nk, and
then when she's sober. Wait a bit; I haven't done yet. If you tell me
everything you can remember--mind _ everything_--I'll pay the rest of
your wages."

Madly excited by this golden prospect, the victim of domestic service
answered inarticulately with a scream. Jackling's right hand and left
hand entered his pockets, and appeared again holding two sovereigns
separately between two fingers and thumbs. From that moment, he was at
liberty to empty the maid-of-all-work's memory of every saying and doing
that it contained.

The sober moments of the mistress yielded little or nothing to
investigation. The report of her drunken moments produced something
worth hearing. There were two men whom it was her habit to
revile bitterly in her cups. One of them was Mr. Evelin, whom she
abused--sometimes for the small allowance that he made to her; sometimes
for dying before she could prosecute him for bigamy. Her drunken
remembrances of the other man were associated with two names. She
called him "Septimus"; she called him "Darts"; and she despised him
occasionally for being a "common sailor." It was clearly demonstrated
that he was one man, and not two. Whether he was "Septimus," or whether
he was "Darts," he had always committed the same atrocities. He had
taken her money away from her; he had called her by an atrocious name;
and he had knocked her down on more than one occasion. Provided with
this information, Jackling rewarded the girl, and paid a visit to her
mistress the next day.

The miserable woman was exactly in the state of nervous prostration
(after the excess of the previous evening) which offered to the
clerk his best chance of gaining his end. He presented himself as the
representative of friends, bent on helping her, whose modest benevolence
had positively forbidden him to mention their names.

"What sum of money must you pay," he asked, "to get rid of the man in
possession?"

Too completely bewildered to speak, her trembling hand offered to him a
slip of paper on which the amount of the debt and the expenses was set
forth: L51 12s. 10d.

With some difficulty the Jew preserved his gravity. "Very well," he
resumed. "I will make it up to sixty pounds (to set you going again) on
two conditions."

She suddenly recovered her power of speech. "Give me the money!" she
cried, with greedy impatience of delay.

"First condition," he continued, without noticing the interruption:
"you are not to suffer, either