I believe I have said that the devil, if well examined, would be found to have a limp; and, perhaps, this notion of mine may aptly enough be termed a detection, seeing I have had so many opportunities of getting near to him in those places where he rests himself in his long journeys from his principal dominions. Nor am I less satisfied that Chance is one of his female angels, who, having been slighted by him, “ peaches,” and tells the like of me his infirmity. Surely I cannot be blamed for an opinion, however absurd it may appear to those slow-pacing people who go so little to a side, where the real curiosities of human nature lie, when I have such a case to report as that of the robbery of Mr Blyth’s shop in the High Street, a little above the Fleshmarket Close, by M’Quarry, and a friend of that accomplished shop-lifter. One morning, a good number of years ago,—1847,1 think,—I was going from my house in the Canongate to my duties in the office, at my usual hour of eight in the morning. I had not much on my mind on that occasion. No charges were then on the books, and I was beginning to think I was gaining ground against the workers of iniquity. Perhaps my mind was perfectly vacant; no
one of my images being called upon to stir in their quiet resting-places in my head, and shew their likenesses to their originals. In this negative state of mind, whom should I see coming up but a well-known personage of the name of M’Quarry, with whom, though so well known to me, I wished much to be even more intimate, probably with the selfish view of knowing some of his secret adventures? It was quite natural I should fix my eye on him before he saw me, because, while I had nothing else to do, he was bent upon something. As I wish to mix a little instruction with the benefit derived from the mere lesson I teach of the insecurity of criminals, allow me to go aside with you for a moment to a close-end,—always my school-room,—and tell you that there is a great deal more in faces than is generally supposed. All men and women pretend, less or more, to the subject, but really their study is generally limited to the inquiry whether one is pleased or displeased with you when in a talk. How few ever aspire to read people as they run, to guess what they are bent upon, and how things are going with them; and yet, what a field is open to the student of human nature here! I exclude the perambulators and loungers, of course, who are always simply engaged in being looked at. Their faces are set in a fix, and you can find nothing there but a steady waiting for admiration; but in the business people, and those not above • domestic troubles, you can always find something readable. I keep to my own peculiar race, and I say I am seldom out when I get my eyes on them. I can, for instance, always tell an unlucky thief from a lucky one,—one with “ speculation in his eye ” from one without a job in contemplation,—one with full fobs from one with empty pockets,—one who suspects being scented from one who is on the scent. And therefrom I derive a kind of benefit; for, just as I observe a great and sudden amount of cheerfulness in the eye of a celebrity, so do I become cheerful, and a dull dog infects me like sympathy. The reason is plain enough; their cheerfulness is the cause of that cheerfulness which is in me, insomuch as it inspires me with the wish to know the particular transaction which makes them happy and so many others sad, while their sadness implies that I have nothing to discover. On that morning, when M‘Quarry came down the High Street, he was so cheerful that, as I have said, he did not see me. “ Luck makes people lightly their best friends,” and so he lightlied me—the very thing that fixed my gaze on him. There was something more than the mere blythesomeness in the usual clod face, which was a sure proof that he had made some others unhappy —perhaps even Mr Blyth, whose shop he passed in a kind of half run, darting his eye inside with ft kind of humorous triumph,—and, continuing the same excited pace, he passed me. His copartner, whose name I don’t recollect, but who was quite familiar to me, was behind him some few yards. He went at the same pace, had the same look of merriment, threw the same darting look into the shop, passed on, and overtook his friend.
Though not quite polite to look back upon your friends, I could not resist the impulse, and I just looked in time to see them burst out in a pretty joyous laugh together, and away they went arm-and-arm. A very simple affair. There was nothing wrong with Mr Blyth’s shop, so far as I could see; and, after all, what was there in a look into a shop to interest me ? It might have been different at night, when a lounger is reconnoitring for the purpose of a bolt in and a bolt
out; but, independently of its being the morning, the young men were off with merely a laugh on their cheek.
Yes, but I was satisfied of one thing, and that was, that some game of draughts had been played in that shop the previous night. “ Ah!” thought I, “ the little fishes, when too happy with the light of the sun on the top of the waters, get tipsy, and then topsy-turvy, and, turning
up their white bellies so as to be seen by the gulls, get both picked up and gobbled up.” With these thoughts I proceeded up the High Street, and entered the office. The Captain was already there, with a gentleman standing by him—no other than Mr Blyth, whose shop had so occupied my attention in my walk.
“ Oh, M’Levy, you ’re just in time,” said the Captain.
“ Here is Mr Blyth with information that his shop has been broken into last night from behind, and a great quantity of silks carried off.

“ It is just a case for you, M’Levy,” said Mr Blyth, who gave me no time to speak; “ for I fear that it is almost a desperate one. I mean we have no means of tracing, except through the goods. No one in the neighbourhood saw the burglars.” “ It is a mere case of a search for the articles,” continued the Captain. “ M’Levy, you can take charge. Call up some of the best searchers, and distribute them in the course of the day among the brokers. But we said I; “neither is there any occasion for troubling the brokers. I know who the robbers are, and will have them up in a couple of hours. Nay, if you wait,
I will bring them to you.” “ What,” cried the astonished silk-mercer, “ already! You ’re surely joking. Have you been up all night ? ”
“ No; in bed all night, sleeping as sound as a bat in winter.”
