TIM THE SNAMMER.
The individual who rejoiced in the name of _Tim the Snammer_, was a
tall, athletic, well-built man of about thirty-two, and tolerably
good-looking. His attire consisted of a shabby bottle-green surtout, a
dark waistcoat, and drab trousers; and he wore his hat very far down on
his head—probably because it was too large for him, his hair being
particularly short, all his superfluous curls having fallen beneath the
unsparing scissors of a gaol-barber.
"Holloa! Josh, my boy!" cried Tim, as he closed the door behind him.
"Why, you are taking it cozie there in bed."
"I have been desperate bad, Tim," was the answer; "or I shouldn't lie
quiet in such a damned empty garret as this here, you may take your
davy. But when did you get out?"
"My time was up to-day at eleven o'clock," returned Tim. "I called at
the old crib in Castle Street—Thompson's, twenty-three, and stayed with
Mutton-Face till now. She told me you'd been ill, and also where I
should find you. So I've come round to see you, old feller—and, may be,
arrange a little job that I've got in my head. But since you're unable
to get up——"
"Tim, my boy," interrupted Josh, "I've just had a deuced good supper,
and I'm sure of a breakfast and a dinner too, and may be a supper also,
to-morrow; and if I ain't well with all that in two days' time, my name
isn't Pedler. So, if you've got any thing that'll keep so long, do let
me be in it. Matilda, my dear, this is my friend Mr. Timothy Splint,
generally knowed as Tim the Snammer: and Tim, this young o'oman is my
jomen. We was regularly spliced at the padding-ken by old Barlow; and
she's staunch to the backbone. So now you're acquainted with each other;
and you needn't be afraid, Tim, of talking secrets. But how goes the
gin, Tilda?"
"There's plenty left—and I borrowed two glasses of the landlord as I
came up," answered the young woman: "so here's one for Mr. Splint."
"Call me Tim, my dear," said that individual "We have no _misters_ and
_missuses_ among us. Here's your health, Tilda, then—since that's your
name: here's to ye, Josh."
"Thank'ee. But what plan is it that you've got in your head?" asked
Pedler.
"I'll tell you in a brace of shakes," returned Splint, smacking his lips
in approval of the dram which he had just imbibed. "You may very well
suppose that I've no great reason to be pleased with the conduct of that
scoundrel Old Death."
"The damned thief!" cried Josh. "He sacked the sixteen pounds, and then
never made a move to help you when you was had up again afore the beak."
"No thanks to him that I wasn't transported," said Tim Splint, with a
fierce expression of countenance. "The prigging wasn't proved very
clearly, and so I got off with two months at the mill as a rogue and
vagabond. But, by hell! I'll have my revenge on the bilking old
scoundrel that humbugged you and Mutton-Face Sal. And what's more, I
know how to go to work, too."
"What do you mean, Tim?" demanded Josh Pedler.
"Why, I mean this—that Mutton-Face knows where Old Death is
hanging-out," responded the Snammer. "She saw him last night in the
Borough; and she dogged him into some crib. This was about eight
o'clock. Well, she was determined to see whether he lived there, or
not—and she was afraid of raising suspicion and alarming him by making
any inquiries: so she watched near the place for a matter of three
hours, and he didn't come out. So it's pretty clear he does live there.
But to make all sure, Mutton-Face has gone over there again to-night;
and she'll watch to see when he comes in, if he does at all—and then
she'll stay to see whether he comes out again. If it's all right, you
and me will just pay a visit to Old Death; and I'll be bound we shall
find something worth the trouble of going for."
"Old Death always has money about him," observed Josh; "and I should
think that there's no one wants blunt more than you and me, Tim, at this
moment."
"I haven't a blessed mag," returned Splint. "If it wasn't for
Mutton-Face Sal, I shouldn't have had a dinner to eat, when I got out of
quod this morning, till I'd prigged the money to pay for one. And after
all I've spent in Thompson's padding-kens, I couldn't get a lodging
there for love, I know. But Sal has managed to keep herself while I've
been lumbered; and now I must begin to keep her again. She's got just
enough to carry us on till either this business of Old Death or some
thing else turns up: and that's all I care about."
