How! Old thief thy wits are lame; To clip such it is no shame;
I rede you in the devil's name,
Ye come not here to make men game.
—Swinburne.
Daniel Pye, having arrived at that corner stone in Holborn Row which afforded him a full view of the house whence he had just been ignominiously dismissed, turned and shook a menacing fist in its direction. His body ached, he was smarting in every limb, and he had a grievance which clamoured loudly for revenge.
 
In Paris he had endured, whilst executing his duty, the buffetings and blows of a crowd of rowdy apprentices; this he had done not from any deep-rooted attachment to a capricious and exacting mistress, nor from any very exalted notions of abstract duty, but chiefly for the sake of the commendations and the rewards which the due fulfilment to Mistress Peyton's commands would naturally bring in its train.
 
The fact that, in order to allay the futile anxieties of a pretty woman, good Daniel Pye subsequently went in for a somewhat highly-coloured tale of his adventures was, after all, a venial sin, and surely the minor transgression which he had committed in delivering the letter, half an hour later than he should have done, did not call for such malignant and cruel treatment as his ungrateful mistress had thought fit to impose upon him. Under a paltry accusation of[269] theft, which the lady herself must have known was totally unfounded, she had handed him over to the magistrate for punishment. Convicted of the charge on the most flimsy evidence, he had been made to stand in the pillory two hours, and been publicly flogged like some recalcitrant 'prentice, or immoral wench.
 
Nay, worse! For Mistress Peyton herself, accompanied by Sir John Ayloffe, had gone down to Bridewell to see her serving-man whipped, under the pretence that she wished to see justice properly tempered with mercy, since she only desired merited chastisement for him and not wanton cruelty.
 
And yet when he, Daniel Pye, was howling at the whipping post like one possessed, the while a crowd of young jackanapes—among whom were some of Pye's fellow servants—stood hooting and jeering, Sir John Ayloffe at Mistress Peyton's special command had ordered that an additional ten strokes with the lash be dealt him with no lenient hand. And when Daniel anon stood in the pillory, bruised, sore, every limb in his body aching with the heavy blows, Sir John had caused baskets full of rotten eggs and scraps of tainted fish and meat and decayed vegetable to be distributed among the spectators so that the ribald youngsters might throw this evil-smelling refuse at the unfortunate man whose sole crime had been a tiny lie spoken in order to reassure an ungrateful mistress.
 
Finally Pye was dismissed from Mistress Peyton's service, despite his abject entreaties. He was kicked out of the street door by a young lacquey whom he himself had oft flogged for impertinence and who now had already assumed the comfortable shoes of office which Daniel had worn for so long.
 
To the last the mistress had persisted in her unfounded[270] and cruel accusations. To the last she coldly asserted that Daniel had robbed her of seventy thousand pounds.
 
Seventy thousand pounds! By Heaven! Daniel was not aware that such a vast sum existed in the world, nor if he had stolen it—which of course he had not—would he have known what to do with all that money!
 
No wonder, therefore, that the man felt mentally as well as bodily sore—nay, that he swore to be revenged on the cruel lady who had so wantonly wronged him. What form his revenge would take he could not at first determine, but these were days when it was not over-difficult for a man to make his petty spite be very uncomfortably felt, provided he had nothing more to lose and possessed neither conscience nor fear of ulterior punishment.
 
Now Daniel Pye, we know, had no overwhelming regard for truth; as to punishment, by the Lord, he had had all the punishment that any menial could possibly receive. He could sink no lower in the hierarchy of respectable domesticity; he had nothing more to lose, nothing more to gain. A serving-man who had been publicly flogged for theft was an outcast as far as gentlemen's houses were concerned. All the service that a branded thief might obtain in future would be in mean taverns or places of doubtful reputation where the master could not afford to be over-particular in the choice of his henchmen.
 
Pye had indeed shaken a menacing fist at the house in Holborn Row. Though he had not thought out the exact form which his revenge might take, he knew by instinct in what quarter to seek for guidance in this desire.
 
His steps led him almost mechanically in the direction of Whitefriars. When he himself was still a respectable lacquey; he would have scorned to set foot in this unhal[271]lowed spot where cheats, liars and other reprobates rubbed shoulders with the wastrels of aristocratic descent who had sought sanctuary here against their creditors.
 
In a corner of the narrow street, and in what had once been the refectory of white-robed monks, there now stood a tavern of evil fame—one or two low-raftered rooms, wherein light and air penetrated in such minute particles that these had not the power to drive away the heavy fumes of alcohol, of rank tobacco, of vice and of licentiousness which filled every corner of this dark and squalid spot.
 
Here the informer, the perjurer, the cheat, held his court unmolested, here the debtor was free from pursuit, and the highway robber safe from the arm of the law.
 
Whitefriars was sanctuary! Oh, the mockery of the word! For it was the brawlers and the bullies, the termagants and hags that inhabited these once holy and consecrated precincts, who enforced this self-ordained law of sanctuary. Neither townguard nor soldiery would dare to enter the unhallowed neighbourhood save in great numerical strength, and even then the flails of the lawless fraternity, the bludgeons of the men and stew-pans and spits of the women oft gained a victory over the musketeers.
 
To this spot now Daniel Pye unhesitatingly turned his footsteps. The servant kicked out of house for theft, the henchman who had been flogged and had stood in the pillory, naturally drifted towards those who like himself were at war with law and order, who had quarrelled with justice or were nursing a grievance.
 
It was then late in the afternoon. Outside the beautiful May sun was trying to smile on the grimy city, on all that man had put up in order to pollute God's pure earth:[272] the evil-smelling, narrow streets, the pavements oozing with slimy, slippery mud, the rickety, tumble-down houses covered with dirt and stains. All this the sun had kissed and touched gently with warmth and promise of spring, but into that corner of Whitefriars where Daniel Pye now stood, it had not attempted to penetrate.
 
Overhead the protruding gables right and left of the street almost met, obscuring all save a very narrow strip of sky. Underfoot the slimy mud, fed by innumerable overflowing gutters, hardly gave a foothold to the passerby.
 
But the door of the brothel stood invitingly open. Daniel Pye walked in unchallenged; scarce a head was turned or a glance raised to appraise the newcomer. He looked sulky and unkempt, his clothes were soiled and tattered after the painful halt in the pillory. In fact he looked what he was—a rebel against society like unto themselves.
 
Men sat in groups conversing in whispers and drinking deeply out of pewter mugs. One of these groups, more compact than the others, occupied the centre of the room. In the midst of it a man with thin, long, yellow hair straggling round a high forehead, his thin shanks encased in undarned worsted stockings, his stooping shoulders covered by a surcoat of sad-coloured grogram, seemed to hold a kind of court.
 
Daniel slouched toward that group; the man in the sad-coloured coat raised a pair of pale, watery eyes to him, and no doubt recognising by that subtle instinct peculiar to the great army of blackguards, that here was a kindred spirit, he made way for the stranger so that the latter might sit on the bench beside him.
 
After a very little while Pye found himself quite at home in that low-raftered room, wherein the air surfeited[273] with evil-smelling fum............