“ Then some policeman has been on the look-out, and told you.”
“ I have not spoken to a policeman to-day yet.” “Then how, in the name of wonder, have you gotit ?” “Just through the means of a laugh,” I replied, laughing myself.
“ Why, you are making a joke of my loss of a hundred guineas.”
“ A laugh is not quite so useless a thing as you imagine. The cackle of a goose saved a city on one occasion, and the cackle of these men, who are not geese, will
save your silk-mercery. I tell you I will have the burglars with you, ay, in one hour, and with them your goods. Wait till I come.”
“ Well, no doubt you ’re famous in your way, but I fear it won’t do to apprehend a man for a laugh.” “ I’ve done it for a breath,” said I, “ merely because it
told me there was some fear in the breather of his breath being interrupted by a certain kind of handkerchief which you don’t deal in. Sit down, and keep yourself easy.”
I accordingly set to my task, going direct to M’Quarry’s mother, in Hume’s Close; my assistant, as usual, with me. I opened the door, and went in just as his mother was giving him his breakfast. “ You didn’t notice me this morning, M’Quarry, when you passed me at Mr Blyth’s door ?” said I. The word Blyth struck him to the heart. “Blyth, wha is Mr Blyth?” said the mother, as she looked into her son’s pale face, her own being nearly of the same colour. “ Why, bless you, don’t you know the man you bought these silks of, up in that bole there ?” pointing to the likeliest place, at the same moment that I observed something like a fringe hanging out from the crevice made by the shrunk door.
“ There’s nae silk there,” said the mother.
“ All a d—-d lie,” growled the son.-
“There’s no use for any words about that,” said I, placing a chair and mounting. On opening the door of the old cupboard, sunk in the wall, there were Mr Blyth’s scarfs, neckcloths, and rib- bons, all stuffed in except that bit of fringe, which had claimed my eye, and convinced me more and more that the devil has a halt; but at that very moment the door of the room burst open, overturning the chair on which I stood, and laying me sprawling on my back, confounded, but still able enough to hear the words of the intruder. “Run, M’Quarry; M’Levy’s in the close !”
“ Yes, and here,” I cried, starting up and seizing the speaker, just as he had got alarmed; no other but my friend whose laugh, along with M’Quarry’s, so delighted me in the morning. “ The laugh’s on the other side now,” said I. The fellow struggled, but he was only a sapling; and
as M’Quarry saw there were two to one, he started upon his feet and laid hold of me by the throat. I instantly changed hands, seizing the younger and weaker with my left, and, using the other against M‘Quarry, pulled away his right, at the same time getting hold of his neckcloth, which I pulled so tight that he instantly became red in the face. I was afraid of the mother, who still held the knife in her hand with which she had been cutting the bread for her son’s breakfast; but the sight of her choking son produced such an effect upon her that she
set up a scream sufficient to reach the head of the close.
The sound had been heard by Mulholland, who, hastening up, relieved me of one of my opponents.
“ We give in,” said M’Quarry, as he gasped for breath.
“ That’s sensible,” said I. “ Then you walk up with
me you know where; on with your bonnet. And as for
you, Mrs M’Quarry, I have to ask you to accompany us;
not, perhaps, that I will trouble you much, as the silks
may have been placed there without your knowledge; but as I need the room for half-an-hour, and must be sure of your not entering it when I am away, you go with us, and I lock the door.” They all came very quietly. I locked the door and took the key with me, and in a few minutes had them all lodged, without communicating my capture as yet to Mr Blyth, who, I understood, was still waiting. I would by and by, however, and taking two men I hastened and got up the silks.
“ Now, Mr Blyth, here are your silks and the robbers,” said I, as the prisoners were brought and the mercery. “ It is not two hours yet, and as this affair began with a laugh I wish it to terminate with one.” A wish complied with on the instant by every one except the culprits. My story is ended, but there is a postscript. Mr Blyth could not, after he went away, understand my allusion to the laugh, and one day, as I was passing, he called me in, with a view to an explanation. That I gave him, much in the same way I have given it to the
reader. After considering a little, he said,—
“Well, how simple this affair is after all. It was not so much your cleverness, M’Levy, as their folly, that got me my goods.”

“ You never said a truer thing in your life, sir said I,
“ for people give M’Levy great praise for some extraordinary powers. It is all nonsense. I am just in the position of the candid juggler, who tells his audience that there is no mystery at all in his art, when all is explained. My detections have been and are very simple pieces of business,— far more simple than the schemes that end in non-detections,—and yet these have all the intricacy of some engines, which look fine on paper, but the very complexity of which prevents them from grinding your meal.