these papers. They won't hurt Sir Nicolas Steele—and if they do, that's his business. Mine is to make the money while I can; but as for what the law can do to me, I don't care a snap of the fingers. So far as that goes, I doubt if there's much in our past that any judge could spout upon. All said and done, it's easy to be a rogue by Act of Parliament. If Nicky and I got our dues, we should have a statue all to ourselves on St. Stephen's Green, and our portraits would be hung in the Kerry town hall. But this is a short-sighted world, and it knows nothing of its greatest men.
It is a year ago since I left my master, and many things have happened since then—though none of them so odd as the events which led up to that parting. We had returned to Paris quietly enough after our fool's errand to Brittany, and there was no thought in our heads of any thing but a slow season and an unprofitable summer. Such of our friends as had been useful had gone their ways, some to Lon- don, some to America. There was no pigeon to pluck that I knew of; no Yankee who would buy diamonds. Sir Nicolas had little to do but drive and play with the old impecunious lot; and right well lie did it.
"While the money's left, be hanged to the care!" he would say; and for the matter of that, all the lifebelts in France couldn't have saved that same dull care when he set out to drown her. Time and again I told him that if nothing was to be done in
