ight
difficulty in respiration (such as a carpenter meets with when he is
planing and comes to a knot), neither of his companions was aware of the
circumstance, until he met with one of these impediments and was obliged
to try again.

'Johnny's dropped off,' said Mr Parkes in a whisper.

'Fast as a top,' said Mr Cobb.

Neither of them said any more until Mr Willet came to another knot--one
of surpassing obduracy--which bade fair to throw him into convulsions,
but which he got over at last without waking, by an effort quite
superhuman.

'He sleeps uncommon hard,' said Mr Cobb.

Mr Parkes, who was possibly a hard-sleeper himself, replied with some
disdain, 'Not a bit on it;' and directed his eyes towards a handbill
pasted over the chimney-piece, which was decorated at the top with a
woodcut representing a youth of tender years running away very fast,
with a bundle over his shoulder at the end of a stick, and--to carry
out the idea--a finger-post and a milestone beside him. Mr Cobb likewise
turned his eyes in the same direction, and surveyed the placard as if
that were the first time he had ever beheld it. Now, this was a document
which Mr Willet had himself indited on the disappearance of his son
Joseph, acquainting the nobility and gentry and the public in general
with the circumstances of his having left his home; describing his dress
and appearance; and offering a reward of five pounds to any person or
persons who would pack him up and return him safely to the Maypole at
Chigwell, or lodge him in any of his Majesty's jails until such time as
his father should come and claim him. In this advertisement Mr Willet
had obstinately persisted, despite the advice and entreaties of his
friends, in describing his son as a 'young boy;' and furthermore as
being from eighteen inches to a couple of feet shorter than he really
was; two circumstances which perhaps accounted, in some degree, for its
never having been productive of any other effect than the transmission
to Chigwell at various times and at a vast expense, of some
five-and-forty runaways varying from six years old to twelve.

Mr Cobb and Mr Parkes looked mysteriously at this composition, at each
other, and at old John. From the time he had pasted it up with his own
hands, Mr Willet had never by word or sign alluded to the subject, or
encouraged any one else to do so. Nobody had the least notion what his
thoughts or opinions were, connected with it; whether he remem