The boy did as he was told, following the white man into his office, which was close by. The door was soon shut, the stone weighed and the bargain struck, the native starting off with the money at a round trot to join his “brothers,” who were waiting round the corner. But “conscience doth make cowards of us all,” and Mr. G. was not an exception; fearing that he had been watched, and regardful either of his spotless reputation, or of the pleasures of the “tronk”[51] looming in the future, started in hot pursuit and gave his late visitor into the custody of the first policeman he met. “What’s up now?” said the guardian of law and order. “Why, look here, this d—d thief of a nigger wants to sell me this ’ere,” was Gonivavitski’s answer, given in tones of simulated indignation. “This ’ere,” however, was not the forty-carat white diamond of a few minutes before, G. was too clever for that, it was merely a piece of boart not worth a sovereign that he now produced. A crowd soon gathered to watch the thief marched off to jail, the _honest_ man following in his wake to lay the charge. Next day at the trial, a little perjury more or less was immaterial, the boy was sentenced to imprisonment and lashes, whilst Mr. G. in a few days found it necessary for the sake of his health to proceed to Europe, where he disposed of the diamond for a good round sum. With this addition to his former capital he returned to the Fields, where he still remains, boasting the possession of an ample fortune, gained, as he always says, by “’ard work and hearly rising.” One of the most generally admitted apothegms of worldly wisdom is that “a man should always tell the truth to his doctor and his lawyer,” but like many far more valuable maxims it is frequently disregarded. An instance in which (albeit I am happy to say I have a tolerably good opinion of my fellow creatures) I could not place confidence in the statements of my patient, occurs to my mind in connection with the anecdotes of which this chapter is composed. About two o’clock one morning in the year 1872 I was roused from the sleep I so much needed, as it was a sickly and busy season, by a hurried rapping at my front door. A doctor’s slumbers are through force of habit light, and in a few seconds my dressing-gown and slippers were assumed, and I hastened to answer the imperative summons of my visitor. A middle-aged citizen, whose reputation, although never openly impugned, was yet hardly enviable, greeted me in somewhat quavering accents, and with pallid cheeks desired my services without a moment’s delay. Having ushered him into my consulting-room I at once discovered the secret of his alarm. The sufferer informed me that “he had been discussing with some friends the means by which the rascally illicits evaded the law and concealed their ill-gotten gems on any sudden emergency, suiting the action to the word he had swallowed (or otherwise concealed from view) two sovs. and a diamond.”