ixpence, and the fare one and sixpence; then I got a return for a
shilling. Now that makes eighteen miles for the horse and six shillings
for me; there's three shillings still for that horse to earn and nine
shillings for the afternoon horse before I touch a penny. Of course, it
is not always so bad as that, but you know it often is, and I say 'tis
a mockery to tell a man that he must not overwork his horse, for when a
beast is downright tired there's nothing but the whip that will keep
his legs a-going; you can't help yourself--you must put your wife and
children before the horse; the masters must look to that, we can't. I
don't ill-use my horse for the sake of it; none of you can say I do.
There's wrong lays somewhere--never a day's rest, never a quiet hour
with the wife and children. I often feel like an old man, though I'm
only forty-five. You know how quick some of the gentry are to suspect us
of cheating and overcharging; why, they stand with their purses in
their hands counting it over to a penny and looking at us as if we were
pickpockets. I wish some of 'em had got to sit on my box sixteen hours
a day and get a living out of it and eighteen shillings beside, and that
in all weathers; they would not be so uncommon particular never to give
us a sixpence over or to cram all the luggage inside. Of course, some of
'em tip us pretty handsome now and then, or else we could not live; but
you can't depend upon that."

The men who stood round much approved this speech, and one of them said,
"It is desperate hard, and if a man sometimes does what is wrong it is
no wonder, and if he gets a dram too much who's to blow him up?"

Jerry had taken no part in this conversation, but I never saw his face
look so sad before. The governor had stood with both his hands in his
pockets; now he took his handkerchief out of his hat and wiped his
forehead.

"You've beaten me, Sam," he said, "for it's all true, and I won't cast
it up to you any more about the police; it was the look in that horse's
eye that came over me. It is hard lines for man and it is hard lines for
beast, and who's to mend it I don't know: but anyway you might tell
the poor beast that you were sorry to take it out of him in that way.
Sometimes a kind word is all we can give 'em, poor brutes, and 'tis
wonderful what they do understand."

A few mornings after this talk a new man came on the stand with Sam's
cab.

"Halloo!" said one, "what's up with Seedy Sam?"

"