send on quantities of his wares ahead to different stations. He seemed to enjoy the intercourse and seeing of the world.
He withstood all the suggestions of the pedler on the subject, and the affair began to look something less than hopeless when he proceeded to the waking up of his son, who, overcome by the liquor, was busily employed in a profound sleep, with his head upon the table.
And the pedler went off flushed with beer and self-complacency; for he thought he had drawn the line precisely; had faithfully discharged his promise to his lady and benefactress, but not so as to make mischief in another household. Such was the power of Ale in the last century. Mercy undid the paper and found the bullet, on which was engraved
The lawyer was delighted too, but his satisfaction was of a far different origin. He had now some prospect of getting back his favorite steed that fine animal, described by him elsewhere to the pedler, as docile as the dog, and fleet as the deer.
It was not until the fugitives were fairly on the road, that the former, who had been pretty well stunned by the severe blow given him by Munro, recovered from his stupor; and he then laboured under the difficulty of freeing himself from the bag about his head and shoulders, and his incarceration in the dwelling of the pedler.
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