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proportion as I sought to solve it.

Occupied with such thoughts as these, and a crowd of others all tending

to the same point, I continued to pace the street for two long hours;

at length the rain began to descend heavily, and then over-powered by

fatigue though no less interested than I had been at first, I engaged

the nearest coach and so got home. A cheerful fire was blazing on the

hearth, the lamp burnt brightly, my clock received me with its old

familiar welcome; everything was quiet, warm and cheering, and in happy

contrast to the gloom and darkness I had quitted.

But all that night, waking or in my sleep, the same thoughts recurred

and the same images retained possession of my brain. I had ever before

me the old dark murky rooms--the gaunt suits of mail with their ghostly

silent air--the faces all awry, grinning from wood and stone--the dust

and rust and worm that lives in wood--and alone in the midst of all

this lumber and decay and ugly age, the beautiful child in her gentle

slumber, smiling through her light and sunny dreams.

CHAPTER 2

After combating, for nearly a week, the feeling which impelled me to

revisit the place I had quitted under the circumstances already

detailed, I yielded to it at length; and determining that this time I

would present myself by the light of day, bent my steps thither early

in the morning.

I walked past the house, and took several turns in the street, with

that kind of hesitation which is natural to a man who is conscious that

the visit he is about to pay is unexpected, and may not be very

acceptable. However, as the door of the shop was shut, and it did not

appear likely that I should be recognized by those within, if I

continued merely to pass up and down before it, I soon conquered this

irresolution, and found myself in the Curiosity Dealer's warehouse.

The old man and another person were together in the back part, and

there seemed to have been high words between them, for their voices

which were raised to a very high pitch suddenly stopped on my entering,

and the old man advancing hastily towards me, said in a tremulous tone

that he was very glad I had come.

'You interrupted us at a critical moment,' said he, pointing to the man

whom I had found in company with him; 'this fellow will murder me one

of these days. He would have done so, long ago, if he had dared.'

'Bah! You would swear away my life if you could,' returned the other,

after bestowing a stare and a frown on me; 'we all know that!'

'I almost think I could,' cried the old man, turning feebly upon him.

'If oaths, or prayers, or words, could rid me of you, they should. I

would be quit of you, and would be relieved if you were dead.'

'I know it,' returned the other. 'I said so, didn't I? But neither

oaths, or prayers, nor words, WILL kill me, and therefore I live, and

mean to live.'

'And his mother died!' cried the old man, passionately clasping his

hands and looking upward; 'and this is Heaven's justice!'

The other stood lounging with his foot upon a chair, and regarded him

with a contemptuous sneer. He was a young man of one-and-twenty or

thereabouts; well made, and certainly handsome, though the expression

of his face was far from prepossessing, having in common with his

manner and even his dress, a dissipated, insolent air which repelled

one.

'Justice or no justice,' said the young fellow, 'here I am and here I

shall stop till such time as I think fit to go, unless you send for

assistance to put me out--which you won't do, I know. I tell you again

that I want to see my sister.'

'YOUR sister!' said the old man bitterly.

'Ah! You can't change the relationship,' returned the other. 'If you

could, you'd have done it long ago. I want to see my sister, that you

keep cooped up here, poisoning her mind with your sly secrets and

pretending an affection for her that you may work her to death, and add

a few scraped shillings every week to the money you can hardly count. I

want to see her; and I will.'

'Here's a moralist to talk of poisoned minds! Here's a generous spirit

to scorn scraped-up shillings!' cried the old man, turning from him to

me. 'A profligate, sir, who has forfeited every claim not only upon

those who have the misfortune to be of his blood, but upon society

which knows nothing of him but his misdeeds. A liar too,' he added, in

a lower voice as he drew closer to me, 'who knows how dear she is to

me, and seeks to wound me even there, because there is a stranger

nearby.'

'Strangers are nothing to me, grandfather,' said the young fellow

catching at the word, 'nor I to them, I hope. The best they can do, is

to keep an eye to their business and leave me to mine. There's a friend

of mine waiting outside, and as it seems that I may have to wait some

time, I'll call him in, with your leave.'

Saying this, he stepped to the door, and looking down the street

beckoned several times to some unseen person, who, to judge from the

air of impatience with which these signals were accompanied, required a

great quantity of persuasion to induce him to advance. At length there

sauntered up, on the opposite side of the way--with a bad pretense of

passing by accident--a figure conspicuous for its dirty smartness,

which after a great many frowns and jerks of the head, in resistance of

the invitation, ultimately crossed the road and was brought into the

shop.

'There. It's Dick Swiveller,' said the young fellow, pushing him in.

'Sit down, Swiveller.'

'But is the old min agreeable?' said Mr Swiveller in an undertone.

Mr Swiveller complied, and looking about him with a propitiatory smile,

observed that last week was a fine week for the ducks, and this week

was a fine week for the dust; he also observed that whilst standing by

the post at the street-corner, he had observed a pig with a straw in

his mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop, from which appearance he

augured that another fine week for the ducks was approaching, and that

rain would certainly ensue. He furthermore took occasion to apologize

for any negligence that might be perceptible in his dress, on the

ground that last night he had had 'the sun very strong in his eyes'; by

which expression he was understood to convey to his hearers in the most

delicate manner possible, the information that he had been extremely

drunk.

'But what,' said Mr Swiveller with a sigh, 'what is the odds so long as

the fire of soul is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing

of friendship never moults a feather! What is the odds so long as the

spirit is expanded by means of rosy wine, and the present moment is the

least happiest of our existence!'

'You needn't act the chairman here,' said his friend, half aside.

