considerable fool of our reasoning. Take it as you may, and going no further than the musical box, explain to me how I should have that night gone down Blackfriars’ Wynd, and come to Henry Devlin’s door just as “The Blue-Bells of Scotland” was being played by that little bit of machinery. You may go on with your thoughts as I proceed to tell you, that recovering myself from my surprise I entered the house. I did not stop at the bar where Mrs Devlin was, but proceeded direct into the room into which I could see from the door, and there, amidst empty tankards, I found the little instrument which had so entranced me, mute and tuneless, just as if it had been conscious that it had done some duty imposed upon it, and left the issue to the Power that watches over the fortunes of that ungrateful creature, man.

Taking up the monitor, which on the instant became dead to me,

“How came this here?” I said to the landlady, who seemed to be watching my movements.

“Indeed, I can hardly tell, Mr M‘Levy,” replied she, “unless it was left by the twa callants wha were in drinking, and gaed out just before you cam in. Did you no meet them?”

“No.”

“Then they maun hae gaen towards the Cowgate as you cam by the High Street.”

I paused an instant as an inconsistency occurred to me.

“But they couldn’t have forgotten a thing that was making sounds at the very moment they left?”

“Aye, but they did though,” replied the woman. “The thing had been kept playin’ a’ the time they were drinking, and was playin’ when they paid their score, and the sound being drowned in the clatter o’ the payment, they had just forgotten it even as I did. It plays twa or three tunes,” she added, “and among the lave ‘The Blue-Bells of Scotland,’ a tune I aye liked, for ye ken I’m Scotch.”

“And I like it too,” replied I, “though I’m Irish; but do you know the lads?”

“Weel—I do, and I dinna. Ane o’ them has been here afore, and if you were to mention his name, I think I could tell you if it was the right ane.”

“Shields,” said I.

“The very name,” said she, “and if I kenned whaur he lived I would send the box to him.”

“I will save you that trouble, Mrs Devlin,” said I, as I put it in my pocket.

“I never took you for a thief, Mr M‘Levy,” said she, in a half humorous way. “I aye took ye for a thief catcher.”

“And it’s just to catch the thief I take the box,” said I. “You can speak to the men if I bring them here?”

“Brawly.”

And so I left the tavern. I had got my trace, and knew where to go for my men, and I had, moreover, a well-grounded suspicion not only as regarded him whose name I had mentioned, but also his companion. I sent immediately for two constables, and having procured these, and been joined by my assistant, I proceeded to Brodie’s Close in the Cowgate. Arriving at the foot of a stair, I planted there my constables, and mounted till I came to a door familiar to me on prior occasions. I gave my quiet knock,—a signal so regular, that, as I have sometimes heard, it was known as “M‘Levy’s warning.” Whether known as such now, or not, I cannot say, but it was quickly enough responded to by no less a personage than the famous Lucky Shields herself. The moment she saw me she recoiled, but only for an instant, and then tried to detain me—the ordinary sign that I should be in. Without saying a word I pushed her back, and making my way forward, got at once into the middle of one of those scenes of which the quiet normal people of the world have no more idea than they have of what is going on in the molten regions of the middle of the earth, on the surface of which they are plucking roses. A large room, where the grandees of a former time drank their claret to the tune of “Lewie Gordon;” all about the sides a number of beds—one or two rattled up of pine stumps—another with black carved legs, which had supported fair dames long since passed away, alongside another with no more pretensions to decayed grandeur than could be put forth by a sack of chaff and a horsecloth. Close to that a ragged arm-chair, with a bundle of hay rolled up in an old napkin, to serve when there was an additional lodger. A number of chairs, marrowless, broken, and rickety; a white table in the midst of all, covered with glasses and tankards, all replete with the ring of drinking echoes, and shining in the haze of tobacco smoke, illuminated by bright gas.

My ears were more bewildered than my eyes; for the room, with its strange furniture, was familiar enough to me; but I had some difficulty for a minute or two in distinguishing the living articles. Round the fir table sat my hero of the box, Patrick Shields; alongside of him, Henry Preger,—so true an associate of Shields, as to render it impossible for me to doubt his participation in the affair at Coates Crescent; and along with these Daniel O’Hara, a gentleman with a peculiar turn of thought, which induced him to believe that a watch in another man’s pocket was out of its proper place. The two first were still fuming with the effects of Mrs Devlin’s whisky, and O’Hara seemed to be great, as master of the new-brewed potation, whisky-punch, which he had been handing round to the young women. I don’t want to paint vividly, in my slap-dash way, where picturesqueness is only to be effected at the expense of the decencies of life, and you don’t want pictures of vice. Then, what boots it to describe such women. Their variety is only a combination of traces which are as uniform as the features of sensuality. Yes, these young women, who were quite familiar to me—Agnes Marshall, Jessie Ronald, Elizabeth Livingstone, Hannah Martin, Julia Shields—were simply representatives of thousands bearing the same marks,—one, a demure but cunning catcher of hearts and purses; another, a fair and comely living temple, with a Dagon of vice stuck up in it; another, never sober except when in a police cell, and never silent except when asleep, and scarcely then, for I have heard the cry of her wild spirit as it floated in drunken dreams; and another, the best resetter in the city, from whom a century of years in prison would not have extorted a Brummagem ring of the value of a glass of whisky. If I force so much of a picture upon you, it is because, as a part of society, you deserve to know what your laws and usages produce.