-d'ye-call-'em, and he would give me in charge. Then I begged from
a naval officer--he never bothered me with knots, but he only gave me
a tract; there's a nice account of the British navy!--and then from a
widow woman that sold lollipops, and I got a hunch of bread from her.
Another party I fell in with said you could generally always get bread;
and the thing to do was to break a plateglass window and get into gaol;
seemed rather a brilliant scheme. Pass the beef.'

'Why didn't you stay at Browndean?' Morris ventured to enquire.

'Skittles!' said John. 'On what? The Pink Un and a measly religious
paper? I had to leave Browndean; I had to, I tell you. I got tick at
a public, and set up to be the Great Vance; so would you, if you were
leading such a beastly existence! And a card stood me a lot of ale and
stuff, and we got swipey, talking about music-halls and the piles of tin
I got for singing; and then they got me on to sing "Around her splendid
form I weaved the magic circle," and then he said I couldn't be Vance,
and I stuck to it like grim death I was. It was rot of me to sing, of
course, but I thought I could brazen it out with a set of yokels. It
settled my hash at the public,' said John, with a sigh. 'And then the
last thing was the carpenter--'

'Our landlord?' enquired Morris.

'That's the party,' said John. 'He came nosing about the place, and then
wanted to know where the water-butt was, and the bedclothes. I told him
to go to the devil; so would you too, when there was no possible thing
to say! And then he said I had pawned them, and did I know it was
felony? Then I made a pretty neat stroke. I remembered he was deaf, and
talked a whole lot of rot, very politely, just so low he couldn't hear
a word. "I don't hear you," says he. "I know you don't, my buck, and I
don't mean you to," says I, smiling away like a haberdasher. "I'm hard
of hearing," he roars. "I'd be in a pretty hot corner if you weren't,"
says I, making signs as if I was explaining everything. It was tip-top
as long as it lasted. "Well," he said, "I'm deaf, worse luck, but I
bet the constable can hear you." And off he started one way, and I the
other. They got a spirit-lamp and the Pink Un, and that old religious
paper, and another periodical you sent me. I think you must have been
drunk--it had a name like one of those spots that Uncle Joseph used to
hold forth at, and it was all full of the most awful swipes about poetry
and the use of the gl