"What!" exclaimed my wife and Aunt Martha. "Steal his own daughter! What do you mean by that?" "That's what it was," said the stout burglar; "no more nor less. I was recommended to the gent as a reliable party for that sort of thing, and I met him to talk it over, and then he told me just how the case stood. He and his wife were separated, and the daughter, about eleven years old, had been given to her by the court, and she put it into a boardin' school, and the gent he was goin' to Europe, and he wanted to get the little gal and take her with him. He tried to get her once, but it slipped up, and so there wasn't no good in his showin' hisself at the school any more, which was in the country, and he knowed that if he expected to get the gal he'd have to hire a professional to attend to it. "Now, when I heard what he had to say, I put on the strictly pious, and, says I, 'that's a pretty bad thing you're askin' me to do, sir, to carry away a little gal from its lovin' mother, and more 'an that, to take it from a school where it's gettin' all the benefits of eddication.'--'Eddication,' says he; 'that's all stuff. What eddication the gal gets at a school like that isn't worth a row of pins, and when they go away they don't know nothin' useful, nor even anything tip-top ornamental. All they've learned is the pianer and higher mathematics. As for anythin' useful, they're nowhere. There isn't one of them could bound New Jersey or tell you when Washington crossed the Delaware.'--'That may be, sir,' says I, 'but them higher branches comes useful. If Washington really did cross the Delaware, your little gal could ask somebody when it was, but she couldn't ask 'em how the pianer was played, nor what the whole multiplication table came to added up. Them things she'd have to learn how to do for herself. I give you my word, sir, I couldn't take a little gal from a school, where she was gettin' a number one eddication, silver forks and towels extry.' The gent looked pretty glum, for he was to sail the next day, and if I didn't do the job for him he didn't know who would, and he said that he was sorry to see that I was goin' back on him after the recommend I'd had, and I said that I wouldn't go back on him if it wasn't for my conscience. I was ready to do any common piece of business, but this stealin' away little gals from lovin' mothers was a leetle too much for me. 'Well,' says he, 'there ain't no time to be lost, and how much more will satisfy your conscience?' When I said a hundred dollars, we struck the bargain.