Meanwhile Monsieur, who could keep his own counsel, communicated by a certain mysterious agency that prevails in most countries, and seems to rival the electric telegraph in point of speed, to enlist a confederate in his service. This was Mr. Geordey Gallon, a genius carrying on the trades of poacher, pugilist, and publican, under favour of that mistaken piece of legislation the Beer Act. Geordey, like Jack, had begun life as a post-boy, and like him had undergone various vicissitudes ere he finally settled down to the respectable calling we have named. He now occupied the Rose and Crown beershop at the Four Lane-Ends, on the Heatherbell Road, some fifteen miles from Pangburn Park, where, in addition to his regular or irregular calling, he generally kept a racing-like runaway, that whisked a light spring-cart through the country by night, freighted with pigeons, poultry, game, dripping—which latter item our readers doubtless know includes every article of culinary or domestic use. He was also a purveyor of lead, lead-stealing being now one of the liberal professions. Geordey had had a fine time of it, for the Hit-im and Hold-im shire constables were stupid and lazy, and when the short-lived Superintendent ones were appointed, it was only a trifle in his way to suborn them. So he made hay while the sun shone, and presently set up a basket-buttoned green cutaway for Sundays, in lieu of the baggy pocketed, velveteen shooting-jacket of week-days, and replaced the fox-skin cap with a bare shallow drab, with a broad brim, and a black band, encasing his substantial in cords and mahogany tops, instead of the navvie boot that laced his great bulging calves into globes. He then called himself a sporting man. Not a fair, not a fight, not a fray of any sort, but Geordey’s great square bull-headed carcase was there, and he was always ready to run his nag, or trot his nag, or match his nag in any shape or way—Mr. George Gallon’s Blue Ruin, Mr. George Gallon’s Flower of the West, Mr. George Gallon’s Honor Bright, will be names familiar to most lovers of leather-plating. * Besides this, he did business in a smaller way. Being a pure patriot, he was a great promoter of the sports and pastimes of the people, and always travelled with a prospectus in his pocket of some raffle for a watch, some shooting-match for a fat hog, some dog or some horse to be disposed of in a surreptitious way, one of the conditions always being, that a certain sum was to be spent by the winner at Mr. Gallon’s, of the Hose and Crown, at the Four Lane-ends on the Heatherbell Road.