he took another pull at the beer and looked more savage than ever.

"'Well,' I says, 'that ain't the sort of thing to be humpy about.'

"'Yes it is,' he snaps back; 'it means that if I don't take precious good care I'll drift into being a blooming milkman, spending my life yelling "Milk ahoi!" and spooning smutty-faced servant-gals across area railings.'

"'Oh!' I says, 'and what may you prefer to spoon—duchesses?'

"'Yes,' he answers sulky-like; 'duchesses are right enough—some of 'em.'

"'So are servant-gals,' I says, 'some of 'em. Your hat's feeling a bit small for you this morning, ain't it?'

"'Hat's all right,' says he; 'it's the world as I'm complaining of—beastly place; there's nothing to do in it.'

"'Oh!' I says; 'some of us find there's a bit too much.' I'd been up since five that morning myself; and his own work, which was scouring milk-cans for twelve hours a day, didn't strike me as suggesting a life of leisured ease.

"'I don't mean that,' he says. 'I mean things worth doing.'

"'Well, what do you want to do,' I says, 'that this world ain't big enough for?'

"'It ain't the size of it,' he says; 'it's the dulness of it. Things used to be different in the old days.'

"'How do you know?' I says.

"'You can read about it,' he answers.

"'Oh,' I says, 'and what do they know about it—these gents that sit down and write about it for their living! You show me a book cracking up the old times, writ by a chap as lived in 'em, and I'll believe you. Till then I'll stick to my opinion that the old days were much the same as these days, and maybe a trifle worse.'

"'From a Sunday School point of view, perhaps yes,' says he; 'but there's no gainsaying—'

"'No what?' I says.

"'No gainsaying,' repeats he; 'it's a common word in literatoor.'

"'Maybe,' says I, 'but this happens to be "The Blue Posts Coffee House," established in the year 1863. We will use modern English here, if you don't mind.' One had to take him down like that at times. He was the sort of boy as would talk poetry to you if you weren't firm with him.

"'Well then, there's no denying the fact,' says he, 'if you prefer it that way, that in the old days there was more opportunity for adventure.'

"'What about Australia?' says I.

"'Australia!' retorts he; 'what would I do there? Be a shepherd, like you see in the picture, wear ribbons, and play the flute?'

"'There's not much of that sort of shepherding over there,' says I, 'unless I've been deceived; but if Australia ain't sufficiently uncivilised for you, what about Africa?'

"'What's the good of Africa?' replies he; 'you don't read advertisements in the "Clerkenwell News": "Young men wanted as explorers." I'd drift into a barber's shop at Cape Town more likely than anything else.'

"'What about the gold diggings?' I suggests. I like to see a youngster with the spirit of adventure in him. It shows grit as a rule.

"'Played out,' says he. 'You are employed by a company, wages ten dollars a week, and a pension for your old age. Everything's played out,' he continues. 'Men ain't wanted nowadays. There's only room for clerks, and intelligent artisans, and shopboys.'

"'Go for a soldier,' says I; 'there's excitement for you.'

"'That would have been all right,' says he, 'in the days when there was real fighting.'

"'There's a good bit of it going about nowadays,' I says. 'We are generally at it, on and off, between shouting about the blessings of peace.'

"'Not the sort of fighting I mean,' replies he; 'I want to do something myself, not be one of a row.'

"'Well,' I says, 'I give you up. You've dropped into the wrong world it seems to me. We don't seem able to cater for you here.'

"'I've come a bit too late,' he answers; 'that's the mistake I've made. Two hundred years ago there were lots of things a fellow might have done.'

"'Yes, I know what's in your mind,' I says: 'pirates.'

"'Yes, pirates would be all right,' says he; 'they got plenty of sea-air and exercise, and didn't need to join a blooming funeral club.'

"'You've got ideas above your station,' I says. 'You work hard, and one day you'll have a milk-shop of your own, and be walking out with a pretty housemaid on your arm, feeling as if you were the Prince of Wales himself.'

"'Stow it!' he says; 'it makes me shiver for fear it might come true. I'm not cut out for a respectable cove, and I won't be one neither, if I can help it!'

"'What do you mean to be, then?' I says; 'we've all got to be something, until we're stiff 'uns.'

"'Well,' he says, quite cool-like, 'I think I shall be a burglar.'

"I dropped into the seat opposite and stared at him. If any other lad had said it I should have known it was only foolishness, but he was just the sort to mean it.

"'It's the only calling I can think of,' says he, 'that has got any element of excitement left in it.'

"'You call seven years at Portland "excitement," do you?' says I, thinking of the argument most likely to tell upon him.

"'What's the difference,' answers he, 'between Portland and the ordinary labouring man's life, except that at Portland you never need fear being out of work?' He was a rare one to argue. 'Besides,' says he, 'it's only the fools as gets copped. Look at that diamond robbery in Bond Street, two years ago. Fifty thousand pounds' worth of jewels stolen, and never a clue to this day! Look at the Dublin Bank robbery,' says he, his eyes all alight, and his face flushed like a girl's. 'Three thousand pounds in golden sovereigns walked away with in broad daylight, and never so much as the flick of a coat-tail seen. Those are the sort of men I'm thinking of, not the bricklayer out of work, who smashes a window and gets ten years for breaking open a cheesemonger's till with nine and fourpence ha'penny in it.'

"'Yes,' says I, 'and are you forgetting the chap who was nabbed at Birmingham only last week? He wasn't exactly an amatoor. How long do think he'll get?'

"'A man like that deserves what he gets,' answers he; 'couldn't hit a police-man at six yards.'

"'You bloodthirsty young scoundrel,' I says; 'do you mean you wouldn't stick at murder?'

"'It's all in the game,' says he, not in the least put out. 'I take my risks, he takes his. It's no more murder than soldiering is.'

"'It's taking a human creature's life,' I says.

"'Well,' he says, 'what of it? There's plenty more where he comes from.'

"I tried reasoning with him from time to time, but he wasn't a sort of boy to be moved from a purpose. His mother was the only argument that had any weight with him. I believe so long as she had lived he would have kept straight; that was the only soft spot in him. But unfortunately she died a couple of years later, and then I lost sight of Joe altogether. I made enquiries, but no one could tell me anything. He had just disappeared, that's all.

"One afternoon, four years later, I was sitting in the coffee-room of a City restaurant where I was working, reading the account of a clever robbery committed the day before. The thief, described as a well-dressed young man of gentlemanly appearance, wearing a short black beard and moustache, had walked into a branch of the London and Westminster Bank during the dinner-hour, when only the manager and one clerk were there. He had gone straight through to the manager's room at the back of the bank, taken the key from the inside of the door, and before the man could get round his desk had locked him in. The clerk, with a knife to his throat, had then been persuaded to empty all the loose cash in the bank, amounting in gold and notes to nearly five hundred pounds, into a bag which the thief had thoughtfully brought with him. After which, both of them—for the thief seems to have been of a sociable disposition—got into a cab which was waiting outside, and drove away. They drove straight to the City: the clerk, with a knife pricking the back of his neck all the time, finding it,