cal Lawson's Nunkey Lawson, and it's all
in the family way, I don't mind telling you that Nunkey Lawson's a
customer of George's. We give Nunkey Lawson a good deal of brandy--G. S.
and Co.'s celebrated Nantz.

BRODIE. What! does he buy that smuggled trash of yours?

SMITH. Well, we don't call it smuggled in the trade, Deakin. It's a wink
and King George's picter between G. S. and the Nunks.

BRODIE. Gad! that's worth knowing. O Procurator, Procurator, is there no
such thing as virtue? (_Allons!_ It's enough to cure a man of vice for
this world and the other.) But hark you hither, Smith; this is all
damned well in its way, but it don't explain what brings you here.

SMITH. I've trapped a pigeon for you.

BRODIE. Can't you pluck him yourself?

SMITH. Not me. He's too flash in the feather for a simple nobleman like
George Lord Smith. It's the great Capting Starlight, fresh in from York.
(He's exercised his noble art all the way from here to London. "Stand
and deliver, stap my vitals!") And the North Road is no bad lay, Deakin.

BRODIE. Flush?

SMITH (_mimicking_). "Three graziers, split me! A mail, stap my vitals!
and seven demned farmers, by the Lard----"

BRODIE. By Gad!

SMITH. Good for trade, ain't it? And we thought, Deakin, the Badger and
me, that coins being ever on the vanish, and you not over sweet on them
there lovely little locks at Leslie's, and them there bigger and uglier
marine stores at the Excise Office....

BRODIE (_impassible_). Go on.

SMITH. Worse luck!... We thought, me and the Badger, you know, that
maybe you'd like to exercise your _h_elbow with our free and galliant
horseman.

BRODIE. The old move, I presume? The double set of dice?

SMITH. That's the rig, Deakin. What you drop on the square you pick up
again on the cross. (Just as you did with G. S. and Co.'s own agent and
correspondent, the Admiral from Nantz.) You always was a neat hand with
the bones, Deakin.

BRODIE. The usual terms, I suppose?

SMITH. The old discount, Deakin. Ten in the pound for you, and the rest
for your jolly companions every one. (_That's_ the way _we_ does it!)

BRODIE. Who has the dice?

SMITH. Our mutual friend, the Candleworm.

BRODIE. You mean Ainslie?--We trust that creature too much, Geordie.

SMITH. He's all right, Marquis. He wouldn't lay a finger on his own
mother. Why, he's no more guile in him than a set of sheep's trotters.

(BRODIE. You think so? Then see he don't cheat you over th