see
me twice?"

Altamont stuttered and stammered and hemd, and hawd. "O!" says he, "I
was passing--passing as you went in and out." And he instantly turned
the conversation, and began talking about pollytix, or the weather, or
some such stuff.

"Yes, my dear," said my missis, "but how could you see papa TWICE?"
Master didn't answer, but talked pollytix more than ever. Still she
would continy on. "Where was you, my dear, when you saw pa? What were
you doing, my love, to see pa twice?" and so forth. Master looked
angrier and angrier, and his wife only pressed him wuss and wuss.

This was, as I said, little Shum's twelfth tumler; and I knew pritty
well that he could git very little further; for, as reglar as the
thirteenth came, Shum was drunk. The thirteenth did come, and its
consquinzes. I was obliged to leed him home to John Street, where I left
him in the hangry arms of Mrs. Shum.

"How the d--," sayd he all the way, "how the d-dd--the
deddy--deddy--devil--could he have seen me TWICE?"

CHAPTER IV.

It was a sad slip on Altamont's part, for no sooner did he go out the
next morning than missis went out too. She tor down the street, and
never stopped till she came to her pa's house at Pentonwill. She was
clositid for an hour with her ma, and when she left her she drove
straight to the City. She walked before the Bank, and behind the Bank,
and round the Bank: she came home disperryted, having learned nothink.

And it was now an extraordinary thing that from Shum's house for the
next ten days there was nothing but expyditions into the city. Mrs.
S., tho her dropsicle legs had never carred her half so fur before, was
eternally on the key veve, as the French say. If she didn't go, Miss
Betsy did, or misses did: they seemed to have an attrackshun to the
Bank, and went there as natral as an omlibus.

At last one day, old Mrs. Shum comes to our house--(she wasn't admitted
when master was there, but came still in his absints)--and she wore a
hair of tryumph, as she entered. "Mary," says she, "where is the money
your husbind brought to you yesterday?" My master used always to give it
to missis when he returned.

"The money, ma!" says Mary. "Why here!" And pulling out her puss, she
showed a sovrin, a good heap of silver, and an odd-looking little coin.

"THAT'S IT! that's it!" cried Mrs. S. "A Queene Anne's sixpence, isn't
it, dear--dated seventeen hundred and three?"

It was so sure enough: a Queen Ans sixpen