n so very sorry. But I was
really forced to do it, for my sister pinched me until the blood came,
and looked at me so--oh, in such a way! And yet my heart failed me
twice, and I thought I never could do it. The peddler didn't find it
out; yet, if they had caught me, Francois, I should have been sent to
prison."

"But you weren't caught; so it's just the same as if you had not
stolen."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes."

"And in prison how unhappy we must be."

"On the contrary--"

"How do you mean on the contrary?"

"Why, you know the fat cripple who lodges at Father Micou's, the man who
buys all Nicholas's things, and keeps a lodging-house in the Passage de
la Brasserie?"

"A fat cripple?"

"Why, yes, who came here the end of last autumn from Father Micou, with
a man who had monkeys and two women."

"Ah, yes, a stout, lame man, who spent such a deal of money."

"I believe you; he paid for everybody. Don't you recollect the rows on
the water when I pulled them, and the man with the monkeys brought his
organ, that they might have music in the boat?"

"Yes; and in the evening the beautiful fireworks they let off,
Francois?"

"And the fat cripple was not stingy, either. He gave me ten sous for
myself. He drank nothing but our best wine, and they had chickens at
every meal. He spent full eighty francs."

"So much as that, Francois?"

"Oh, yes!"

"How rich he must be!"

"Not at all. What he spent was money he had gained in prison, from which
he had just come."

"Gained all that money in prison?"

"Yes; he said he had seven hundred francs beside, and that, when that
was all gone, he should try another good 'job;' and if he were taken, he
didn't care, because he should go back to his jolly 'pals in the Stone
Jug,' as he said."

"Then he wasn't afraid of prison, Francois?"

"On the contrary; he told Calabash that they were a party of friends and
merrymakers all together; and that he had never had a better bed and
better food than when he was in prison. Good meat four times a week,
fire all the winter, and a lump of money when he left it; whilst there
are fools of honest workmen who are starving with cold and hunger, for
want of work."

"Are you sure he said that, Francois,--the stout lame man?"

"I heard him, for I was rowing him in the punt whilst he told his story
to Calabash and the two women, who said that it was the same thing in
the female prisons they had just left."

"But then, Francois, it