Josh Perrott reached home late for tea but in good humour. He had spent most of the day at the Bag of Nails, dancing attendance on the High Mobsmen. Those of the High Mob were the flourishing practitioners in burglary, the mag, the mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe of such dippers--such pick-pockets--as could dress well, welshers, and snides-men. These, the grandees of rascality, lived in places far from the Jago, and some drove in gigs and pony traps. But they found the Bag of Nails a convenient and secluded exchange and house of call, and there they met, made appointments, designed villainies, and tossed for sovereigns: deeply reverenced by the admiring Jagos, among whom no ambition flourished but this--to become also of these resplendent ones. It was of these that old Beveridge had spoken one day to Dicky, in language the child but half understood. The old man sat on a curb in view of the Bag of Nails, and smoked a blackened bit of clay pipe. He hauled Dicky to his side, and, pointing with his pipe, said:--'See that man with the furs?' 'What?' Dicky replied. 'Mean 'im in the ice-cream coat, smokin' a cigar? Yus.' 'And the other with the brimmy tall hat, and the red face, and the umbrella?' 'Yus.' 'What are they?' ''Igh mob. 'Ooks. Toffs.' 'Right. Now, Dicky Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them--look hard. Some day, if you're clever--cleverer than anyone in the Jago now--if you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough--one of a thousand--maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living, drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is--that's your aim in life--there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps--' he waved his hand toward the Bag of Nails. 'It's the best the world has for you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol and the gallows. So do your devilmost, or God help you, Dicky Perrott--though he wont: for the Jago's got you!' Old Beveridge had eccentric talk and manners, and the Jago regarded him as a trifle 'balmy,' though anything but a fool. So that Dicky troubled little to sift the meaning of what he said. Josh Perrott's mission among the High Mob had been to discover some Mobsman who might be disposed to back him in the fight with Billy Leary. For though a private feud was the first cause of the turn-up, still business must never be neglected, and a feud or anything else that could produce money must be made to produce it, and when a fight of exceptional merit is placed before spectators, it is but fair that they should pay for their diversion.