Where's the man wid the _gould-laced skull-cap_?
Sure enough I tought I'd be up wi' you, and so now you see I'm down upon you." At this moment a Street-keeper made way through the crowd, and Tom and Bob keeping close in his rear, came directly up to the principal performers in this interesting scene, and found honest Pat Murphy holding the man by his collar, while he was twisting and writhing to get released from the strong and determined grasp of the athletic Hibernian.
Pat no sooner saw our Heroes, than he burst out with a lusty "Arroo! arroo! there's the sweet-looking jontleman that's been robbed by a dirty _spalpeen_ that's not worth the tail of a rotten red-herring.

I'll give charge of dis here pick'd bladebone of a dead donkey that walks about in God's own daylight, dirting his fingers wid what don't belong to him at all at all.

So sure as the devil's in his own house, and that's London, you've had your pocket pick'd, my darling, and that's news well worth hearing"-- addressing himself to Dashall.
By this harangue it was pretty clearly understood that Murphy had been in pursuit of the pickpocket, and Tom immediately gave charge.
The man, however, continued to declare he was not the right person--"That, so help him G----d, the Irishman had got the wrong bull by the tail--that he was a b----dy _snitch_{2} and that he would _sarve him out_{3}--that he wished 1 _Brush_--Be off.
2 _Snitch_--A term made use of by the light-fingered tribe, to signify an informer, by whom they have been impeached or betrayed--So a person who turns king's evidence against his accomplices is called a Snitch.
3 _Serve him out_--To punish, or be revenged upon any person for any real or supposed injury.
~84~~he might meet him out of St.Giles's, and he would _wake_{ 1} him with an _Irish howl_." 1 Wake with an Irish howl--An Irish Wake, which is no unfrequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of St.Giles's and Saffron Hill, is one of the most comically serious ceremonies which can well be conceived, and certainly baffles all powers of description.

It is, however, considered indispensable to wake the body of a de-ceased native of the sister kingdom, which is, by a sort of mock lying in state, to which all the friends, relatives, and fellow countrymen and women, of the dead person, are indiscriminately admitted; and among the low Irish this duty is frequently performed in a cellar, upon which occasions the motley group of assembled Hibernians would form a subject for the pencil of the most able satirist.
Upon one of these occasions, when Murtoch Mulrooney, who had suffered the sentence of the law by the common hangman, for a footpad robbery, an Englishman was induced by a friend of the deceased to accompany him, and has left on record the following account of his entertainment:-- "When we had descended (says he) about a dozen steps, we found ourselves in a subterraneous region, but fortunately not uninhabited.

On the right sat three old bawds, drinking whiskey and smoking tobacco out of pipes about two inches long, (by which means, I conceive, their noses had become red,) and swearing and blasting between each puff.