pounds was proclaimed by the Home Office, and for a time
public interest in the Harmon Murder, as it came to be called, ran high.

_II.--The Golden Dustman_

Mr. Boffin, a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning,
dressed in a pea overcoat, and wearing thick leather gaiters, and gloves
like a hedger's, came ambling towards the street corner where Silas Wegg
sat at his stall. A few small lots of fruits and sweets, and a choice
collection of halfpenny ballads, comprised Mr. Wegg's stock, and
assuredly it was the hardest little stall of all the sterile little
stalls in London.

"Morning, morning!" said the old fellow.

"Good-morning to _you_, sir!" said Mr. Wegg.

The old fellow paused, and then startled Mr. Wegg with the question,
"How did you get your wooden leg?"

"In an accident."

"Do you like it?"

"Well, I haven't got to keep it warm," Mr. Wegg answered desperately.

"Did you ever hear of the name of Boffin? And do you like it?"

"Why, no," said Mr. Wegg, growing restive; "I can't say that I do."

"My name's Boffin," said the old fellow, smiling. "But there's another
chance for you. Do you like the name of Nicodemus? Think it over. Nick
or Noddy. Noddy Boffin, that's my name."

"It is not, sir," said Mr. Wegg, in a tone of resignation, "a name as I
could wish anyone to call _me_ by, but there may be persons that would
not view it with the same objections. Silas Wegg is my name. I don't
know why Silas, and I don't know why Wegg."

"Now, Wegg," said Mr. Boffin, "I came by here one morning and heard you
reading through your ballads to a butcher-boy. I thought to myself,
'Here's a literary man _with_ a wooden leg, and all print is open to
him! And here am I without a wooden leg, and all print is shut to me.'"

"I believe you couldn't show me the piece of English print that I
wouldn't be equal to collaring and throwing," Mr. Wegg admitted
modestly.

"Now I want some reading, and I must pay a man so much an hour to come
and do it for me. Say two hours a night at twopence-halfpenny. Half-a-
crown a week. What do you think of the terms, Wegg?"

"Mr. Boffin, I never did 'aggle, and I never will 'aggle. I meet you at
once, free and fair, with----Done, for double the money!"

From that night Silas Wegg came to read at Boffin's Bower--or Harmony
Jail, as the house was formerly called--and he soon learnt that his
employer was no other than the inheritor of old Harmon's property, and
that