Free McLevy by James McLevy Page A

inventor is the leader. I confess I was more inclined to believe in the single performer, but I was destined in this instance to find myself wrong. I was at least
determined to get at the bottom of the mystery, and it wasn’t long until I was gratified. In the month of May of the year mentioned, the cases had accumulated, and as yet my inquiries had
been unsuccessful. In the New Town the cases had been limited to the narrow streets, and latterly they had increased about the foot of the Canongate. In that quarter, accordingly, I found it
necessary to be, though not very expedient to be seen, and I soon got upon my proper scent. One day I observed coming from the Watergate three or four women, all of the lowest section of
Conglomerates—not altogether a perfectly applicable name here, in so much as my “clear grits” were not rounded by healthy washings, but sharpened by the abrasion of vice and
misery. They were busy tying up a bundle, and after indulging in many stealthy looks to the right and left, they made forward up the Canongate. I might safely have stopped them and made inquiry
into the contents of their bundle, but I had something else in view, and was content with noting them, all known to me as they were—cast-off Fancies, not genteel enough for being leagued with
respectable thieves, and yet below the summer heat of love—trulls or trollops—trogganmongers during day, and troglodytes during night.
    I have said I had hopes, and accordingly I had scarcely lost sight of them when I encountered, a little on this side of the Abbey strand, a small Cupid of a fellow standing in the middle of the
street, (he had crept from a stair foot,) having a little bit of a shirt on him coming down to his knees, and crying lustily with beslubbered face.
    That’s my robbed traveller, said I to myself, as I made up to the young sufferer who had so early fallen among thieves.
    And just at the same time as the wondering women of the Watergate were pouring in to see the interesting personage, up comes the mother, who (as I afterwards learned) having sent out Johnny for
a loaf of bread, and finding he didn’t return, issued forth to seek for him. One may guess her astonishment at meeting him within so short a time, probably not ten minutes, in a state
approaching to nudity, but the guess would hardly come up to the real thing. The notion of his having been robbed and stripped didn’t occur to her, and her amazement did not abate until I
told her the truth, whereupon the women—like so many hens whose chickens had been seized by a hawk—broke into a scream of execration which excited the wit of an Irishman, “Have
the vagabonds taken the watch from the gintleman? Why didn’t they take the shirt too, and make a naked shaim ov it?” And having taken the name of the mother, I made after my
strippers.
    Nor was it long until I got them again within my vision. It seemed to be a feasting-day with the ogresses. They met and parted, every one looking out for some little Red Riding-hood, who was
doubtless unconscious of the tender mercies of the she-wolves. The league consisted of five, all of whom had been through my hands for thefts and robberies—Catharine Lang, Helen Duff, Mary
Joice, Margaret Joice, and Robina Finnie. If you have ever been among the wynds, you can form an idea of these hags; if you haven’t, you must excuse me—squalor-painting is at best a
mud-daub. Amongst all, mark this strange feature—that though some of them had been mothers, the mother was here inverted, the natural feelings turned upside down; the innocent creatures for
whom some stray sympathy might have been expected, changed into objects of rapine and cruelty for the sake of a few rags. I soon not only marked their movements, but saw that an opportunity waited
them—for where in the Old Town will you not find clots of children? and are not these, when engaged in play, artless and confiding? Who, however degraded, will harm them? Nay,