“Why, you’re not a pick—­” Richard hesitated from motives of delicacy.

“A pickpocket?  Well, I hope not, Sir, indeed,” interrupted the other, indignantly.

“Then what are you?” said Richard, bluntly.

As a coy maiden blushes and hangs her head in silence when asked the question which she is yet both proud and pleased to answer in the affirmative, so did Mr. Robert Balfour (for such was the name of our new acquaintance) pause and in graceful confusion rub his stubble chin with his closed fist ere he replied:  “Well, the fact is, I have been in the gold and precious stone line these thirty years, and never in the provinces until this present summer, when I came down here, as a Yankee pal of mine once put it, ‘to open a little jewelry store.’”

“With a crowbar?” suggested Richard, with a faint smile.

“Just so,” said the other, nodding; “and it so happened that yours truly, Bob Balfour, was caught in the very act.”

“And what term of punishment do you expect for such a—­”

“Such a misfortune as that?” answered Mr. Balfour, hastening to relieve Richard’s embarrassment.  “Well, if I had got the swag, I should—­considering the testimonials that will be handed in—­have been a lifer.  But since I did not realize so much as a weddin’ ring, twenty years ought to see me through it now.”

Twenty years!  Why, this man would be over seventy before he regained his liberty!

“Great Heaven!” cried Richard, “can you be cheerful with such a future before you! and at the end of it, to be turned old and penniless into the wide world!”

A genuine pity showed itself in the young man’s look and tone.  A minute before he had thought himself the most wretched of human beings; yet here was one whose fate was even harder, and who met it without repining.  Community of trouble had already touched the heart which he had thought was turned to stone.

“Are you sorry for me, young gentleman,” inquired the convict, in an altered voice, “you who have got so much trouble of your own to bear?”

“I am, indeed,” said Richard, frankly.

“You would not write a letter for me, though, would you?” inquired the other, wistfully.  “I should like to tell—­somebody as I’ve left at home—­where I am gone to; and the fact is, I can’t write; I never learned how to do it.”

A blush came over Bob Balfour’s face for the first time; the man was ashamed of his ignorance, though not of his career of crime.  “If it’s too much trouble, say so,” added he, gruffly.  “Perhaps it was too great a favor to ask of a gentleman born.”

“Not at all,” said Richard, hastily, “if the man will bring us pen and paper.”

“Hush! the officer, if you please,” said Balfour.  “They like to be ‘officered,’ these gentry, every one of them.  Some friends of mine always addresses ’em as ‘dogs;’ but that’s a mistake, when they has to watch you.”