CHRISTOPHER SNUB; WHO WAS "BORN TO BE HANGED."

BY DOUGLAS JERROLD.

CHAP. I.

Ir was the fixed opinion of the most discriminating inhabitants of the small town of Hempenfield, that Christopher Snub-better known as that incorrigible little scoundrel Kit Snub-was born to be hanged. Such was the public belief, extending and strengthening with the growth of Kit, from his seventh-so early did his genius show itself to his seventeenth year; and then, to the sometimes reflecting townsfolk, it seemed somewhat strange that Kit had not been hanged a year or two before. Nevertheless, no man gave up his long-cherished conviction. Kit had, it was true, escaped by miracle; notwithstanding, his doom, though deferred, was certain. Michaelmas would not be more fatal to spring goslings than assizes to Kit. It was a pity, thought two or three of the most charitable folk; for the varlet, bating a certain roguish defiance in his eye, and a bad habit of turning all things into laughter, was a handsome and certainly a good natured boy. It was really to be lamented, but Kit Snub must be hanged!

Kit was, in truth, the scamp of his birthplace. To the great satisfaction of all fathers and mothers, he was an imp of mischief. It was to them an exceeding comfort if a garden were robbed, glass broken, the decency of a cobbler's stall defiled by tobacco-smoke, henroosts cleared of eggs, or any other social iniquity committed to know that it was only Kit Snub, and none of their own blessed babes, who could have dreamt of such an atrocity. The very blackness of Kit made all the other boys of Hempenfield as white as snow. Thus he bore upon his single back all the sins of the rising generation of his native town, and, to the innate wickedness of human nature we must declare it, he skipped as lightly, and laughed as heartily, as though the burden were a grace. Profligate Christopher Snub!

Augustus Doublebrain was a sweet little fellow-a very cherub at full length. He was so civil, so quiet, so meek, so all that a child should be! He had but one fault: he was the companion of Christopher Snub. They played with the same marbles-they flew the same kite-they bit the same apple: that is, when the marbles, the kite, and the apples happened to be Kit's. Otherwise, like "a dear, good child, as he would be without that Snub"-such were oft the words of his wailing mother-Augustus Doublebrain played and munched alone. . And thus much for the childhood of the two companions—thus much for the early wickedness of Christopher Snub.

"You'll be sorry for this some day," said a young man to the parish beadle; who, at the insinuation put on a more majestic look-knit three wrinkles in his official brow at the insolent supposition. He sorrythe beadle of Hempenfield sorry!

"Innocence is still innocence, abuse it as you will," continued the speaker, the beadle deigning no rejoinder to the stale, insipid truth.

"I wish I may die, then, if I was in the churchyard!" exclaimed the young man.

The beadle made no reply; but, backing a few paces from the speaker, surveyed him with a lofty self-complacency. Vandyke having bestowed a magic touch upon a portrait-Rembrandt having thrown a sunbeam on the canvass-may have glanced at the new beauty with a like swelling of the heart. No artificer so lowly, no drudge so mean, but that he is sometimes proud of his handiwork. The beadle of Hempenfield felt a flutter at his bosom: he had locked a culprit in the parish stocks, and stood aloof, in brief consideration of his own ability. Reader, the guilty one so stocked was-Kit Snub!

"Times is changed," said the beadle, with melancholy voice, shaking his head at Kit; "times is changed; else this had been whipping, too."

"I wasn't in the churchyard," cried Snub.

"You'll be hanged, Christopher," said the beadle; "the stocks is a halfway house-a resting-place in the way to the gallows; I always said it, and I shall live to see it; you'll be hanged!"

Kit cast a furious look at the prophet, and then, regaining his composure, began to whistle a jig.

"Your character's gone, Christopher; and the sooner you're gone after it the better for Hempenfield. Pitch-and-toss in a churchyard!

it's worse," said the beadle," than Guy Fawkes!"

"For the last time," cried Christopher, "I say I wasn't there." "Rattling money among the solemn tombstones, continued the beadle, unmoved by the protestations of Snub; "teasing honest folks in their coffins with the mammon of this world-it's a wicked aggravation. How would you like it, Kit?"

Kit whistled.

"And to find nobody better for your wickedness, than a gipsy and a tinker! Have you lost all decency?"

"And why didn't you catch them?" asked Snub. "Then you'd seen that I knew no more on 'em than the owl in the church ivy. But it's always the case-there was always a spite in this place against

me."

