"Perhaps so!" replied the prisoner; and, after a few more words, the officers proceeded to visit the other male culprit. To him, however, their manner was totally different. "Ha! Tony, my lad!" cried the head officer; "How do you do this many a day? Why! how the devil were you such a soft chap as to get taken in for such a bad job as this--but you had nearly bilked us all, by jingo!" "Oh, R----," he replied. "Oh, it is a bad job indeed! But I knew well enough that I was wellnigh up to my weight; and that d--d fellow, Harding, persuaded me, you see! But I say, R----, tell me, is that young Harrison like to die? Harding gave him a h--ll of a shot--and, d--n him, if he would die, if I would not take to talking, and plead the king's pardon, do you see!" "No, no!" answered the officer. "No chance of his dying! No, no, Tony. It's all up with you! They must hang two of you; and if any one gets off, in course it will be the woman." At this hopeless picture of his situation, the ruffian first swore and blasphemed for two or three minutes, and then, relapsing into the other extreme, cast himself down and wept like a child. "Fie, fie, Tony!" cried the officer. "Die game, any how--why, I thought you were more varment than that comes to--a man must die somehow, you know--and you have had a long pull at it, my lad--besides, it's all nonsense when one knows that it must be so." "Ay, that's the job!" said the prisoner. "If one could but think of some way of getting off"---- "Don't you fancy that," replied the officer. "Why, look ye now, Tony, if you could get off for this last job, I'll tell you as a friend, they'd hang you for that burning business; for they've got proof enough against you for that." This last argument seemed completely to dispel all Mr. Anthony Smithson's objections to being hanged; and after two or three exhortations to those virtues that Bow Street officers expect from thieves, the two children of Mercury went on to visit the female prisoner. As, however, we have fully as great a disgust to scenes of low vice and misery as our readers can have, and only introduce them, where compelled to do so in accordance with truth, we shall leave the officers to conduct their prisoners to England, and proceed to notice the events which occurred to Henry Beauchamp, in whose favour we have already kept our promise, of giving up to him the greater part of this volume. That gentleman then set off from Paris with all speed, as soon as he had seen the prisoners safely consigned to the Bow Street officers. He well knew, that such adventures as those in which he had lately been engaged, could not fail to find their way into the mouth of Rumour; and for many reasons he wished to reach London, ere that lady was ready to go trumpeting before him, like the man with the box on his back, who walks before Punch.