be got for them on the shortest notice, and turning to his own exclusive
account his authority to act for the Firm. Affery, remembering that the
clever one had said he would explain himself further in four-and-twenty
hours' time, determined for her part that his taking himself off within
that period with all he could get, was the final satisfactory sum and
substance of his promised explanation; but she held her peace, devoutly
thankful to be quit of him. As it seemed reasonable to conclude that a
man who had never been buried could not be unburied, the diggers gave
him up when their task was done, and did not dig down for him into the
depths of the earth.

This was taken in ill part by a great many people, who persisted
in believing that Flintwinch was lying somewhere among the London
geological formation. Nor was their belief much shaken by repeated
intelligence which came over in course of time, that an old man who wore
the tie of his neckcloth under one ear, and who was very well known to
be an Englishman, consorted with the Dutchmen on the quaint banks of the
canals of the Hague and in the drinking-shops of Amsterdam, under the
style and designation of Mynheer von Flyntevynge.

CHAPTER 32. Going

Arthur continuing to lie very ill in the Marshalsea, and Mr Rugg
descrying no break in the legal sky affording a hope of his enlargement,
Mr Pancks suffered desperately from self-reproaches. If it had not been
for those infallible figures which proved that Arthur, instead of pining
in imprisonment, ought to be promenading in a carriage and pair, and
that Mr Pancks, instead of being restricted to his clerkly wages, ought
to have from three to five thousand pounds of his own at his immediate
disposal, that unhappy arithmetician would probably have taken to his
bed, and there have made one of the many obscure persons who turned
their faces to the wall and died, as a last sacrifice to the late Mr
Merdle's greatness. Solely supported by his unimpugnable calculations,
Mr Pancks led an unhappy and restless life; constantly carrying his
figures about with him in his hat, and not only going over them himself
on every possible occasion, but entreating every human being he could
lay hold of to go over them with him, and observe what a clear case it
was. Down in Bleeding Heart Yard there was scarcely an inhabitant of
note to whom Mr Pancks had not imparted his demonstration, and, as
figures are catching, a kind of cyphering measl