ould I expect to
find you here?'

'There is something in that,' Mr Bloomfield admitted. 'You see I thought
it better that even you should be ignorant of my address; those rascals,
the Finsburys, would have wormed it out of you. And just to put them off
the scent I hoisted these abominable colours. But that is not all,
Gid; you promised me to work, and here I find you playing the fool at
Padwick.'

'Please, Mr Bloomfield, you must not be hard on Mr Forsyth,' said Julia.
'Poor boy, he is in dreadful straits.'

'What's this, Gid?' enquired the uncle. 'Have you been fighting? or is
it a bill?'

These, in the opinion of the Squirradical, were the two misfortunes
incident to gentlemen; and indeed both were culled from his own career.
He had once put his name (as a matter of form) on a friend's paper; it
had cost him a cool thousand; and the friend had gone about with the
fear of death upon him ever since, and never turned a corner without
scouting in front of him for Mr Bloomfield and the oaken staff. As for
fighting, the Squirradical was always on the brink of it; and once, when
(in the character of president of a Radical club) he had cleared out
the hall of his opponents, things had gone even further. Mr Holtum,
the Conservative candidate, who lay so long on the bed of sickness, was
prepared to swear to Mr Bloomfield. 'I will swear to it in any court--it
was the hand of that brute that struck me down,' he was reported to have
said; and when he was thought to be sinking, it was known that he had
made an ante-mortem statement in that sense. It was a cheerful day for
the Squirradical when Holtum was restored to his brewery.

'It's much worse than that,' said Gideon; 'a combination of
circumstances really providentially unjust--a--in fact, a syndicate of
murderers seem to have perceived my latent ability to rid them of the
traces of their crime. It's a legal study after all, you see!' And with
these words, Gideon, for the second time that day, began to describe the
adventures of the Broadwood Grand.

'I must write to The Times,' cried Mr Bloomfield.

'Do you want to get me disbarred?' asked Gideon.

'Disbarred! Come, it can't be as bad as that,' said his uncle. 'It's
a good, honest, Liberal Government that's in, and they would certainly
move at my request. Thank God, the days of Tory jobbery are at an end.'

'It wouldn't do, Uncle Ned,' said Gideon.

'But you're not mad enough,' cried Mr Bloomfield, 'to persist in t