One man in his time plays many animals. Hardie at this period turned
mole. He burrowed darkling into _oes alienum._ There is often one of
these sleek miners in a bank: it is a section of human zoology the
journals have lately enlarged on, and drawn the painstaking creature
grubbing and mining away to brief opulence--and briefer penal servitude
than one could wish. I rely on my reader having read these really able
sketches of my contemporaries, and spare him minute details, that possess
scarcely a new feature, except one: in that bank was not only a mole, but
a mole-catcher; and, contrary to custom, the mole was the master, the
mole-catcher the servant. The latter had no hostile views; far from it:
he was rather attached to his master. But his attention was roused by the
youngest clerk, a boy of sixteen, being so often sent for into the bank
parlour, to copy into the books some arithmetical result, without its
process. Attention soon became suspicion; and suspicion found many little
things to feed on, till it grew to certainty. But the outer world was
none the wiser: the mole-catcher was no chatterbox; he was a solitary
man--no wife nor mistress about him; and he revered the mole, and liked
him better than anything in the world--_except money.
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