"Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could,--though
that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the question whether
you would ha' been over-ready to give me work yourselves,--a bit of a
poacher, a bit of a laborer, a bit of a wagoner, a bit of a haymaker,
a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things that don't pay and lead to
trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting soldier in a Traveller's Rest,
what lay hid up to the chin under a lot of taturs, learnt me to read;
and a travelling Giant what signed his name at a penny a time learnt me
to write. I warn't locked up as often now as formerly, but I wore out my
good share of key-metal still.
"At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got acquainted wi'
a man whose skull I'd crack wi' this poker, like the claw of a lobster,
if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was Compeyson; and that's the
man, dear boy, what you see me a pounding in the ditch, according to
what you truly told your comrade arter I was gone last night.
"He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a public
boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was
a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too. It was the
night afore the great race, when I found him on the heath, in a booth
that I know'd on. Him and some more was a sitting among the tables when
I went in, and the landlord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a
sporting one) called him out, and said, 'I think this is a man that
might suit you,'--meaning I was.
"Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a
watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of
clothes.
"'To judge from appearances, you're out of luck,' says Compeyson to me.
"'Yes, master, and I've never been in it much.' (I had come out of
Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have
been for something else; but it warn't.) "'Luck changes,' says Compeyson; 'perhaps yours is going to change.' "I says, 'I hope it may be so. There's room.' "'What can you do?' says Compeyson.
"'Eat and drink,' I says; 'if you'll find the materials.' "Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me five
shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place.