sed to amuse himself by screwing
gimlets into its breast, sticking forks into its eyes and beating it
with a poker.

A few minutes before the officers arrived the dwarf received warning
from Sally Brass, but he had no time to get away. When he heard the
knocking on the gates and knew that the law he had so long defied was
at last upon him, he fell into a panic and did not know which way to
turn. He tried to cover the light of the fire, but only succeeded in
upsetting the stove. Then he ran out of the house on to the dock in the
darkness.

It was a black, foggy night, and he could not see a foot before him. He
thought he could climb over the wall to the next wharf and so escape,
but in his fright he missed his way and fell over the edge of the
platform into the swift-flowing river.

He screamed in terror, but the water filled his throat and the knocking
on the gates was so loud that no one heard him. The water swept him
close to a ship, but its keel was smooth and slippery and there was
nothing to cling to. He had been so wicked that he was afraid to die and
he fought desperately, but the rapid tide smothered his cries and
dragged him down--to death.

The waves threw his drowned body finally on the edge of a dismal swamp,
in the red glare of the blazing ruin which the overturned stove that
night made of the building in which he had framed his evil plots. And
this was the end of Quilp, the dwarf.

As for Kit, he found himself all at once not only free, but a hero. His
employer came to the jail to tell him that he was free and that everyone
knew now of his innocence, and they made him eat and drink, and
everybody shook hands with him. Then he was put into a coach and they
drove straight home, where his mother was waiting to kiss him and cry
over him with joy.

And last, but by no means least of all his new good fortune, he learned
then that the Stranger who had been searching so long for little Nell
and her grandfather had found certainly where they were and that Kit was
to go with him and his employer at once and bring them back again to
London.

They started the next day, and on the long road they talked much of
little Nell and the strange chance by which the lost had been found. A
gentleman who lived in the village to which they were now bound, who had
himself been kind to the child and to the old man whom the new
schoolmaster had brought with him, had written of the pair to Kit's
employer, and the letter had