"Hang me, Sally, if I know what your game is in sheltering this spark.
Anyhow you wouldn't do it if you didn't see your way to some coin out of
him."

"I don't, so shut up your sauce."

"More fool you then. Look here, Sal. I've got hold of a cull or I
shouldn't be in this lackey's coat. The fool's bursting with gold and he
wants someone to help him to spend it. I'll be hanged if there's another
woman in London like you for that fun. Now's your chance. He's sweet on
a wench--a raw boarding school miss--he ran off with her an hour or so
ago. The little fool thought she was going to be married by a Fleet
parson, but somehow she took fright and jumped out of the coach on
London Bridge. How the devil she did it beats me, though to be sure when
one of your sex makes up her mind to anything she'll do it and damme, I
believe Beelzebub helps her. Now then----"

"What's this gabble to do with me?" broke in Sally, disdainfully.

"Wait a minute. The wench had a friend in the crowd--a man who got her
away--damn him. I jumped from the coach and we had a set to. See this?"

Scowling ferociously Rofflash pointed to a lump beneath his eye which
promised to become a beautiful mouse on the morrow.

"The jackanapes got me on the hop; my foot slipped and s'life, I was
down. But for that I'd ha' spitted him like a partridge. By the time I
was on my legs the mob were after him. I joined in the hue and cry and
we ran him down to your house. Now then, where's his hiding hole? It'll