an old gnarled black yew."

I had so far distinctly followed the dialogue; but at this point the
landlord entered and, begging my pardon, would suggest that number 12,
a most superior apartment, having now been vacated, it would give him
pleasure if I would look in. I declined to look in, but agreed for
number 12 at a venture and gave myself again, with dissimulation, to
my friends. They had got up; Simmons had put on his overcoat; he stood
polishing his rusty black hat with his napkin. "Do you mean to go down
to the place?" he asked.

"Possibly. I've thought of it so often that I should like to see it."

"Shall you call on Mr. Searle?"

"Heaven forbid!"

"Something has just occurred to me," Simmons pursued with a grin that
made his upper lip look more than ever denuded by the razor and jerked
the ugly ornament of his chin into the air. "There's a certain Miss
Searle, the old man's sister."

"Well?" my gentleman quavered.

"Well, sir!--you talk of moving on. You might move on the damsel."

Mr. Searle frowned in silence and his companion gave him a tap on the
stomach. "Line those ribs a bit first!" He blushed crimson; his eyes
filled with tears. "You ARE a coarse brute," he said. The scene
quite harrowed me, but I was prevented from seeing it through by the
reappearance of the landlord on behalf of number 12. He represented to
me that I ought in justice to him to come and see how tidy they HAD
made it. Half an hour afterwards I was rattling along in a hansom toward
Covent Garden, where I heard Madame Bosio in The Barber of Seville. On
my return from the opera I went into the coffee-room; it had occurred
to me I might catch there another glimpse of Mr. Searle. I was not
disappointed. I found him seated before the fire with his head sunk on
his breast: he slept, dreaming perhaps of Abijah Simmons. I watched him
for some moments. His closed eyes, in the dim lamplight, looked even
more helpless and resigned, and I seemed to see the fine grain of his
nature in his unconscious mask. They say fortune comes while we sleep,
and, standing there, I felt really tender enough--though otherwise most
unqualified--to be poor Mr. Searle's fortune. As I walked away I noted
in one of the little prandial pews I have described the melancholy
waiter, whose whiskered chin also reposed on the bulge of his
shirt-front. I lingered a moment beside the old inn-yard in which, upon
a time, the coaches and post-chaises found space to turn and