But, nevertheless, they were
the men.
"You thoroughly understand your instructions now?" questioned Mortlake, as
he concluded speaking.
The fellow who had been addressed by his companion as Joey, at the time
they encountered Mortlake and Harding on the road to the Galloway farm,
nodded.
"We understand, guv'ner," he rasped out in a hoarse voice; "Slim, here,
and me don't take long ter catch on, eh, Slim?"
"No dubious manner of doubt about that," responded Slim. "An' although I'm
a tramp now, guv'ner, I wasn't allers one. I've held my head as high as
the rest of the good folks of the world. I can play the gentleman to
perfection. Don't you worry."
This Slim--or to give him his correct name--Frederick Palmer, was, as he
declared with such emphasis, a man who had indeed "seen better days," as
the phrase is. Now that he was invested in fair-looking clothes, and was
graced with a clean collar and a smooth-shaven face, he actually might
have passed for a person in fairly well-to-do circumstances. For the part
Mortlake wished him to play, he could not have picked out a better man.
Utterly unscrupulous, and with the best of his life behind him, "Slim"--as
the tramp fraternity knew him--was prepared to do anything that there was
money in. His companion possessed no such saving graces of appearance.
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