uted men who eat
heartily, sleep profoundly, and lie thinking in bed in the mornings--
when awake--with philosophic intensity.

On the morning after his first day in London our hero's mind had to
grapple with the perplexing question, whether it was possible that a man
with a jovial face, a hearty manner, well-off to all appearance in a
worldly point of view, and who chanced to have a man's money at his
mercy yet did not take it, _could_ be a deceiver and in league with
thieves. Impossible! Yet there were the damaging facts that Mr Spivin
had introduced a thief to him as a true and converted man, and that this
thief, besides denying his own conversion, had pronounced him--Spivin--a
black-hearted villain!

"It bothers me!" said David at length, getting over the side of the bed,
and sitting there for some time abstractedly stroking his chin.

Pondering the subject deeply, he dressed, called for breakfast, met
Spivin with a quiet "guid-mornin', freen," said that he had had "a
pleesant time o't i' the slums," and then went out to visit his friends
in Cherub Court. Before going, however, he removed his money from his
bag, put it in an inner breast-pocket, and paid his bill.

"You won't be back to dinner, I suppose," said the landlord in his
genial manner.

"Na. I'm gaun to plowter aboot a' day an' see the toon. I may be late
o' comin' in, but ye'll keep my bed for me, an' tak' care o' my bag."

Spivin said he would do so with such hearty goodwill that David said,
mentally, "He's innocent."

At the moment a tall dark man with a sharp intelligent expression
entered the house and bade the landlord good-morning. The latter
started, laughed, winked, glanced expressively at the Scotsman, and
returned the stranger's salute in a tone that induced David to say,
mentally, "He's guilty."

Gravely pondering these contradictory opinions, our hero walked along
until he found himself close to the alley which led into Cherub Court.
A female yell issued from the alley as he came up, and Mrs Rampy
suddenly appeared in a state of violent self-assertion. She was a
strong, red-faced woman, who might have been born a man, perhaps, with
advantage. She carried a broken-lipped jug, and was on her way to the
shop which was at least the second cause of all her woes.

Standing aside to let the virago pass, Laidlaw proceeded to the court,
where, to his great surprise, he found Tommy Splint sitting on a
doorstep, not exactly in tears, b