at!" exclaimed Tom; "do you know what it's worth?"

"Ten shillings is all I can give you," curtly replied the pawnbroker.

Tom gulped down a groan. "Give me the money, then, for goodness' sake,"
he said.

The pawnbroker coolly and deliberately made out the ticket, while Tom
stood chafing impatiently.

"Be quick, please!" he said, as though fearful of some one detecting him
in a crime.

"Don't you be in a hurry," said the pawnbroker.

"Here's the ticket."

"And the ten shillings?" broke in Tom.

"You shall have it," said my master, going to his drawer.

To Tom it seemed ages while the silver was being counted, and when he
had got it he darted from the shop as swiftly as he had entered it.

"That fellow's going wrong," muttered the pawnbroker to himself, as he
laid the pin on the shelf beside me.

I recognised it at once as having often been my companion on Tom's
dressing-table at nights, but I myself was so discoloured and ill that
it did not at first know me. I was too anxious, however, to hear some
thing about Tom to allow myself to remain disguised.

"Don't you know me, scarf-pin?" I asked.

He looked hard at me. "Not a bit," he said.

"I'm Tom Drift's old watch."

"You don't say so! So you are! How ever did you come here? Did he
pawn you?"

"No; I was stolen from him one night at the music-hall, and pawned here
by the thief."

"Ah, that music-hall!" groaned the pin; "that place has ruined Tom
Drift."

"When I left him," I said, "he was just going to the bad as hard as he
could. He had broken with his best friend, and seemed completely--"

"Hold hard! what friend?" interposed the pin.

"Charlie Newcome, my first master; they had a quarrel the day I was
stolen."

"That must be nearly two years ago?" said the pin.

"Just," said I. "Do tell me what has happened since then."

"It's a long story," said the pin.

"Never mind, we've nothing else to do here," I said encouragingly.

"Well," said the pin, "the night you were lost Tom never turned up at
home at all."

"He was utterly drunk," I said, by way of explanation.

"Don't you interrupt," said the pin, "or I won't tell you anything."

I was silenced.

"Tom never turned up at all until the next morning; and he sat all that
day in his chair, and did nothing but look at the wall in front of him."

"Poor fellow!" I could not help saying.

"There you go!" said the pin; "be good enough to remember what I said,
and if you can't