At length Bill Bolter burst out into a loud laugh, and exclaimed, "Why, Tom, you're getting proud all on a sudden: you won't speak to your friends." "Halloo, Bill, is that you?" ejaculated the burglar. "When did they turn you out of the jug?" "This mornin' at twelve; and with never a brown in my pocket. Luckily the old woman had turned the children to some use during the time I was at the stepper, or else I don't know what would have become on us." "And I'm as completely stitched up as a man could be if he'd just come out o' the workus," said Tom. "I just now spent my last tanner[35] for this here grub. Ah! it's a d----d hard thing for a man like me to be brought down to cag-mag,[36]"--he added, glancing sulkily at the sausage, which he was eating half raw. "We all sees ups and downs," observed Dick Flairer. "My opinion is that we are too free when we have the blunt." "And there's them as is too close when we haven't it," returned the Cracksman bitterly. "There's the landlord of this crib won't give a gen'leman like me tick not for one blessed farden. But things can't go on so: I'm blowed if I won't do a crack that shall be worth while; and then I'll open a ken in opposition to this. You'd see whether I'd refuse a pal tick in the hour of need." "Well, you don't suppose that we are here just to amuse ourselves," said Dick: "we come to see you." "Is anythink to be done?" demanded the Cracksman. "First answer me this," cried Dick: "has that crib at Upper Clapton been cracked yet?" "What, where there's a young swell----" "I don't know nothing more about it than wot you told me," interrupted Dick. "Me and you was to have done it; and then you went larking with the davy's-dust----" "I know the crib you mean," said the Cracksman hastily: "that job is yet to be done. Are you the chaps to have a hand in it." "That's the very business that we're come for," answered Bill. "Well," resumed the Cracksman, "it seems we're all stumped up, and can't hold out no longer. We won't put this thing off--it shall be done to-morrow night. Eleven's the hour. I will go Dalston way--you two can arrange about the roads you'll take, so long as you don't go together; and we'll all three meet at the gate of Ben Price's field at eleven o'clock." "So far, so good," said Dick Flairer. "I've got a darkey:[37] but we want the kifers[38] and tools." "And a sack," added Bill. "We must get all these things of old Moses Hart, the fence;[39] and give him a share of the swag," exclaimed the Cracksman. "Don't bother yourselves about _that_; I'll make it all right." "Well, now that's settled," said Dick. "I've got a bob in my pocket, and we'll have a rinse of the bingo." The burglar went out to the bar, and returned with some brandy, which he and his companions drank pure. "So Crankey Jem's in quod?" observed the Cracksman, after a pause. "Yes--and the Resurrection Man too: but he has chirped, and will be let out after sessions."