THE MILLER’S MAN AT THE MOP.—A LIVELY COMPANION.—SAL LOSES HER PURSE.—THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.—THE POCKET-BOOK TWICE STOLEN.—GEORGE IN THE KING’S ARMS.—GEORGE IN THE KING’S SERVICE.—THE LETTER CHANGES HANDS, BUT KEEPS ITS SECRET.  
For some years the ex-servant of the windmill had been rather favored by fortune than otherwise.  He found the pocket-book, and, though he could not read the letter, he got the five-pound note.  Since then, his gains, honest and dishonest, had been much beyond his needs, and his savings were not small.  Suspicion was just beginning to connect his name and that of the Cheap Jack with certain thefts committed in the neighborhood, when he made up his mind to go.
 
His wealth was not generally known.  Many a time had he been tempted to buy pigs (a common speculation in the district, and the first stone of more than one rustic fortune), but the dread of exciting suspicion balanced the almost certain profit, and he could never make up his mind.  For Master Lake paid only five pounds a year for his man’s valuable services, which, even in a district where at that time habits were simple, and boots not made of brown paper, did not leave much margin for the purchase of pigs.  The pig speculation, though profitable, was not safe.  George had made money, however, and he had escaped detection.  On the whole, he had been fortunate.  But that mop saw a turn in the tide of his affairs, and ended strangely with him.
 
It began otherwise.  George had never felt more convinced of his power to help himself at the expense of his neighbors than he did after getting Sal’s information, and keeping back his own, before they started to join in the amusements of the fair.  He was on good terms with himself; none the less so that he had not failed to see the Cheap Jack’s chagrin, as the woman poured forth all she knew for George’s benefit, and got nothing in return.
 
The vanity of the ignorant knows no check except from without; under flattery, it is boundless, and the Cheap Jack’s wife found no difficulty in fooling George to the top of his bent.
 
George was rather proud, too, of his companion.  She was not, as has been said, ill-looking but for her mouth, and beauty was not abundant enough in the neighborhood to place her at much disadvantage.  Fashionable finery was even less common, and the Cheap Jack’s wife was showily dressed.  And George found her a very pleasant companion; much livelier than the slow-witted damsels of the country-side.  For him she had nothing but flattery; but her smart speeches at the expense of other people in the crowd caused the miller’s man to double up his long back with laughter.
 
A large proportion of the country wives and sweethearts tramped up and down the fair at the heels of their husbands and swains, like squaws after their Indian spouses.  But the Cheap Jack’s wife asked George for his arm,—the left one,—and she clung to it all the day.  “Quite the lady in her manners she be,” thought George.  She called him “Mr. Sannel,” too.  George felt that she admired him.  For a moment his satisfaction was checked, when she called his attention to the good looks of a handsome recruiting sergeant, who was strutting about the mop with an air expressing not so much that it all belonged to him as that he didn’t at all belong to it.
 
“But there, he ain’t to hold a candle to you, Mr. Sannel, though his coat do sit well upon him,” said the Cheap Jack’s wife.
 
It gratified George’s standing ill-will to the Cheap Jack to have “cut him out” with this showy lady, and to laugh loudly with her upon his arm, whilst the hunchback followed, like a discontented cur, at their heels.  If there was a drawback to the merits of his lively companion, it was her power of charming the money out of George’s pocket.
 
The money that he disbursed came from the right-hand pocket of his red waistcoat.  In the left-hand pocket (and the pockets, like the pattern of the waistcoat, were large) was the lost pocket-book.  It was a small one, and just fitted in nicely.  In the pocket-book were George’s savings, chiefly in paper.  Notes were more portable than coin, and, as George meant to invest them somewhere where he was not known, no suspicions need be raised by their value.  The letter was there also.
 
There were plenty of shows at the mop, and the Cheap Jack’s wife saw them all.  The travelling wax-works; the menagerie with a very mangy lion in an appallingly rickety cage; the fat Scotchman, a monster made more horrible to view by a dress of royal Stuart tartan; the penny theatre, and a mermaid in a pickling-tub.
 
One treat only she declined.  The miller’s man would have paid for a shilling portrait of her, but she refused to be taken.
 
The afternoon was wearing away, when Sal caught sight of some country bumpkins upon a stage, who were preparing to grin through horse-collars against each other for the prize of a hat.  As she had never seen or heard of the entertainment, George explained it to her.
 
It was a contest in which the ugliest won the prize.  Only the widest-mouthed, most grotesque-looking clowns of the place attempted to compete; and he won who, besides being the ugliest by nature, could “grin” and contort his features in the mode which most tickled the fancy of the beholders.  George had once competed himself, and had only failed to secure the hat because his nearest rival could squint as well as grin; and he was on the point of boasting of this, but on second thoughts he kept the fact to himself.
 
Very willing indeed he was to escort his companion to a show in the open air for which nothing was charged, and they plunged valiantly into the crowd.  The crowd was huge, but George’s height and strength stood him in good stead, and he pushed on, and dragged Sal with him.  There was some confusion on the stage.  A nigger, with a countenance which of itself moved the populace to roars of laughter, had applied to be allowed to compete.  Opinions were divided as to whether it would be fair to native talent, whilst there was a strong desire to see a face that in its natural condition was “as good as a play,” with the additional attractions of a horse-collar and a grin.
 
The country clowns on the stage fumed, and the nigger grinned and bowed, and the crowd yelled, and surged, and swayed, and weak people got trampled, and everybody was tightly squeezed, and the Cheap Jack’s wife was alarmed, and withdrew her hand from George’s arm, and begged him to hold her up, which he gallantly did, she meanwhile clinging with both hands to his smock.
 
As to the hunchback, it is hardly necessary to say that he did not get very far into the crowd, and when his wife and George returned, laughing gayly, they found him standing outside, with a sulky face.  “Look here, missus,” said he; “you’re a enjoying of yourself, but I’m not.  You’ve got the blunt, so just hand over a few coppers, and I’ll get a pint at the King’s Arms.”
 
Sal began fumbling to find her pocket, but when she found it, she gave a shriek, and turned it inside out.  It was empty!
 
If the miller’s man had enjoyed himself before, he was not to be envied now.  The Cheap Jack’s wife poured forth her woes in a continuous stream of complaint.  She minutely described the purse which she had lost, the age and quality of her dress, and the impossibility of there being a hole in her pocket.  She took George’s arm once more, and insisted upon revisiting every stall and show where they had been, to see if her purse had been found.  Up and down George toiled with her, wiping his face and feeling that he looked like a fool, as at each place in turn they were told that they might as well “look for a needle in a bottle of hay,” and that pickpockets were as plenty at a mop as blackberries in September.
 
He was tired of t............