ad I cause to
repent it? There is none so apt as a boy to be the adviser of any man in
difficulties such as mine. To the beginnings of virile common-sense he
adds the last lights of the child's imagination; and he can fling
himself into business with that superior earnestness that properly
belongs to play. And Rowley was a boy made to my hand. He had a high
sense of romance, and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals.
His travelling library consisted of a chap-book life of Wallace, and
some sixpenny parts of the "Old Bailey Sessions Papers" by Gurney the
shorthand writer; and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You
can imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this
disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier,
and a murderer, rolled in one--to live by stratagems, disguises, and
false names, in an atmosphere of midnight and mystery so thick that you
could cut it with a knife--was really, I believe, more dear to him than
his meals, though he was a great trencherman, and something of a glutton
besides. For myself, as the peg by which all this romantic business
hung, I was simply idolised from that moment; and he would rather have
sacrificed his hand than surrendered the privilege of serving me.

We arranged the terms of our campaign, trudging amicably in the snow,
which now, with the approach of morning, began to fall to purpose. I
chose the name of Ramornie, I imagine from its likeness to Romaine;
Rowley, from an irresistible conversion of ideas, I dubbed Gammon. His
distress was laughable to witness; his own choice of an unassuming
nickname had been Claude Duval! We settled our procedure at the various
inns where we should alight, rehearsed our little manners like a piece
of drill until it seemed impossible we should ever be taken unprepared;
and in all these dispositions, you may be sure the despatch-box was not
forgotten. Who was to pick it up, who was to set it down, who was to
remain beside it, who was to sleep with it--there was no contingency
omitted, all was gone into with the thoroughness of a drill-sergeant on
the one hand and a child with a new plaything on the other.

"I say, wouldn't it look queer if you and me was to come to the
post-house with all this luggage?" said Rowley.

"I dare say," I replied. "But what else is to be done?"

"Well, now, sir--you hear me," says Rowley. "I think it would look more
natural-like if you was to come to the post-house a