“To be sure, there is!” said Nack, with a crooked grin that displayed his unfortunate mouthful of jagged teeth. “You’re lookin’ at one! And right here’s the assistant to the High Constable hisself, so bite on that apple and piss a prune!”

“You men are mad!” came the unsteady response. “Crude louts as constables? What’s this world coming to?”

“I don’t know ’bout the world, but you’re comin’ near to a ride in the gutter! Off with you!”

“Outrage! Outrage!” cried the man, and though he puffed steam amid the drifting snowflakes he gave up the battle as lost and retreated into the moving mass of London humanity at his back.

“No you don’t!” Lillehorne reached out with his free hand to clutch the paperboy’s shoulder, as the lad had made a move to dart away but it had been at first a twist of the head rather than a leap of the legs. “Take the sheet, Nack,” Lillehorne said, and so it was done.

“My manager’ll skin me for this! He counted all the copies out!” the boy protested.

“Some advice to you.” Lillehorne released the shoulder and placed the cane’s tip alongside the boy’s cheek. “Tell your manager he miscounted by one. Look him directly in the eyes when you say this, and believe it yourself. Believe it so fervently that it becomes true. You’ll have no trouble, if you believe it with enough ferocity.”

The boy paused. Then, with a quizzical expression and a knotting of the eyebrows: “Thank you?”

“You are welcome. Now run along.” Lillehorne gave the cheek a quick pat with the cane, the paperboy scurried away with his lesson on how to be an adept liar, Lillehorne snatched the Pin from Nack before Nack had a chance to read a word of it, and Lillehorne said with the air of the victor’s satisfaction, “Let us retire to Mr. Chomley’s coffeehouse. He already understands the importance of a cup of free coffee to a hard-working public servant.”

“Two hard-workin’ public servants!” said Nack, nearly adding a chortle.

“Um,” Lillehorne replied with a frozen expression. Off they went, one following the other as had been their custom in New York for several years and now in London the same.

As the pair progressed westward along Stonecutter toward Chomley’s establishment on Norwich Street, Lillehorne mused that on this day of the twelfth month of 1703 the entire six hundred thousand population of the city must be out on the streets, chattering and nattering, steaming the air with their breath and the noxious odors of their nags pulling coach, carriage and wagon. Most of them, it seemed to him, clutched copies of Lord Puffery’s Pin in their gloved mitts. Oh, what a farce they played, these fancy prigs of London! he thought. Prancing to and fro to display their winter finery, their new hats and expensive powdered wigs, jostling and elbowing, crowding past each other for a look into the windows at some fresh geegaw or sugared dumpling, and they smiled and smiled their false smiles with eyes as hard as iron and teeth ready to bite the heads off their neighbors’ children if it took that to prosper in this city.