In one of the dirtiest of the dirty and disreputable dens of London, a man and a boy sat on that same dark December night engaged in earnest conversation.

 

Their seats were stools, their table was an empty flour-barrel, their apartment a cellar. A farthing candle stood awry in the neck of a pint bottle. A broken-lipped jug of gin-and-water hot, and two cracked tea-cups stood between them. The damp of the place was drawn out, rather than abated, by a small fire, which burned in a rusty grate, over which they sought to warm their hands as they conversed. The man was palpably a scoundrel. Not less so was the boy.

 

“Slogger,” said the man, in a growling voice, “we must do it this wery night.”

 

“Vell, Brassey, I’m game,” replied the Slogger, draining his cup with a defiant air.

 

“If it hadn’t bin for that old ’ooman as was care-taker all last summer,” continued the man, as he pricked a refractory tobacco-pipe, “we’d ’ave found the job more difficult; but, you see, she went and lost the key o’ the back door, and the doctor he ’ad to get another. So I goes an’ gets round the old ’ooman, an’ pumps her about the lost key, an’ at last I finds it—d’ye see?”

 

“But,” returned the Slogger, with a knowing frown, “seems to me as how you’d never get two keys into one lock—eh? The noo ’un wouldn’t let the old ’un in, would it?”

 

“Ah, that’s where it is,” replied Mr Brassey, with a leer, as he raised his cup to his large ugly mouth and chuckled. “You see, the doctor’s wife she’s summat timmersome, an’ looks arter the lockin’ up every night herself—wery partikler. Then she ’as all the keys up into her own bedroom o’ nights—so, you see, in consikence of her uncommon care, she keeps all the locks clear for you and me to work upon!”

 

The Slogger was so overcome by this instance of the result of excessive caution, that he laughed heartily for some minutes, and had to apply for relief to the hot gin-and-water.

 

“’Ow ever did you come for to find that hout?” asked the boy.

 

“Servants,” replied the man.

 

“Ha!” exclaimed the boy, with a wink, which would have been knowing if the spirits had not by that time rendered it ridiculous.

 

“Yes, you see,” continued the elder ruffian, blowing a heavy cloud of smoke like a cannon shot from his lips, “servants is wariable in character. Some is good, an’ some is bad. I mostly take up wi’ the bad ’uns. There’s one in the doctor’s ’ouse as is a prime favourite with me, an’ knows all about the locks, she does. But there’s a noo an’ unexpected difficulty sprung up in the way this wery mornin’.”

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