'Fred!' cried Mr Swiveller, tapping his nose, 'a word to the wise is

sufficient for them--we may be good and happy without riches, Fred.

Say not another syllable. I know my cue; smart is the word. Only one

little whisper, Fred--is the old min friendly?'

'Never you mind,' replied his friend.

'Right again, quite right,' said Mr Swiveller, 'caution is the word,

and caution is the act.' with that, he winked as if in preservation of

some deep secret, and folding his arms and leaning back in his chair,

looked up at the ceiling with profound gravity.

It was perhaps not very unreasonable to suspect from what had already

passed, that Mr Swiveller was not quite recovered from the effects of

the powerful sunlight to which he had made allusion; but if no such

suspicion had been awakened by his speech, his wiry hair, dull eyes,

and sallow face would still have been strong witnesses against him. His

attire was not, as he had himself hinted, remarkable for the nicest

arrangement, but was in a state of disorder which strongly induced the

idea that he had gone to bed in it. It consisted of a brown body-coat

with a great many brass buttons up the front and only one behind, a

bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat, soiled white trousers, and

a very limp hat, worn with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in

the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented with an outside pocket

from which there peeped forth the cleanest end of a very large and very

ill-favoured handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled on as far

as possible and ostentatiously folded back over his cuffs; he displayed

no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with

the semblance of a ring on its little finger and a black ball in its

grasp. With all these personal advantages (to which may be added a

strong savour of tobacco-smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of

appearance) Mr Swiveller leant back in his chair with his eyes fixed on

the ceiling, and occasionally pitching his voice to the needful key,

obliged the company with a few bars of an intensely dismal air, and

then, in the middle of a note, relapsed into his former silence.

The old man sat himself down in a chair, and with folded hands, looked

sometimes at his grandson and sometimes at his strange companion, as if

he were utterly powerless and had no resource but to leave them to do

as they pleased. The young man reclined against a table at no great

distance from his friend, in apparent indifference to everything that

had passed; and I--who felt the difficulty of any interference,

notwithstanding that the old man had appealed to me, both by words and

looks--made the best feint I could of being occupied in examining some

of the goods that were disposed for sale, and paying very little

attention to a person before me.

The silence was not of long duration, for Mr Swiveller, after favouring

us with several melodious assurances that his heart was in the

Highlands, and that he wanted but his Arab steed as a preliminary to

the achievement of great feats of valour and loyalty, removed his eyes

from the ceiling and subsided into prose again.

'Fred,' said Mr Swiveller stopping short, as if the idea had suddenly

occurred to him, and speaking in the same audible whisper as before,

'is the old min friendly?'

'What does it matter?' returned his friend peevishly.

'No, but IS he?' said Dick.

'Yes, of course. What do I care whether he is or not?'

Emboldened as it seemed by this reply to enter into a more general

conversation, Mr Swiveller plainly laid himself out to captivate our

attention.

He began by remarking that soda-water, though a good thing in the

abstract, was apt to lie cold upon the stomach unless qualified with

ginger, or a small infusion of brandy, which latter article he held to

be preferable in all cases, saving for the one consideration of

expense. Nobody venturing to dispute these positions, he proceeded to

observe that the human hair was a great retainer of tobacco-smoke, and

that the young gentlemen of Westminster and Eton, after eating vast

quantities of apples to conceal any scent of cigars from their anxious

friends, were usually detected in consequence of their heads possessing

this remarkable property; when he concluded that if the Royal Society

would turn their attention to the circumstance, and endeavour to find

in the resources of science a means of preventing such untoward

revelations, they might indeed be looked upon as benefactors to

mankind. These opinions being equally incontrovertible with those he

had already pronounced, he went on to inform us that Jamaica rum,

though unquestionably an agreeable spirit of great richness and

flavour, had the drawback of remaining constantly present to the taste

next day; and nobody being venturous enough to argue this point either,

he increased in confidence and became yet more companionable and

communicative.

'It's a devil of a thing, gentlemen,' said Mr Swiveller, 'when

relations fall out and disagree. If the wing of friendship should never

moult a feather, the wing of relationship should never be clipped, but

be always expanded and serene. Why should a grandson and grandfather

peg away at each other with mutual wiolence when all might be bliss and

concord. Why not jine hands and forgit it?'

'Hold your tongue,' said his friend.

'Sir,' replied Mr Swiveller, 'don't you interrupt the chair.

Gentlemen, how does the case stand, upon the present occasion? Here is

a jolly old grandfather--I say it with the utmost respect--and here is

a wild, young grandson. The jolly old grandfather says to the wild

young grandson, "I have brought you up and educated you, Fred; I have

put you in the way of getting on in life; you have bolted a little out

of course, as young fellows often do; and you shall never have another

chance, nor the ghost of half a one." The wild young grandson makes

answer to this and says, "You're as rich as rich can be; you have been

at no uncommon expense on my account, you're saving up piles of money

for my little sister that lives with you in a secret, stealthy,

hugger-muggering kind of way and with no manner of enjoyment--why can't

you stand a trifle for your grown-up relation?" The jolly old

grandfather unto this, retorts, not only that he declines to fork out

with that cheerful readiness which is always so agreeable and pleasant

in a gentleman of his time of life, but that he will bow up, and call

names, and make reflections whenever they meet. Then the plain question

is, an't it a pity that this state of things should continue, and how

much better would it be for the gentleman to hand over a reasonable

amount of tin, and make it all right and comfortable?'

Having delivered this oration with a great many waves and flourishes of

the hand, Mr Swiveller abruptly thrust the head of his cane into his

mouth as if to prevent himself from impairing the effect of his speech