pace, arrived at
the railway-station in time for a late train to London, and, disdainful
of the dangers by which he was threatened in return to any of the haunts
of his late associates, gained the dark court wherein he had effected a
lodgment on the night of his return to London, and roused Cutts from his
slumbers with tales of an enterprise so promising, that the small man
began to recover his ancient admiration for the genius to which he had
bowed at Paris, but which had fallen into his contempt in London.

Mr. Cutts held a very peculiar position in that section of the great
world to which he belonged. He possessed the advantage of an education
superior to that of the generality of his companions, having been
originally a clerk to an Old Bailey attorney, and having since
that early day accomplished his natural shrewdness by a variety of
speculative enterprises both at home and abroad. In these adventures he
had not only contrived to make money, but, what is very rare with the
foes of law, to save it. Being a bachelor, he was at small expenses,
but besides his bachelor's lodging in the dark court, he had an
establishment in the heart of the City, near the Thames, which was
intrusted to the care of a maiden sister, as covetous and as crafty as
himself. At this establishment, ostensibly a pawnbroker's, were received
the goods which Cutts knew at his residence in the court were to be
sold a bargain, having been obtained for nothing. It was chiefly by this
business that the man enriched himself. But his net was one that took in
fishes of all kinds. He was a general adviser to the invaders of law. If
he shared in the schemes he advised, they were so sure to be successful,
that he enjoyed the highest reputation for luck. It was but seldom that
he did actively share in those schemes--lucky in what he shunned as in
what he performed. He had made no untruthful boast to Mrs. Crane of the
skill with which he had kept himself out of the fangs of justice. With a
certain portion of the police he was indeed rather a favourite; for was
anything mysteriously "lost," for which the owner would give a reward
equal to its value in legal markets, Cutts was the man who would get it
back. Of violence he had a wholesome dislike; not that he did not admire
force in others--not that he was physically a coward--but that caution
was his predominant characteristic. He employed force when required--set
a just value on it--would plan a burglary, and