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Updated: June 22, 2025
"Henry, score James Maxley's name off the books," said Skinner with cool dignity. But when he had said this, he was at his wits' end: there were not nine hundred pounds of hard cash in the bank, nor anything like it. SKINNER called "young" because he had once had a father on the premises was the mole-catcher.
Perhaps, too, I felt somewhat reassured by the presence of his companion, who was a frequenter of Roche-Mauprat, and would be likely to show me respect and afford me assistance. Marcasse, the mole-catcher, as he was called, professed to rid the dwellings and fields of the district of polecats, weasels, rats and other vermin.
The mole-catcher had never cared to risk his life on this beam; not that he was afraid of its narrowness or its height; he was accustomed to these perilous "crossings," as he called them; but the beam had been partly consumed by the fire and was so thin in the middle that it was impossible to say whether it would bear the weight of a man, even were he as slender and diaphanous as the worthy sergeant.
When they were alone together, they inquired into the cause of the conflagration, and, in place of recognising, like the rest of the world, that the moist straw had taken fire of its own accord, they suspected that it was a case of revenge. It proceeded, no doubt, from Maître Gouy, or perhaps from the mole-catcher.
In a transport of delight I threw myself into my sergeant's arms. "A mere trifle," he said; "enjoyed it. I found that my foot was still sure and my head cool. Ha! ha! old sergeant," he added, looking at his leg, "old hidalgo, old mole-catcher, after this they won't make so many jokes about your calves!"
Others, again, of that parental relation have, upon the reception of the like injury, been of a more magnanimous and heroic spirit, who, in imitation and at the example of the children of Jacob revenging upon the Sichemites the rapt of their sister Dinah, having found the rascally ruffian in the association of his mystical mole-catcher closely and in hugger-mugger conferring, parleying, and coming with their daughters, for the suborning, corrupting, depraving, perverting, and enticing these innocent unexperienced maids unto filthy lewdnesses, have, without any further advisement on the matter, cut them instantly into pieces, and thereupon forthwith thrown out upon the fields their so dismembered bodies, to serve for food unto the wolves and ravens.
I rely on my reader having read these really able sketches of my contemporaries, and spare him minute details, that possess scarcely a new feature, except one: in that bank was not only a mole, but a mole-catcher; and, contrary to custom, the mole was the master, the mole-catcher the servant. The latter had no hostile views; far from it: he was rather attached to his master.
As he turned into the school wynd, the town drum began to beat, windows were thrown open, and sullen men ran out of closes where women were screaming and trying to hold them back. At the foot of the wynd Gavin passed Sanders Webster. "Mr. Dishart," the mole-catcher cried, "hae you seen that Egyptian? May I be struck dead if it's no' her little leddyship."
"Silence, Master Patience!" said the mole-catcher solemnly; "these are not the words of a philosopher." "You are quite right, quite right," replied the sorcerer; "and in truth, I don't know why I allow myself to argue with this lad. He might have had me made into pap by his uncles.
He had come back after an absence of fifteen years, with a good deal of money in his pocket, and he had a fond desire that he, the son of the mole-catcher, should get some recognition of his prosperity from the most important man in the locality. If Gourlay had said, with solemn and fat-lipped approval, "Man, I'm glad to see that you have done so well," he would have swelled with gratified pride.
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