"People of your kidney always calls justice bad names. Spite, i'fackins! Is there to be no godliness in the world-is heads-and-tails to be allowed in a churchyard? But good words is wasted breath upon you. I'm sorry for it, Kit; for the sake of your dead father-an honest man and the best bowler fifty miles round-I'm sorry for it: but, to be sure, what could be hoped when he married Becky Drinkwater, the chambermaid of the Crown,-when your mother-"

It was especially unfortunate for Simon Scoggs, beadle of Hempenfield, that when in the pursuit of his duty, as censor morum, he apprehended Christopher Snub on the charge of playing pitch-and-toss, hustle-cap, and other plebeian games of chance, with a tinker and a gipsy, in the sanctuary of the dead,-it was, we repeat, unfortunate for our vigilant functionary-as the sequel shall prove that Kit was bound for a cricket-match. The beadle was a man of rigid morals, and thought it a favourable opportunity to indulge in reflections upon the late Mrs. Snub-(there ran a legend, that in her maidenhood she

had with some contumely rejected Simon Scoggs)-her son being fast in the stocks. The lion was not defunct, but fast by the legs, when Simon ventured to bray a little. Scarcely, however, had he uttered his first condemnatory note, when he fell-as though struck by the iron club of a giant-upon the earth; a fountain of blood gushing from his nose, defiling his waistcoat, and trickling down his nether garments. Gathering himself bolt upright, the beadle of Hempenfield bled like-like a chancery suitor, or a pig.

Simon Scoggs, his head still swimming, and his eyes striking fire at the same moment, felt his nose and his mistake: he had not searched the person of the culprit; otherwise, in his jacket-pocket he had discovered a cricket-ball, which Kit-he inherited the unerring eye and steady hand of his father-delivered with a precision readily though not cheerfully acknowledged by the beadle; who, for a time, thought his nose had followed the eyes of justice—annihilated by the cricketball of Kit.

The reader may hastily imagine that our beadle scrambled to his legs, and with meteor eyes and trumpet-voice assailed his assailant. No housewife her heart broken with some precious china vessel-ever gathered together the fragmentary porcelain with greater care, with a more sorrowing tenderness, than did Simon Scoggs, beadle of Hempenfield, pick himself up limb by limb. He seemed to think his noselike the nose of the seal-was the seat of vitality, and that he must be al but exanimate. At length, a consciousness of protracted existence dawned dimly upon him; when, pulling a deep breath, he shook his head, and a sickly smile of satisfaction played about his mouth as he meekly addressed Christopher Snub in the following words: "Yes, it's a blessed thing to think of-you must be hanged."

And Christopher Snub, the last remnant of his good name blown to the winds, sat in the stocks. He felt his innocence, and knew he was a prsoner. Gloomy, desolate thoughts might have fallen on the captive lad he not been weaned from the bitterness of reflection by the society of some half-dozen ragged boys, who, within the very shadow of the stocks began a game of ring-taw!

("Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play !")

Whereupon, Christopher, who would have brought the same moral energy to a game at push-pin or a game at chess, entered with fullest enjoyment into the sport, counselling, warning, and triumphing with the players. Whether this faculty may be set down to highest philosophy, or to invincible hardness of heart, we leave as matter of argument to the moralists. Certain it is, Christopher was in the very heat of the game, when a sound-a dolorous sound-called his attention from the sport. Turning his eyes, he beheld the sorrow-stricken countenance of Augustus Doublebrain.

"I never thought it would come to this, Kit," said Augustus, wringing his hands.

"It's nothing," said Christopher; "I shall be out at sunset. That won't do, Bill Simmons-knuckle down," cried Christopher, to one of the party at taw.

"Bless us, Kit!" exclaimed Augustus, "can you think of knuckling down in the stocks?"

"And why not?" cried Snub.

"With your character gone," urged Doublebrain-" yes, Christopher-your character!"

"I shall leave the village, and get a new one; for you know Guss, in the matter of character," said Snub, "I can plainly see it-do what you will to keep it whole and sound-luck's all."

"Don't talk in that hardened way," said Augustus Doublebrain. "Character's like a Sunday hat,-You must play at the ring, Sam Small,—it wears longer with some folks, though they don't take more care of it, than with others."

"You really weren't in the churchyard?" asked Doublebrain, solicitously.

"No; but it was no use my saying so-they said they'd got a witness of it, though what witness I don't know; and, more than that, the squire said there was another fact against me." "The Lord preserve us!" cried Doublebrain. what is it?"

"Another fact!

