He is never at rest, the wretched professional thief. He goes about with the tools of war perpetually in his hands, and with enemies in the front and the rear, and to the right and the left of him. “Anybody, to hear ’em talk,” a thief once remarked to me (he was a thief at present in possession of liberty; not an incarcerated rogue plying “gammon” as the incarcerated rogue loves to ply it), “anybody would think, to hear ’em talk, that it was all sugar with us while we were free, and that our sufferings did not begin until we were caught, and ‘put away.’ Them that think so know nothing about it. Take a case, now, of a man who is in for getting his living ‘on the cross,’ and who has got a ‘kid’ or two, and their mother, at home. I don’t say that it is _my_ case, but you can take it so if you like. _She_ isn’t a thief. Ask her what she knows about me, and she’ll tell you that, wuss luck, I’ve got in co. with some bad uns, and she wishes that I hadn’t. She wishes that I hadn’t, p’raps—not out of any sort of Goody-two-shoes feeling, but because she loves me. That’s the name of it; _we_ haint got any other word for the feelin’; and she can’t bear to think that I may, any hour, be dragged off for six mouths, or a year, p’raps. And them’s my feelings, too, and no mistake, day after day, and Sundays as well as week-days. She isn’t fonder of me than I am of her, I’ll go bail for that; and as for the kids, the girl especially, why I’d skid a waggon wheel with my body rather than her precious skin should be grazed. Well, take my word for it, I never go out in the morning, and the young ’un sez ‘good bye,’ but what I think ‘good bye—yes! p’raps it’s good bye for a longer spell than you’re dreaming about, you poor little shaver.’ And when I get out into the street, how long am I safe? Why, only for the straight length of that street, as far as I can see the coast clear. I may find a stopper at any turning, or at any corner. And when you _do_ feel the hand on your collar! I’ve often wondered what must be a chap’s feelings when the white cap is pulled over his peepers, and old Calcraft is pawing about his throat, to get the rope right. It must be a sight worse than the _other_ feeling, you’ll say. Well, if it is, I wonder how long the chap manages to hold up till he’s let go!”