e may learn
something about the little beast. I should be glad to see the mother
well enough."

"Do I remimber her?" said the Ensign. "Do I remimber whisky? Sure I
do, and the snivelling sneak her husband, and the stout old lady her
mother-in-law, and the dirty one-eyed ruffian who sold me the parson's
hat that had so nearly brought me into trouble. Oh but it was a rare
rise we got out of them chaps, and the old landlady that's hanged too!"
And here both Ensign Macshane and Major Brock, or Wood, grinned, and
showed much satisfaction.

It will be necessary to explain the reason of it. We gave the British
public to understand that the landlady of the "Three Rooks," at
Worcester, was a notorious fence, or banker of thieves; that is, a
purchaser of their merchandise. In her hands Mr. Brock and his companion
had left property to the amount of sixty or seventy pounds, which was
secreted in a cunning recess in a chamber of the "Three Rooks" known
only to the landlady and the gentlemen who banked with her; and in
this place, Mr. Sicklop, the one-eyed man who had joined in the Hayes
adventure, his comrade, and one or two of the topping prigs of the
county, were free. Mr. Sicklop had been shot dead in a night attack near
Bath: the landlady had been suddenly hanged, as an accomplice in another
case of robbery; and when, on their return from Virginia, our two
heroes, whose hopes of livelihood depended upon it, had bent their steps
towards Worcester, they were not a little frightened to hear of the
cruel fate of the hostess and many of the amiable frequenters of the
"Three Rooks." All the goodly company were separated; the house was no
longer an inn. Was the money gone too? At least it was worth while to
look--which Messrs. Brock and Macshane determined to do.

The house being now a private one, Mr. Brock, with a genius that was
above his station, visited its owner, with a huge portfolio under his
arm, and, in the character of a painter, requested permission to take a
particular sketch from a particular window. The Ensign followed with the
artist's materials (consisting simply of a screwdriver and a crowbar);
and it is hardly necessary to say that, when admission was granted
to them, they opened the well-known door, and to their inexpressible
satisfaction discovered, not their own peculiar savings exactly,
for these had been appropriated instantly, on hearing of their
transportation, but stores of money and goods to the amount of