“‘Played out,’ says he.  ’You are employed by a company, wages ten dollars a week, and a pension for your old age.  Everything’s played out,’ he continues.  ’Men ain’t wanted nowadays.  There’s only room for clerks, and intelligent artisans, and shopboys.’

“‘Go for a soldier,’ says I; ‘there’s excitement for you.’

“‘That would have been all right,’ says he, ’in the days when there was real fighting.’

“‘There’s a good bit of it going about nowadays,’ I says.  ’We are generally at it, on and off, between shouting about the blessings of peace.’

“‘Not the sort of fighting I mean,’ replies he; ’I want to do something myself, not be one of a row.’

“‘Well,’ I says, ’I give you up.  You’ve dropped into the wrong world it seems to me.  We don’t seem able to cater for you here.’

“‘I’ve come a bit too late,’ he answers; ’that’s the mistake I’ve made.  Two hundred years ago there were lots of things a fellow might have done.’

“‘Yes, I know what’s in your mind,’ I says:  ‘pirates.’

“‘Yes, pirates would be all right,’ says he; ’they got plenty of sea-air and exercise, and didn’t need to join a blooming funeral club.’

“‘You’ve got ideas above your station,’ I says.  ’You work hard, and one day you’ll have a milk-shop of your own, and be walking out with a pretty housemaid on your arm, feeling as if you were the Prince of Wales himself.’

“‘Stow it!’ he says; ’it makes me shiver for fear it might come true.  I’m not cut out for a respectable cove, and I won’t be one neither, if I can help it!’

“‘What do you mean to be, then?’ I says; ’we’ve all got to be something, until we’re stiff ‘uns.’

“‘Well,’ he says, quite cool-like, ‘I think I shall be a burglar.’

“I dropped into the seat opposite and stared at him.  If any other lad had said it I should have known it was only foolishness, but he was just the sort to mean it.

“‘It’s the only calling I can think of,’ says he, ’that has got any element of excitement left in it.’

“‘You call seven years at Portland “excitement,” do you?’ says I, thinking of the argument most likely to tell upon him.

“‘What’s the difference,’ answers he, ’between Portland and the ordinary labouring man’s life, except that at Portland you never need fear being out of work?’ He was a rare one to argue.  ‘Besides,’ says he, ’it’s only the fools as gets copped.  Look at that diamond robbery in Bond Street, two years ago.  Fifty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels stolen, and never a clue to this day!  Look at the Dublin Bank robbery,’ says he, his eyes all alight, and his face flushed like a girl’s.  ’Three thousand pounds in golden sovereigns walked away with in broad daylight, and never so much as the flick of a coat-tail seen.  Those are the sort of men I’m thinking of, not the bricklayer out of work, who smashes a window and gets ten years for breaking open a cheesemonger’s till with nine and fourpence ha’penny in it.’