"Once I was caught at what they call defacing the tombstones; and what, Guss, do you think they called defacing ?-why, writing Sukey Saunders's name under the heads of some of the cherubims."

"I can't say it was right, Kit-it's what mother would call hetthenish," answered Doublebrain.

"Folks differ, you see," replied Scrub. "Howsoever, they said that if I was infidel-that was the word-infidel enough to write roundhand upon tombstones, I wouldn't stick to cry heads-and-tails among the coffins; and so upon that argument, Guss, here I am."

"That's no evidence," observed Doublebrain.

"And so I said: "Granting the first fault,' said II defy the cherubin to prove heads-and-tails!' Then the squire laughed, and the he gives me over to the beadle, who claps me here in the timber. But for all that, you see-Jack Robins " (again Kit was among the marbleplayers), "no funking!"

"And as you weren't in the churchyard with the tinker ard the gipsy," said Augustus, "where were you, and what about?"

66

Nutting," cried Christopher Snub, with a twinkling of the eye. "Nutting, with Polly Spicer."

"She'll be the ruin of you," said Augustus Doublebrain, with a groan.

"Bless her!" cried Christopher, smacking his lips.

Evening approached. Augustus Doublebrain having delivered himself of his very kindest counsel, squeezed Christopher's hand, leaving him in ignominy and the best spirits. The boys, proud to receive the instruction of Snub, even though dealt from the stocks, left their marbles for supper and bed; a nightingale preluded fitfully from a neighbouring bush, and Christopher Snub, sat in profoundest solitude-that is, with nothing but his innocence-in the parish stocks. Had the beadle forgotten him? Kit pondered on the malice of Scoggs, and then his thoughts wandered to the bloody-nose and the cricket-ball. The evening grew darker, and Kit became the more fixed in the belief that

the beadle had determined to leave him-out of mere revenge-the whole night, beneath an autumn sky. Gusts of wind made the captive shrink-a drop of rain, prologue to a deluge, fell on Kit's cheek-and cold and hungry, Snub sat in the stocks and shivered. He tried, manfully tried, to abstract his moral self from the desolation around him; and then, as further torment, his errant soul was cheated by the apparition of the "Red Lion" raised upon his hind legs, and looking, as for twenty years he had looked, jauntily for custom, whether of man or beast. Not that the "Red Lion" maintained his time-honoured aspect, for his two forepaws, heretofore scrambling over the sign-board, now, to the imagination of the hungry wretch in the stocks, grasped a platter, wherein hissed and smoked an ample steak, and a pot of ale, with foam like purest fleece. Was it the theory of Aristotle, that men with large hearts have great stomachs? It matters not; Christopher Snub was so organized: his bowels yearned at the vision; and then, smitten with the cheat, declined and fell, yea, almost to fainting. The lion, beef, and ale had vanished, and Christopher sat consorted with hunger and darkness.

The consciousness of innocence is a great support to the human animal; and Kit-moderately assisted by meat and malt-felt that he could have sustained his energies, even in the stocks. But to be left in cold and darkness to pine and starve-hark!

Christopher's ears quickened. Yes! a cloud has just swum before the moon-he cannot well descry him; but, surely, that is the slow, measured step-the tread of authority announcing Scoggs. Past all doubt, thinks Kit-it's Scoggs, the beadle!

Now Kit was a little in error; it was not the beadle, but a stray jackass.

And the ass boldly approached the stocks, and stared placidly at Christopher-and Christopher, nothing daunted, stared at the ass.

CHAP. II.

CHRISTOPHER is in the stocks, and his fortune hangs upon an ass! The meek beast, with something like a touch of fellowship, gazes piteously at Snub, and the prisoner, won by the confidence, or compassion, or whatever it is staring from the brutes eyes, pats its head in token of acknowledgment. Here, thought Snub, are a couple of us; children of misery-doomed, undeservedly to bear the thumps and bitter abuse of folks who think themselves our betters! Here we are, cold, hungry-but at this moment Snub heard footsteps, and dismissing the miseries of the ass from his mind, he thought only of himself. The ass turned from the stocks, and in a minute was seized by a couple of fellows, both of whom began drubbing the beast, and cursing and swearing at it for straying.

"Poor devil!" groaned Christopher; his heart smitten with the blows.

"What's that?" exclaimed one of the men.

"A voice from the stocks," cried the other; and advancing a few steps, the fellow stood with arms akimbo, and shaking with laughter in front of Snub. "What, is the gaol full, old fellow, that they've put you out to lodge and board on the common?" asked the man, who