meet Dick Whittington as Lal declared that you would, and did he really
bring you fame and fortune when you met him?"

The Writer smiled. "Yes, indeed I met him, but not in any way or
fashion that I should ever have expected. Of course both of you
children know Lal well enough by this time to realise that he loves a
little joke of his own at our expense, and many of his mysterious
promises, although they come true in a way, turn out to be utterly and
completely different from what he would seem to suggest to us by his
words; in fact, Lal is like a great happy conjuror or wizard who dearly
loves to mystify us with a trick. I am convinced he enjoys our
amazement at any of his pet tricks, as much as he enjoys the laugh he
has at our expense."

"That's right," said Ridgwell; "he tricked Chris and me finely once. I
haven't forgiven him so very long for it, and it made me feel very
uncomfortable for a good while."

"Everybody forgives Lal in the end," laughed the Writer; "one simply
cannot help oneself, but really his pranks are too absurd, and yet when
I found out how I had been tricked, I couldn't be cross with him, for I
actually loved his funny old ways more than before, if such a thing
were possible. To continue my story where I left off, Alderman Gold
seemed in some miraculous way to have had much more than his sight
restored to him that night. The first thing he did was to lift the
body of poor Sam very gently, and as we left the Square he called a
cab, and whilst we drove to his big mansion in Lancaster Gate, he asked
me to tell him everything I could remember about my short life up to
that time. Of course, I did so in my own peculiar fashion; the
verbiage of the street and the gutter must have been freely sprinkled
about during that narrative. Sometimes he looked thoughtful, and at
other times he lay back in the cab and laughed out loud. When we
arrived at his big house, which seemed to me at that time to be a
mighty great mansion, he first made his way into a very big garden at
the back where there were a lot of trees, and opening a gardening shed,
he got a spade and dug a grave for Sam deep down under the trees, and
it is there with his name, which was afterwards carved on a piece of
wood, until this day.

"Whilst my childish tears were still flowing as the result of this sad
ceremony, a lady came down the garden path in the moonlight, and as she
joined us I noticed that although she appeared a little