It was no easy matter to communicate to his irritable and contumelious auditors the sense of Muriel’s charm, or the reasonableness of her request that he commit burglary merely to assist her in settling a family row.  Mary could not understand it; Humpy paced the room nervously, shaking his head and muttering.  It was their judgment, stated with much frankness, that if he had been a fool in the first place to steal the child, his character was now blackened beyond any hope by his later crimes.  Mary wept copiously; Humpy most annoyingly kept counting upon his fingers as he reckoned the “time” that was in store for all of them.

“I guess I got into ut an’ I guess I’ll git out,” remarked The Hopper serenely.  He was disposed to treat them with high condescension, as incapable of appreciating the lofty philosophy of life by which he was sustained.  Meanwhile, he gloated over the loot of the night.

“Them things is wurt’ mints; they’s more valible than di’mon’s, them things is!  Only eddicated folks knows about ’em.  They’s fer emp’rors and kings t’ set up in their palaces, an’ men goes nutty jes’ hankerin’ fer ’em.  The pigtails made ’em thousand o’ years back, an’ th’ secret died with ’em.  They ain’t never goin’ to be no more jugs like them settin’ right there.  An’ them two ole sports give up their business jes’ t’ chase things like them.  They’s some folks goes loony about chickens, an’ hosses, an’ fancy dogs, but this here kind o’ collectin’ ’s only fer millionaires.  They’s more difficult t’ pick than a lucky race-hoss.  They’s barrels o’ that stuff in them houses, that looked jes’ as good as them there, but nowheres as valible.”

An informal lecture on Chinese ceramics before daylight on Christmas morning was not to the liking of the anxious and nerve-torn Mary and Humpy.  They brought The Hopper down from his lofty heights to practical questions touching his plans, for the disposal of Shaver in the first instance, and the ceramics in the second.  The Hopper was singularly unmoved by their forebodings.

“I guess th’ lady got me to do ut!” he retorted finally.  “Ef I do time fer ut I reckon’s how she’s in fer ut, too!  An’ I seen her pap breakin’ into a house an’ I guess I’d be a state’s witness fer that!  I reckon they ain’t goin’ t’ put nothin’ over on Hop!  I guess they won’t peep much about kidnapin’ with th’ kid safe an’ us pickin’ ‘im up out o’ th’ road an’ shelterin’ ‘im.  Them folks is goin’ to be awful nice to Hop fer all he done fer ’em.”  And then, finding that they were impressed by his defense, thus elaborated, he magnanimously referred to the bill-book which had started him on his downward course.

“That were a mistake; I grant ye ut were a mistake o’ jedgment.  I’m goin’ to keep to th’ white card.  But ut’s kind o’ funny about that poke—­queerest thing that ever happened.”

He drew out the book and eyed the name on the flap.  Humpy tried to grab it, but The Hopper, frustrating the attempt, read his colleague a sharp lesson in good manners.  He restored it to his pocket and glanced at the clock.