smith, one Billings; it won't be out of the way to get our horse shod at his house, if he is alive still, and we may learn something about the little beast. I should be glad to see the mother well enough." "Do I remimber her" said the ensign. "Do I remimber whiskey? Sure I do, and the snivelling sneak her husband, and the stout old lady her mother-in-law, and the dirty one-eyed ruffian who sold me the parson's hat, that had so nearly brought me into trouble. Oh, but it was a rare rise we got out of them chaps, and the old landlady that's hanged, too!" And here both Ensign Macshane and Major Brock, or Wood, grinned, and showed much satisfaction. It will be necessary to explain the reason of it. We gave the British public to understand that the landlady of the "Three Rooks,' at Worcester, was a notorious fence, or banker of thieves; that is, a purchaser of their merchandise. In her hands Mr. Brock and his companion had left property to the amount of sixty or seventy pounds, which was secreted in a cunning recess in a chamber of the "Three Rooks," known only to the landlady and the gentlemen who banked with her; and in this place Mr. Sicklop, the one-eyed man who had joined in the Hayes adventure, his comrade, and one or two of the topping prigs of the county, were free. Mr. Sicklop had been shot dead in a night attack near Bath; the landlady had been suddenly hanged, as an accomplice in another case of robbery; and when, on their return from Virginia, our two heroes, whose hopes of livelihood depended upon it, had bent their steps toward Worcester, they were not a little frightened to hear of the cruel fate of the hostess and many of the amiable frequenters of the "Three Rooks." All the goodly company were separated; the house was no longer an inn. Was the money gone too? At least it was worth while to look-which Messrs. Brock and Macshane determined to do. The house being now a private one, Mr. Brock, with a genius that was above his station, visited its owner, with a huge portfolio under his arm, and, in the character of a painter, requested permission to take a particular sketch from a particular window. The ensign followed with the artist's materials (consisting simply of a screw-driver and a crow-bar); and it is hardly necessary to say that, when admission was granted to them, they opened the well-known door, and to their inexpressible satisfaction discovered, not their own peculiar savings exactly, for these had been appropriated instantly on hearing of their transportation, but stores of money and goods to the amount of near three hundred pounds; to which Mr. Macshane said they had as just and honorable a right as anybody else. And so they had as just a right as anybody-except the original owners; but who was to discover them? With this booty they set out on their journey—anywhere, for they knew not whither; and it so chanced that when their horse's shoe came off, they were within a few furlongs of the cottage of Mr. Billings, the blacksmith. As they came near, they were saluted by tremendous roars issuing from the smithy. A small boy was held across the bellows, two or three children of smaller and larger growth were holding him down, and many others of the village were gazing in at the window, while a man, half-naked, was lashing the little boy with a whip, and occasioning the cries heard by the travellers. As the horse drew up, the operator looked at the new-comers for a moment, and then proceeded incontinently with his work; belaboring the child more fiercely than ever. When he had done, he turned round to the new-comers and asked how he could serve them? whereupon Mr. Wood (for such was the name he adopted, and by such we shall call him to the end) wittily remarked that however he might wish to serve them, he seemed mightily inclined to serve that young gentleman first. "It's no joking matter," said the blacksmith; "if I don't serve him so now he'll be worse off in his old age. He'll come to the gallows as sure as his name is Billnever mind what his name is.' And so saying he gave the urchin another cut; which elicited, of course, another scream. “Oh! his name is Bill?" said Captain Wood. "His name's not Bill!" said the blacksmith, sulkily. "He's no name; and no heart, neither. My wife took the brat in seven years ago, from a beggarly French chap to nurse, and she kept him, for she was a good soul (here his eyes began to wink, "and she's-she's gone now (here he began fairly to blubber). "And d— him, out of love for her, I kept him too, and the scoundrel is a liar and a thief. This blessed day, merely to vex me and my boys here, he spoke ill of her, he did, and I'll-cut-his -life-out-I-will!" and with each word honest Mulciber applied a whack on the body of little Tom Billings; who, by shrill shrieks, and oaths in treble, acknowledged the receipt of the blows. "Come, come," said Mr. Wood, "set the boy down, and the bellows a-going; my horse wants shoeing, and the poor lad has had strapping enough." The blacksmith obeyed, and cast poor Master Thomas loose. As he staggered away and looked back at his tormentor, his countenance assumed an expression which made Mr. Wood say, grasping hold of Macshane's arm, It's the boy, it's the boy; when his mother gave Gaglenstein the laudanum, she had the self-same look with her!" "Had she really now?" said Mr. Macshane. And pree, meejor, who was his mother?" 