such audacity about him and his actions that even his most
reprehensible deeds do not disgust me.

He is of the spare and lean kind, but were he fatter he might
well pose as a modern Jack Falstaff, for his one idea is summed
up in Falstaff's words: "Where shall we take a purse to-night?"
Downy, of course, obtained full remission of his sentence; he did
all that was required of him in prison, and so reduced his five
years' sentence by fifteen months. But I feel certain that he
did nor spend three years and nine months in a convict
establishment without robbing a good many, and the more difficult
he found the task, the more he would enjoy it.

I expect his education is now complete, so I have to beware of
Downy, for he would glory in the very thought of "besting" me, so
I laugh and joke with the rascal, but keep him at arm's length.
We discuss matters on the doorstep; if he looks ill I have pity
on him, and subsidise him. Sometimes his merry look changes to a
half-pathetic look, and he goes away to his "doss house,"
realising that after all his "besting" he might have done
better.

Some of my friends have crossed the river, but as I think of them
they come back and bid me tell their stories. Here is my old
friend the famous chess-player, whose books are the poetry of
chess, but whose life was more than a tragedy. I need not say
where I met him; his face was bruised and swollen, his jawbone
was fractured, he was in trouble, so we became friends. He was a
strange fellow, and though he visited my house many times, he
would neither eat nor drink with us. He wore no overcoat even in