Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas. Lever Charles James

to comment upon my unparalleled assurance and impertinence to Captain De Courcy, he discovered that the honorable captain had left his place.

      Such was the fact! The dashing aide-de-camp was at that moment standing in earnest converse with myself beside the dock.

      “May I speak with this boy in another room, your worship?” said he, addressing the court.

      “Certainly, Captain De Courcy! Sergeant Biles, show Captain De Courcy into my robing-room.”

      The honorable captain did not regain his composure immediately on finding himself alone with me; on the contrary, his agitation was such that he made two or three efforts before he could utter the few words with which he first addressed me.

      “What did you mean by saying that Mr. Mansergh would defend you? and what was the fee you alluded to?” were the words.

      “Just what I said, sir,” said I, with the steady assurance a confidence of victory gives. “I thought it was better to have able counsel; and as I know I have the means of recompensing him, the opportunity was lucky.”

      “You don’t pretend that you could afford to engage one like him, my lad?” said he, affecting, but very poorly, an air of easy composure. “What could you give him?”

      “A note, sir; and although it never issued from the Bank, one not without value!”

      The captain became deadly pale; he made one step towards the door, and in a low voice of ill-restrained anger said, “I’ll have you searched, sirrah! If anything belonging to me is found upon you – ”

      “No fear, sir,” said I, composedly; “I have taken precautions against that; the note is safe!”

      He threw himself upon a chair, and stared at me steadily for some minutes without a word. There we were, each scanning the other, and inwardly calculating how to win the game we were playing.

      “Well,” said he, at last; “what are your terms? You see I give in.”

      “And so best,” said I; “it saves time. I ask very little from your honor, – nothing more, in fact, than to have this charge dismissed. I don’t mean to wear rags all my life, and consort with vagabonds, and so I dislike to have it said hereafter that I was ever arraigned or committed for an offence like this. You must tell the justice that it was some blunder or mistake of your orders to me; some accidental circumstance or other, – I don’t much care what, or how; nor will he, if the explanation comes from you! This done, I ‘ll place the note in your hand within half an hour, and we need never see much more of each other.”

      “But who is to secure me that you keep your promise?”

      “You must trust to me,” said I, carelessly; “I have no bail to give.”

      “Why not return now, with the policeman, for the note, before I speak to the justice?”

      “Then who is to go bail for you?” said I, smiling.

      “You are a cool fellow, by Jove!” cried he, at the steady impudence which I maintained in the discussion.

      “I had need be,” replied I, in a voice very different from the feigned hardihood of my assumed part. “The boy who has neither a home nor a friend in the world has little else to rely on, save the cold recklessness of what may befall him!”

      I saw a curl of contempt upon the captain’s lip at the energy of this speech; for now, when, for the first time between us, a single genuine sentiment broke from me, he deemed it “cant.”

      “Well!” cried he, “as you wish; I’ll speak to the justice, and you shall be free.”

      He left the room as he spoke, but in a few moments reentered it, saying, “All is right! You are discharged! Now for your share of the bargain.”

      “Where will your honor be in half an hour?”

      “At the Club, Foster Place.”

      “Then I ‘ll be there with the note,” said I.

      He nodded, and walked out. I watched him as he went; but he neither spoke to a policeman, nor did he turn his head round to see what became of me. There was something in this that actually awed me. It was a trait so unlike anything I had ever seen in others that I at once perceived it was “the gentleman’s” spirit, enabling him to feel confidence even in a poor ragged street wanderer as I was. The lesson was not lost on me. My life has been mainly an imitative one, and I have more than once seen the inestimable value of “trusting.”

      No sooner was I at large than I speeded to Betty’s, and was back again long before the half-hour expired. I had to wait till near five, however, before he appeared; so sure was he of my keeping my word that he never troubled himself about me. “Ha!” said he, as he saw me, “long here?”

      “Yes, sir, about an hour;” and I handed him the note as I spoke.

      He thrust it carelessly into his sabretache, and, pulling out a crown piece, chucked it towards me, saying, “Good-bye, friend; if they don’t hang you, you ‘ll make some noise in the world yet.”

      “I mean it, sir,” said I, with a familiar nod; and so, genteelly touching my cap in salute, I walked away.

      CHAPTER VIII. A QUIET CHOP AT ‘KILLEEN’S’ AND A GLANCE AT A NEW CHARACTER

      I looked very wistfully at my broad crown piece as it lay with its honest platter face in the palm of my hand, and felt, by the stirring sensations it excited within me, some inklings of his feelings who possesses hundreds of thousands of them. Then there arose in my mind the grave question how it was to be spent; and such a strange connection is there between what economists call supply and demand, that, in place of being, as I esteemed myself a few minutes back, “passing rich,” I at once perceived that I was exceeding poor, since to effect any important change in my condition, five shillings was a most inadequate sum. It would not buy me more than a pair of shoes; and what use in repairing the foundation of the edifice, when the roof was in ruin? – not to speak of my other garments, to get into which, each morning, by the same apertures as before, was a feat that might have puzzled a harlequin.

      I next bethought me of giving an entertainment to my brethren at Betty’s; but, after all, they had shown little sympathy with me in my late misfortune, and seemed rather pleased to be rid of a dangerous professional rival. This, and a lurking desire to leave the fraternity, decided me against this plan.

      Then came the thought of entertaining myself, giving myself a species of congratulatory dinner on my escape; and, in fact, commemorating the event by anticipating the most fashionable mode now in use.

      I canvassed the notion with all the skill and fairness I could summon, starting the various objections against it, and answering them with what seemed to myself a most judicial impartiality.

      “Who does a man usually entertain,” said I, “but his intimate friends?” Those whose agreeability is pleasing to him, or whose acquaintance is valuable from their station and influence. Now, with whom had I such an unrestrained and cordial intercourse as myself? Whose society never wearied, whose companionship always interested me? My own! And who, of all the persons I had ever met with, conceived a sincere and heartfelt desire for my welfare, preferring it to all others? “Con Cregan, it is you,” said I, enthusiastically. “In you my confidence is complete. I believe you incapable of ever forgetting me. Come, then, and let us pledge our friendship over a flowing bowl.”

      Where, too, was the next doubt? With a crown to spend, I was not going to descend to some subterranean den among coalheavers, newsvenders, and umbrella-hawkers. But how was I to gain access to a better-class ordinary, – that was the difficulty, – who would admit the street-runner, in his rags, into even a brief intimacy with his silver forks and spoons? And it was precisely to an entertainment on such a scale as a good tavern could supply that I aspired. It was to test my own feelings under a new stimulant, – just as I have often since seen grave people experiment upon themselves with laughing-gas and magnetism and the fumes of ether.

      “It may be too much for you, Con,” said I, as I went along; “there’s no knowing