ady breakfasted, when his valet informed him, with raised,
supercilious eyebrows, that an uncommon ragged sort of a person insisted
that he had been told to call. Though Beck had been at the house before,
and the valet had admitted him, so much thinner, so much more ragged was
he now, that the trim servant--no close observer of such folk--did
not recognize him. However, at Percival's order, too well-bred to
show surprise, he ushered Beck up with much civility; and St. John
was painfully struck with the ravages a few weeks had made upon the
sweeper's countenance. The lines were so deeply ploughed, the dry hair
looked so thin, and was so sown with gray that Beck might have beat all
Farren's skill in the part of an old man.

The poor sweeper's tale, extricated from its peculiar phraseology, was
simple enough, and soon told. He had returned home at night to find his
hoards stolen, and the labour of his life overthrown. How he passed that
night he did not very well remember. We may well suppose that the little
reason he possessed was wellnigh bereft from him. No suspicion of the
exact thief crossed his perturbed mind. Bad as Grabman's character might
be, he held a respectable position compared with the other lodgers in
the house. Bill the cracksman, naturally and by vocation, suggested the
hand that had despoiled him: how hope for redress or extort surrender
from such a quarter? Mechanically, however, when the hour arrived to
return to his day's task, he stole down the stairs, and lo, at the very
door of the house Bill's children were at play, and in the hand of the
eldest he recognized what he called his "curril."

"Your curril!" interrupted St. John.

"Yes, curril,--vot the little 'uns bite afore they gets their teethin'."

St. John smiled, and supposing that Beck had some time or other been
puerile enough to purchase such a bauble, nodded to him to continue.
To seize upon the urchin, and, in spite of kicks, bites, shrieks, or
scratches, repossess himself of his treasure, was the feat of a moment.
The brat's clamour drew out the father; and to him Beck (pocketing the
coral, that its golden bells might not attract the more experienced
eye and influence the more formidable greediness of the paternal thief)
loudly, and at first fearlessly, appealed. Him he charged and accused
and threatened with all vengeance, human and divine. Then, changing his
tone, he implored, he wept, he knelt. As soon as the startled cracksman
recov