“Them’s the sentiments,” cried the inspector, and then muttered in an undertone, “that have hanged better men than you.”

“You see, gentlemen,” Jackson continued, the liquor opening his heart, and making him loquacious, “that I began life in Liverpool, in the old country.  I was apprenticed to a grocer, but I looked upon weighing coffee and tea as not the kind of employment for a man; so one day I stepped out of the store on board of a ship that was just ready to sail for Melbourne, and started to seek my fortune in this part of the world.”

“Didn’t you have any capital to begin with?” interrogated the inspector, with a wink of encouragement.

“Well, yes,” hesitated the young fellow; “I forgot to say that I had five hundred sovereigns in my pocket at the time I left; and they were intrusted to me by my master to put into the Bank of Liverpool.”

“Ah, that was something like,” cried the inspector, rubbing his hands.  “How old Slocum must have been astonished when he found that you was gone.”

“You knew my master, then,” cried Jackson, starting up with alarm depicted upon his countenance.

“Of course I didn’t know him; but I can read, can’t I?  Didn’t an advertisement appear in one of the papers at Melbourne, offering a reward for the arrest of one Charley Wright.  But don’t fear us; go on with your yarn.  You’ve made a good beginning.”

“I’m glad that you think so, ’cos I don’t know as you’d approve of such kinds of pickings.”

“Approve of ’em?” echoed the inspector.  “No matter; you go on, and while talking I’ll order more lush.”

“I didn’t find so many chances to make a fortune as I expected here,” Jackson continued, “but I got employment in a store, where I worked daytimes, and at night I used to do a little on my own account in the pasteboard line; but I wasn’t very successful, and somehow or other I think I was cheated.”

“It’s exceedingly probable,” cried the inspector, sotto voce.

“And when I found that I was cleaned out after a few weeks, I attempted to retrieve my losses by borrowing from my employers,” Jackson continued.

“Without their consent or knowledge,” Mr. Brown remarked.

The young fellow smiled faintly, and nodded his head in token of assent, and then continued: 

“One day I borrowed a hundred pounds, thinking that I could replace it without its being missed, if I was lucky at cards; but somehow I wasn’t, and my employers began to make a stir in relation to the matter.”

“That must have been exceedingly disagreeable to your feelings,” the inspector insinuated.

“Well, it was rather hard, I will own, ’cos I might have been lucky after a while, and then I could have paid the whole debt without trouble; but men in business don’t seem to have much consideration for their clerks; and I think that a good deal of crime originates through their obstinacy and stupidity.