M'riar," said he at last.

"How do you make that out, Mo?"

"I've as good as promised the old girl that she shan't have any hand in
it. She's out of it."

"Then keep her out of it. But only you give the tip to Sim Rowe that
M'riar's in with him, and that he's putting the screw on her, and Sim
he'll do the rest. Twig?" Conscious casuistry always closes one eye, and
Mr. Jerry closed his.

"That's one idea of keeping square, Jerry, but it ain't mine."

"What's wrong with it, Mo?" Mr. Jerry's confidence in his suggestion had
flagged, and his eye had reopened slowly.

"M'riar's not to have _any_ hand in it--that's her stipulation.
According-ly to my ideas, Jerry, either you take advantage, or you
don't. _Don't's_ the word, this time. If I bring M'riar in _at all_,
it's all one which of two ways I do it. She's out of it."

Mr. Jerry began, feebly:--"You can't do more than keep your word,
Mo...."

"Yes, you can, Jerry. You can keep your meanin'. And you can do more
than that. You can keep to what the other party thought you meant, when
you know. _I_ know, this time. I ain't in a Court o' Justice, Jerry,
dodgin' about, and I know when I'm square, by the feel. M'riar's out of
it, and she shall stop out." Uncle Mo was not referring only to the
evasions of witnesses on oath, which he regarded as natural, but to a
general habit of untruth, and subtle perversion of obvious meanings,
which he ascribed not only to counsel learned in the Law, but to the
Bench itself.

"Don't you want this chap to dance the Newgate hornpipe, Mo?"

"Don't I, neither?" Uncle Mo smoked peacefully, gazing on the fire. The
silhouette of a hanged man, kicking, floated before his mind's eye, and
soothed him. But he made a reservation. "After him and me have had a
quiet half-an-hour together!"

Mr. Jerry was suddenly conscious of a new danger. "I say, Mo," said he.
"None of that, if _you_ please!"

"None o' what?"

"This customer's not your sort. He's a bad kind. Bad before he was first
lagged, and none the better for the company he's kept since! You're an
elderly man now, Mo, and I'll go bail you haven't so much as put on the
gloves for ten years past. And suppose you had, ever so! Who's to know
he hasn't got a Colt in his pocket, or a bowie-knife?" Those of us who
remember the fifties will recall how tightly revolvers clung to the name
of their patentee, and the sort of moral turpitude that attached to
their use. They were regarded as givin