66 Mrs. Cat, you fool!" answered Wood. Then, upon my secred word of honor, she has a mighty fine kitten anyhow, my dear. Aha !'' "They don't drown such kittens," said Mr. Wood, archly; and Macshane, taking the allusion, clapped his finger to his nose in token of perfect approbation of his commander's sentiment. While the blacksmith was shoeing the horse, Mr. Wood asked him many questions concerning the lad whom he had just been chastising, and succeeded, beyond a doubt, in establishing his identity with the child whom Catharine Hall had brought into the world seven years since. Billings told him of all the virtues of his wife, and the manifold crimes of the lad; how he stole, and fought, and lied, and swore; and though the youngest under his roof, exercised the most baneful influence over all the rest of his family. He was determined at last, he said, to put him to the parish, for he did not dare to keep him. "He's a fine whelp, and would fetch ten pieces in Virginny," sighed the ensign. "Crimp, of Bristol, would give five for him," said Mr. Wood, ruminating. "Why not take him?" said the ensign. 66 66 Faith, why not?" said Mr. Wood. His keep, meanwhile, will not be sixpence a day." Then turning round to the blacksmith, Mr. Billings,' said he, you will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that I know everything regarding that poor lad's history. His mother was an unfortunate lady of high family, now no more; his father a German nobleman, Count de Galgenstein by name." The very man!" said Billings; a young, fair-haired man, who came here with the child, and a dragoon sergeant." "Count de Galgenstein by name, who, on the point of death, recommended the infant to me.' "And did he pay you seven years' boarding?" said Mr. Billings, who was quite alive at the very idea. "Alas, sir, not a jot! he died, sir, six hundred pounds in my debt; didn't he, ensign?" Six hundred, upon my secred honor! I remember when he got into the house along with the poli-" Psha! what matters it?" here broke out Mr. Wood, looking fiercely at the ensign. Six hundred pounds he owes me; how was he to pay you? But he told me to take charge of this boy, if I found him; and found him I have, and will take charge of him, if you will hand him over. "Send our Tom!" cried Billings. And when that youth appeared, scowling, and yet trembling, and prepared, as it seemed, for another castigation, his father, to his surprise, asked him if he was willing to go along with those gentlemen, or whether he would be a good lad and stay with him. Mr. Tom replied immediately, "I won't be a good lad, and I'd rather go to than stay with you!" 66 "Will you leave your brothers and sisters?" said Billings, looking very dismal 'Hang my brothers and sisters-I hate 'em; and, besides, I haven't got any." "But you had a good mother, hadn't you, Tom?" Tom paused for a moment. "Mother's gone," said he, “and you flog me, and I'll go with these men." "Well, then, go thy ways," said Billings, starting up in a passion ; "go thy ways for a graceless reprobate; and if this gentleman will take you he may do so." After some further parley, the conversation ended, and the next morning Mr. Wood's party consisted of three; a little boy being mounted upon the bay horse, in addition to the ensign or himself; and the whole company went journeying toward Bristol. We have said that Mrs. Hayes had, on a sudden, taken a fit of maternal affection and was bent upon being restored to her child; and that benign destiny which watched over the life of this lucky lady instantly set about gratifying her wish, and, without cost to herself of coach-hire or saddle-horse, sent the young gentleman very quickly to her The village in which the Hayeses dwelt was but a very few miles out of the arms. road from Bristol; whither, on the benevolent mission above hinted at, our party of worthies were bound; and coming, toward the afternoon, in sight of the house of that very Justice Ballance who had been so nearly the ruin of Ensign Macshane, that officer narrated for the hundredth time, and with much glee the circumstances which had then befallen him, and the manner in which Mrs. Hayes, the elder, had come forward to his rescue. "Suppose we go and see the old girl" suggested Mr. Wood. "No harm can come to us now." And his comrade always assenting, they wound their way toward the village, and reached it as the evening came on. In the public-house where they rested, Wood made inquiries concerning the Hayes family; was informed of the death of the old couple, of the establishment of John Hayes and his wife in their place, and of the kind of life that these latter led together. When all these points had been imparted to him, he ruminated much; an expression of sublime triumph and exultation at length lighted up his features. "I think, Tim," said he at last, "that we can make more than five pieces of that boy." In coorse, you fool! and how? I'll tell you how. This Hayes is well to do in the world, and--" "And we'll nab him again-ha, ha!" roared out Macshane. "By my secred honor, meejor, there never was a gineral like you at a strathyjam." 