ered his astonishment at such audacity, and comprehended the nature
of the charge against himself and his family, he felt the more indignant
from a strange and unfamiliar consciousness of innocence. Seizing Beck
by the nape of the neck, with a dexterous application of hand and foot
he sent him spinning into the kennel.

"Go to Jericho, mud-scraper!" cried Bill, in a voice of thunder; "and if
ever thou sayst such a vopper agin,--'sparaging the characters of them
'ere motherless babes,--I'll seal thee up in a 'tato-sack, and sell thee
for fiv'pence to No. 7, the great body-snatcher. Take care how I ever
sets eyes agin on thy h-ugly mug!"

With that Bill clapped to the door, and Beck, frightened out of his
wits, crawled from the kennel and, bruised and smarting, crept to
his crossing. But he was unable to discharge his duties that day; his
ill-fed, miserable frame was too weak for the stroke he had received.
Long before dusk he sneaked away, and dreading to return to his lodging,
lest, since nothing now was left worth robbing but his carcass, Bill
might keep his word and sell that to the body-snatcher, he took refuge
under the only roof where he felt he could sleep in safety.

And here we must pause to explain. In our first introduction of Beck we
contented ourselves with implying to the ingenious and practised reader
that his heart might still be large enough to hold something besides his
crossing. Now, in one of the small alleys that have their vent in the
great stream of Fleet Street there dwelt an old widow-woman who eked out
her existence by charing,--an industrious, drudging creature, whose sole
occupation, since her husband, the journeyman bricklayer, fell from a
scaffold, and, breaking his neck, left her happily childless as well as
penniless, had been scrubbing stone floors and cleaning out dingy houses
when about to be let,--charing, in a word. And in this vocation had she
kept body and soul together till a bad rheumatism and old age had put
an end to her utilities and entitled her to the receipt of two shillings
weekly from parochial munificence. Between this old woman and Beck there
was a mysterious tie, so mysterious that he did not well comprehend it
himself. Sometimes he called her "mammy," sometimes "the h-old crittur."
But certain it is that to her he was indebted for that name which he
bore, to the puzzlement of St. Giles's. Becky Carruthers was the name of
the old woman; but Becky was one of those good