"'And true' said he; 'he'd steal your molar tooth while you were laughing
at him.'

"'Let me have him, and try my hand on him, anyway. I've got no one just
now. Anything is better than nothing.'

"Well I took Tim, and sending for him to my room I locked the door, and
sitting down gravely before him explained in a few words that I was quite
aware of his little propensities.

"'Now,' said I, 'if you like to behave well, I'll think you as honest as
the chief-justice; but if I catch you stealing, if it be only the value of
a brass snuff-box, I'll have you flogged before the regiment as sure as my
name's Maurice.'

"Oh, I wish you heard the volley of protestations that fell from him fast
as hail. He was a calumniated man the world conspired to wrong him; he was
never a thief nor a rogue in his life. He had a weakness, he confessed, for
the ladies; but except that, he hoped he might die so thin that he could
shave himself with his shin-bone if he ever so much as took a pinch of salt
that wasn't his own.

"However this might be, nothing could be better than the way Tim and I got
on together. Everything was in its place, nothing missing; and in fact, for
upwards of a year, I went on wondering when he was to show out in his true
colors, for hitherto he had been a phoenix.

"At last,--we were quartered in Limerick at the time,--every morning used
to bring accounts of all manner of petty thefts in the barrack,--one fellow
had lost his belt, another his shoes, a third had three-and-sixpence in