dy of the missing heir.

The first thing John Harmon saw after he was well enough to walk was a
printed notice announcing the finding of his own dead body--which gave
him a very queer sensation. Lying there he had had time to think over
the adventure and he had guessed pretty nearly how it all had happened.
He went at once to the police station to look at the corpse and saw it
was that of his false friend, who had tried to lure him to his death. So
it was the real John Harmon who had so excitedly appeared that night to
the police inspectors, and had vanished immediately, and whom they had
searched for so long in vain, under the suspicion that he himself was
the murderer.

He had a very good reason for not letting the police find him, too. Now
that the world considered him dead, he had determined, before he came to
life, to carry out his first plan, and to find out for himself just what
kind of person the Bella Wilfer he was expected to marry was, and
whether Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, who had been so kind to him in his
childhood, would still be as true to his memory in their wealth. For
this reason he did not correct the error that had been made. He took the
name of John Rokesmith, and, to get acquainted with Bella, hired
lodgings in her own father's house.

Mr. Wilfer was a clerk for a Mr. Veneering, a man who had made a big
fortune in the drug business and wanted now to get into Parliament.
Everything the Veneerings had was brand new. They spent a great deal of
money entertaining society people at dinners, but Mr. Veneering spent
very little on his clerks. Bella's father, though he was always as happy
as a cherub, was so poor that he never had been able to buy a whole new
suit at once. His hat was shabby before he could afford a coat, and his
trousers were worn before he got to new shoes. So he was glad enough
indeed to get a lodger.

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, to be sure, now had the great fortune. They bought
a fine house, and everybody called Mr. Boffin "The Golden Dustman,"
because he was so rich. Mrs. Boffin wore velvet dresses, and Mr. Boffin,
thinking that now he was rich he ought to know a great deal about books,
bought a big volume of the _History of the Roman Empire_ and hired a man
with a wooden leg who kept a ballad shop near by to come and read to him
in the evenings.

But in spite of all their fine things, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin remained the
same good, kind-hearted couple they had always been. John Harmon (or
Joh