I remembered certain lessons of my mother's as to one's proper behaviour toward lost property, and I mentioned them. But Grandfather Nat clearly resolved me that this was no case in point. "It can't be his, because he's dead," Captain Nat argued; "an' if it's the other chap's--well, let him come an' ask for it. That's fair enough, you know, Stevy. An' if he don't come--it ain't likely he will, is it?--then it's yours; and I'll keep it to help start you in life when you grow up. I won't pay it into the bank--not for a bit, anyhow. There's numbers on bank notes: an' they lead to trouble, often. But they're as good one time as another, an' easy sent abroad later on, or what not. So there you are, my boy! Eight hundred odd to start you like a gentleman, with as much more as Grandfather Nat can put to it. Eh?" He kissed me and rubbed his hands in my curls, and I took the occasion to communicate my decision as to being a purlman. Grandfather Nat laughed, and patted my head down on the pillow; and for a little I remembered no more. I awoke in an agony of nightmare. The dead man, with blood streaming from mouth and eyes, was dragging my grandfather down into the river, and my mother with my little dead brother in her arms called me to throw out the pocket-book, and save him; and throw I could not, for the thing seemed glued to my fingers. So I awoke with a choke and a cry, and sat up in bed. All was quiet about me, and below were the common evening noises of the tavern; laughs, argumentation, and the gurgle of drawn beer; though there was less noise now than when I had come up, and I judged it not far from closing time. Out in the street a woman was singing a ballad; and I got out of bed and went to the front room window to see and to hear; for indeed I was out of sorts and nervous, and wished to look at people. At the corner of the passage there was a small group who pointed and talked together--plainly discussing the murder; and as one or two drifted away, so one or two more came up to join those remaining. No doubt the singing woman had taken this pitch as one suitable to her ware--for she sang and fluttered at length in her hand one of the versified last dying confessions that even so late as this were hawked about Ratcliff and Wapping. What murderer's "confession" the woman was singing I have clean forgotten; but they were all the same, all set to a doleful tune which, with modifications, still does duty, I believe, as an evening hymn; and the burden ran thus, for every murderer and any murder:-- Take warning by my dreadful fate, The truth I can't deny; This dreadful crime that I are done I are condemned to die. The singular grammar of the last two lines I never quite understood, not having noticed its like elsewhere; but I put it down as a distinguishing characteristic of the speech of murderers.