One of the duties consequent upon Pat's vocation was the conveyance of meals to certain unruly prison spirits, who,--choosing, like Milton's Devil, rather to "reign in darkness than serve in light,"--consume in penal solitude their scanty dole of bread and water; many a sly bit of relishing pork, saved from his own meagre portion, and snugly sandwiched between coarse slices of bread, solaced these hungry wretches. Often did a certain water-proof tin box,--conveyed for this sinful purpose to our tricksy purveyor, by that underground express whose mysteries only the initiated may penetrate,--often did this box, neatly ensconced in the innocent depths of a water-bucket, empty its savoury contents into the hollow maws of refractory sinners! Pat's position in the prison also afforded him countless opportunities for that surreptitious intercourse, which, at this time, constituted the whole social interchange of the place; and, in the capacity of newsmonger and go-between, he had come to be a very popular and highly important personage in this restricted community. Who but he could adroitly snatch that propitious moment to whisper at the grating of some eager magpie of the big cage that racy bit of outside gossip, deftly gleaned from the thoughtless chat of loquacious officers?
When the "nate young gintlemun" in No. --, whose deceased great grandsire had unluckily bequeathed him certain erratic views respecting the ancient pronouns, "_Meum et tuum_," which, never quite developing in _bona-fide_ crime, had in no wise proved disastrous to the aforesaid progenitor, whose bones crumbled in the family vault as reputably as might those of that elusive "honest man," for whom the Grecian cynic, lantern in hand, is known to have vainly scoured this naughty world;--when the "nate young gintlemun,"--with the ugly heirloom which Nature, amplifying by the way, had carried disastrously on to the third generation,--sat moping and repenting alone in his prison cell, who but Pat Doniver, dropping for a bit of rest on that pine stool "forninst" the grating, would empty, _sotto voce_, in the prisoner's ear, such a budget of fun, news, and anecdote (the latter a trifle stale, but still racy) as would send this dejected young forger to his dreary cot with a cheered and comforted heart?