ppose, for I could no longer see.

'Now what the devil in a dice-box do you mean?' said Slicer, possessing
himself of my watch. 'Who is the blasted cove?--not that I care a flash
of damnation.'

'A man as 'll knock you down if he thinks you want it, or give you a
half-a-crown if he thinks you want it--all's one to him, only he'll have
the choosing which.'

'What the hell's that to me? Look spry. He mustn't lie there all night.
It's too near the ken. Come along, you Scotch haddock.'

I was aware of a kick in the side as he spoke.

'I tell you what it is, Slicer,' said one whose voice I had not yet
heard, 'if so be this gentleman's a friend of Long Bob, you just let him
alone, I say.'

I opened my eyes now, and saw before me a tall rather slender man in a
big loose dress-coat, to whom Slicer had turned with the words,

'You say! Ha! ha! Well, I say--There's my Scotch haddock! who'll touch
him?'

'I'll take him home,' said the tall man, advancing towards me. I made an
attempt to rise. But I grew deadly ill, fell back, and remember nothing
more.

When I came to myself I was lying on a bed in a miserable place. A
middle-aged woman of degraded countenance, but kindly eyes, was putting
something to my mouth with a teaspoon: I knew it by the smell to be gin.
But I could not yet move. They began to talk about me, and I lay and
listened. Indeed, while I listened, I lost for a time all inclination to
get up, I was so much interested in what I heard.

'He's comin' to hisself,' said the woman. 'He'll be all right by and by.
I wonder what brings the likes of him into the likes of this place. It
must look a kind of hell to them gentle-folks, though we manage to live
and die in it.'

'I suppose,' said another, 'he's come on some of Mr. Falconer's
business.'

'That's why Job's took him in charge. They say he was after somebody or
other, they think.--No friend of Mr. Falconer's would be after another
for any mischief,' said my hostess.

'But who is this Mr. Falconer?--Is Long Bob and he both the same alias?'
asked a third.

'Why, Bessy, ain't you no better than that damned Slicer, who ought to
ha' been hung up to dry this many a year? But to be sure you 'ain't been
long in our quarter. Why, every child hereabouts knows Mr. Falconer. Ask
Bobby there.'

'Who's Mr. Falconer, Bobby?'

A child's voice made reply,

'A man with a long, long beard, that goes about, and sometimes grows
tired and sits on a door-step. I see