I was silenced a good while with that, for when he said, "Would you have me be hanged, Jacque?" I had no more to say. But one day after this he called to me. "Colonel Jacque," says he, "I have thought of a way how the gentleman shall have his bills again; and you and I shall get a good deal of money by it, if you will be honest to me, as I was to you." "Indeed," says I, "Robin"--that was his name--"I will be very honest; let me know how it is, for I would fain have him have his bills."
"Why," says he, "they told me that he had left word at the clerk's place in the long-room that he would give £30 to any one that had the bills, and would restore them, and would ask no questions. Now, if you will go, like a poor innocent boy, as you are, into the long-room and speak to the clerk, it may do. Tell him if the gentleman will do as he promised, you believe you can tell him who has it; and if they are civil to you, and willing to be as good as their words, you shall have the letter-case, and give it them."
I told him ay, I would go with all my heart. "But, Colonel Jacque," says he, "what if they should take hold of you and threaten to have you whipped? Won't you discover me to them?" "No," says I; "if they would whip me to death I won't." "Well, then," says he, "there's the letter-case; do you go." So he gave me directions how to act and what to say; but I would not take the letter-case with me, lest they should prove false, and take hold of me, thinking to find it upon me, and so charge me with the fact; so I left it with him. And the next morning I went to the custom-house, as was agreed. What my directions were will, to avoid repetition, appear in what happened; it was an errand of too much consequence indeed to be entrusted to a boy, not only so young as I was, but so little of a rogue as I was yet arrived to the degree of.
Two things I was particularly armed with, which I resolved upon: 1. That the man should have his bills again; for it seemed a horrible thing to me that he should be made to lose his money, which I supposed he must, purely because we would not carry the letter-case home. 2. That whatever happened to me, I was never to tell the name of my comrade Robin, who had been the principal. With these two pieces of honesty, for such they were both in themselves, and with a manly heart, though a boy's head, I went up into the long-room in the custom-house the next day.