44 Peace, you bellowing donkey, and don't wake the child. The man is well to do, his wife rules him, and they have no children. Now, either she will be very glad to have the boy back again, and pay for the finding of him, or else she has said nothing about him, and will pay us for being silent, too; or, at any rate, Hayes himself will be ashamed at finding his wife the mother of a child a year older than his marriage, and will pay for the keeping of the brat away. There's profit, my dear, in any one of the cases, or my name's not Peter Brock." When the ensign understood this wondrous argument, he would fain have fallen on his knees and worshipped his friend and guide. They began operations, almost immediately, by an attack on Mrs. Hayes. On hearing, as she did in private interview with the ex-corporal the next morning, that her son was found, she was agitated by both of the passions which Wood attributed to her. She longed to have the boy back, and would give any reasonable sum to see him; but she dreaded exposure, and would pay equally to avoid that. How could she gain the one point and escape the other? Mrs. Hayes hit upon an expedient which, I am given to understand, is not uncom mon nowadays. She suddenly discovered that she had a dear brother, who had been obliged to fly the country in consequence of having joined the Pretender, and had died in France, leaving behind him an only son. This boy her brother had, with his last breath, recommended to her protection, and had confided him to the charge of a brother officer who was now in the country, and would speedily make his appearance; and, to put the story beyond a doubt, Mr. Wood wrote the letter from her brother stating all these particulars, and Ensign Macshane received full instructions how to perform the part of the brother officer." What consideration Mr. Wood received for his services, we cannot say; only it is well known that Mr. Hayes caused to be committed to jail a young apprentice in his service, charged with having broken open a cupboard in which Mr. Hayes had forty guineas in gold and silver, and to which none but he and his wife had access. 66 Having made these arrangements, the corporal and his little party decamped to a short distance, and Mrs. Catherine was left to prepare her husband for a speedy addition to his family, in the shape of this darling nephew. John Hayes received the news with anything but pleasure. He had never heard of any brother of Catherine's; she had been bred at the workhouse, and nobody ever hinted that she had relatives; but it is easy for a lady of moderate genius to invent circumstances; and with lies, tears, threats, coaxings, oaths, and other blandishments, she compelled him to submit. Two days afterward, as Mr. Hayes was working in his shop with his lady seated beside him, the trampling of a horse was heard in his court-yard, and a gentleman, of huge stature, descended from it, and strode into the shop. His figure was wrapped in a large cloak; but Mr. Hayes could not help fancying that he had somewhere seen his face before. "This, I preshoom," said the gentleman, "is Misther Hayes, that I have come so many miles to see, and this is his amiable lady? I was the most intimate frind, madam, of your laminted brother, who died in King Lewis's service, and whose last touching letthers I dispatched to you two days ago. I have with me a further precious token of my dear friend Captain Hall-it is here. And so saying, the military gentleman, with one arm removed his cloak, and stretching forward the other into Hayes's face almost, stretched likewise forward a little boy, grinning, and sprawling in the air, and prevented only from falling to the ground by the hold which the ensign kept of the waistband of his little coat and breeches. "Isn't he a pretty boy?" said Mrs. Hayes, sidling up to her husband tenderly, and pressing one of Mr. Hayes's hands. About the lad's beauty it is needless to say what the carpenter thought; but that night, and for many, many nights after, the lad stayed at Mr. Hayes's. CHAPTER VIII. ENUMERATES THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF MASTER THOMAS BILLINGS-INTRODUCES BROCK AS DOCTOR WOOD-AND ANNOUNCES THE EXECUTION OF ENSIGN MACSHANE. 