"Well," said Josh Pedler, "I hope I shall be able to get up in two or
three days; and then I'm your man for any thing you like. But, I say,
Tim, what a life this is of our'n, to be sure!"
"You don't mean to say you're a-tired on it—do you?" cried Splint, with
a species of anxiety and almost convulsive shudder, proving that a truth
of an unwelcome nature, and to which he never liked to be awakened, was
suddenly recalled to his contemplation.
[Illustration]
"By God! I wish I could turn honest man, Tim!" exclaimed Pedler, with
unmistakeable sincerity. "It's all very well while the excitement of
drinking or _business_ goes on; but it's when one is lumbered in bed, as
I've been for some weeks, that one feels queer and qualmish, Tim. That's
why I always hate to have the least thing the matter with me. I can't
a-bear to have time to brew and mope over things. I wish there wasn't no
such thing as _thought_, Tim."
"Blest if I didn't often say so to myself when I was cooped up in that
cursed prison, Josh!" exclaimed the Snammer. "I tell you what it is.
People say we're reglarly depraved—that's the word, Josh—and so they
invent treadmills and all them kind of things. But it's quite enow for
chaps like us to be left alone with our own thoughts—and there's no
denying it. Now my idear is jist this:—Put a man like us into gaol, if
you will and don't torture him with hard labour: but let him have time
to _think_. Then, when he comes out, say to him, '_Here's work for you,
and a chance to get an honest living_.' My opinion is that nine out of
ten would awail themselves of the offer. But suppose only one or two did
it—why, it must be a blessin' to society to reduce the number of them as
preys upon it. What do you think, Josh?"
"I can't a-bear to think about it, Tim," returned the invalid thief.
"Now, then, Tilda—what the hell are you piping your eyes for? I s'pose
you think my friend Splint is a Methodist parson? But he ain't
though—and don't mean to be. Damnation! Tilda, leave off blubbering like
that—and hand round the gin. There—that's a good girl. Blue ruin is the
mortal enemy of unpleasant thinking—and that's why we all takes to it as
nat'ral as one does to opium when he's accustomed to it."
"I've often thought, Josh," said Tim Splint, after draining the glass
which Matilda handed him, "that I should like to go over to America, and
bury myself in the backwoods that you hear talked of or read about. I
wish I had a chance! And, raly, if we do get a good haul from Old Death,
I think I shall try the game. For, arter all—and you and me may say it
between ourselves in this here room, 'cause Matilda, being a o'oman,
goes for no one,—but, arter all, there's few on us that wouldn't give up
prigging if we could. I wonder why they don't establish societies to
reclaim and provide for men-thieves, as they do for unfortunit vimen.
Blowed if I wouldn't go into such a place in a minute!"
"And do you mean to say," exclaimed Matilda, wiping her eyes, and
speaking with strange energy, "that if you choose to leave off this kind
of life, you can't? Why, you'd be happier, Josh, as a labourer with only
twelve or fifteen shillings a week, than you are now;—for I never heard
so much from your lips as I have to-night."
"Who the devil will employ people without characters?" demanded Josh
Pedler. "Do you think that if you tried to get a place even as a
scullion in a gentleman's family, you could obtain it? No such a thing.
Lord bless your dear heart! them as talks most about the depravity of
the lower classes, is always the last to give us a chance."
"Yes:—and yet we wasn't all nat'rally wicked," said Tim the Snammer.
"Some on us was made so by circumstances; and that was the case with
me."
"How came that about?" asked Josh Pedler, who, being in no humour to
sleep, was well disposed for conversation.
"Yes:—how came that about?" inquired Matilda, feeling interested in the
present topic.
"You don't mean to say you would like to hear me tell my story, do you?"
exclaimed Tim.
"I should, by all means," answered Josh Pedler.
"And I too——Oh! above all things!" cried Matilda: "particularly, if you
can show——what you said," she added hesitatingly.
"You mean to say, if I can prove that I didn't become what I am through
my own fault?" observed the Snammer. "Well—I think I _can_ prove it. But
you shall judge for yourselves. So, here goes."
And, with this free-and-easy kind of preface, the thief commenced his
narrative, which we have expurgated of those grammatical solecisms and
characteristic redundancies which, if preserved, would only mar the
interest and obscure the sense. At the same time, we have kept as nearly
to the original mode of delivery as possible.