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From the foregoing chapter the reader might hastily arrive at the conclusion that I was certainly qualifying for inclusion in the ranks of criminal classes, since I had arrived at the stages of committing offences against the general peace and well-being without any adequate reason, and had besides no conscience at all, or a conscience void of offence, my only dread being the policeman. I don't know that such a conclusion could be far from the truth, but I would plead that my predatory instincts had been aroused through no fault of my own, and had been fostered by the company into which I was inevitably cast. And then a sudden check was put upon my career, quite by accident, and I shot off at a tangent for a while into an entirely new branch of business.

I met a kind man one day, whose acquaintance I had made about a year previously, quite by accident. I was hungry and despondent, having been unable to find a chance job for nearly two days. He pitied me, and helped me temporarily, but better still offered me employment. He was a billiard-marker, who had just taken a room at a big public-house at Notting Hill, and he wanted a little cheap help such as I could give. So next day I got my first lesson in billiard-marking, and proved, so he said, a very apt pupil, so apt indeed, that by the end of the first evening I could be trusted to mark without fear of my displeasing the players, who, however, were seldom hard to satisfy. And in a week I was as familiar with the whole atmosphere and argot of the billiard-room, as if I had been at it all my life.