66 E are obliged, in recording this history, to follow ac- During that period Master Thomas Billings had been under the especial care of his mother; and, as may be imagined, he rather increased than dimin ished the accomplishments for which he had been remarkable while under the roof of his foster-father. And with this advantage, that while at the blacksmith's, and only three or four years of age, his virtues were necessarily appreciated only in his family circle, and among those few acquaintances of his own time of life whom a youth of three can be expected to meet in the alleys or over the gutters of a small country hamlet-in his mother's residence his circle extended with his own growth, and he began to give proofs of those powers of which in infancy there had been only encouraging indications. Thus it was nowise remarkable that a child of four years should not know his letters, and should have had a great disinclination to learn them; but when a young man of fifteen showed the same creditable ignorance, the same undeviating dislike, it was easy to see that he possessed much resolution and perseverance. When it was remarked, too, that, in case of any difference, he not only beat the usher, but by no means disdained to torment and bully the very smallest boys of the school, it was easy to see that his mind was comprehensive and careful, as well as courageous and grasping. As it was said of the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsula, that he had a thought for everybody-from Lord Hill to the smallest drummer in the army-in like manner Tom Billings bestowed his attention on high and low; but in the shape of blows; he would fight the strongest and kick the smallest, and was always at work with one or the other. At thirteen, when he was re:noved from the establishment whither he had been sent, he was the cock of the school out of doors, and the very last boy in. He used to let the little boys and new-comers pass him by, and laugh; but he always belabored them unmercifully afterward; and then it was, he said, his turn to laugh. With such a pugnacious turn, Tom Billings ought to have been made a soldier and might have died a marshal; but, by an unlucky ordinance of fate, he was made a tailor, and died a never mind what for the present; suffice it to say, that he was suddenly cut off at a very early period of his existence, by a disease which has exercised considerable ravages among the British youth. By consulting the authority above-mentioned, we find that Hayes did not confine himself to the profession of a carpenter, or remain long established in the country; but was induced, by the eager spirit of Mrs. Catherine most probably, to try his fortune in the metropolis; where he lived, flourished, and died. Oxford Road, St. Giles's, and Tottenham Court, were, at various periods of his residence in town, inhabited by him. At one place he carried on the business of greengrocer and small-coalman; in another he was carpenter, undertaker, and lender of money to the poor; finally, he was a lodging-house keeper in the Oxford or Tyburn Road; but continued to exercise the lastnamed charitable profession. Lending as he did upon pledges, and carrying on a pretty large trade, it was not for him, of course, to inquire into the pedigree of all the pieces of plate, the bales of cloth, swords, watches, wigs, shoe-buckles, etc., that were confided by his friends to his keeping; but it is clear that his friends had the requisite confidence in him, and that he enjoyed the esteem of a class of characters who still live in history, and are admired unto this very day. The mind loves to think that perhaps, in Mr. Hayes's backparlor the gallant Turpin might have hob-and-nobbed with Mrs. Catherine; that here, perhaps, the noble Sheppard might have cracked his joke, or quaffed his pint of rum. Who knows but that Macheath and Paul Clifford may have crossed legs under Hayes's dinner-table? But why pause to speculate on things that might have been? why desert reality for fond imagination, or call up from their honored graves the sacred dead? I know not; and yet, in sooth, I can never pass Cumberland Gate without a sigh, as I think of the gallant cavaliers who traversed that road in old time. Pious priests accompanied their triumphs; their chariots were surrounded by hosts of glittering javelin-men. As the slave at the car of the Roman conqueror shouted, "Remember thou art mortal!" before the eyes of the British warrior rode the undertaker and his coffin, telling him that he too must die! Mark well the spot! A hundred years ago Albion Street (where comic Power dwelt, Milesia's darling son)-Albion Street was a desert. The square of Connaught was without its penultimate, and, strictly speaking, naught. The Edgware Road was then a road, 'tis true; with tinkling wagons passing now and then, and fragrant walls of snowy hawthorn blossoms. The ploughman whistled over Nutford Place; down the green solitudes of Sovereign Street the merry milkmaid led the lowing kine. Here, then, in the midst of green fields and sweet air-before ever omnibuses were, and when Pineapple Turnpike and Terrace were alike unknown-here stood Tyburn; and on the road toward it, perhaps to enjoy the prospect, stood, in the year 1725, the habitation of Mr. John Hayes. One fine morning in the year 1725, Mrs. Hayes, who had been abroad in her best hat and riding hood; Mr. Hayes, who for a wonder had accompanied her; and Mrs. Springatt, a lodger, who for a remuneration had the honor of sharing Mrs. Hayes's friendship and table; all returned, smiling and rosy, at about half-past ten o'clock, from a walk which they had taken to Bayswater. Many thousands of people were like |