McLevy

McLevy by James McLevy Page B

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Authors: James McLevy
that might have defied an Orkney eagle-hunter, descended at
the north back of the Canongate, and got clear off.
    Once more “done” by my agile friend, my pride was up, and I must have him by hook or by crook. I knew he was one of those enchanted beings whose love to the Old Town prevents them
from leaving it. It has such a charm for them that they will stick to it at all hazards, even when, day by day, and night by night, they are hounded through closes and alleys like wild beasts, and
have, as it were, nowhere to lay their heads. I have known them sleep on the tops of houses, and in crannies of old buildings, half-starved and half-clothed, in all weathers, summer or winter,
rather than seek rest by leaving the scenes of their wild infancy. And all this they will do in the almost dead certainty that ultimately they will be seized. I was thus satisfied that Andrew was
about the town; and even when, after the lapse of months, I could get no trace of him, I still retained my conviction that he was in hiding.
    That conviction was destined to receive a grotesque and grim verification. I was one day at the top of Leith Wynd. A number of people were looking at the slow march of some poor wretch’s
funeral, the coffin borne by some ragged Irishmen, a few others going behind. As I stood looking at the solemn affair—more solemn and impressive to right minds than the plumed pageant that
leaves the mansion with the inverted shield, and goes to the vault where are conserved, with the care of sacred relics, the remains of proud ancestors—a poor woman, who seemed to have been
among the mourners, came up to me.
    “And do you see your work, now?” quoth she, in a true Irish accent. “Do you know who is in that white coffin there, wid the bit black cloth over it?”
    “No,” said I.
    “And you don’t know the darling you murthered for stealing a hen at Paul’s Work?”
    “You don’t mean to say,” replied I, “that that’s the funeral of your son, Mrs Ireland?”
    “Ay, and, by my soul, I do, and murthered by you. He never lifted up his head agin, but pined and dwined like a heart-broken cratur as he was; and now he’s there going as fast as the
boys can carry him to his grave.”
    “Well,” said I, “I am sorry for it.”
    “The devil a bit of you, you vagabond! It’s all sham and blarney, and a burning shame to you, to boot.”
    “Peace, Janet,” said I; “he’s perhaps happier now than he was here stealing and drinking. There are no sky-lights in the Canongate graves, and he’ll not climb out
to do any more evil.”
    “Sky-lights!” cried Janet; “ay, but there is, and Andrew Ireland will climb out and get to heaven, while you, you varmint, will be breaking firewood in h— to roast their
honours the judges who condemned my innocent darling.”
    “Quiet, Janet.”
    “Well, thin, to roast yourself; will that plaise ye?”
    “Yes, yes,” said I.
    And fearing the woman’s passions, inflamed by her grief, might reach the height of a howl, I moved away, while she, muttering words of wrath, proceeded after the white coffin. Nor can I
say I was altogether comfortable as I proceeded to the Office, for there is something in the wild, moving yet miserable lives of these Arabs of the wynds when wound up by death that is really
touching. Nay, it is scarcely possible to avoid the thought that they are not free agents, if they do not claim from our sympathy the character of victims. In truth I was getting muffish, if I did
not soliloquise a bit about other climbers whose feet rested on the backs of such poor wretches, and who, by means not very different, get into high places, where they join the fashionable cry
about philanthropy—yes, a philanthropy that helps the devil, by allowing him to brain the objects they attempt to benefit.
    But a police-office soon takes the softness out of a man. I had scarcely entered when I got notice of a robbery, committed on the prior night at the workshop of Messrs

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