zing villany--as indeed it would
seem to be the case, when so many worthless names remain among its
better records, unmolested.

Of Sally Brass, conflicting rumours went abroad. Some said with
confidence that she had gone down to the docks in male attire, and had
become a female sailor; others darkly whispered that she had enlisted
as a private in the second regiment of Foot Guards, and had been seen
in uniform, and on duty, to wit, leaning on her musket and looking out
of a sentry-box in St james's Park, one evening. There were many such
whispers as these in circulation; but the truth appears to be that,
after the lapse of some five years (during which there is no direct
evidence of her having been seen at all), two wretched people were more
than once observed to crawl at dusk from the inmost recesses of St
Giles's, and to take their way along the streets, with shuffling steps
and cowering shivering forms, looking into the roads and kennels as
they went in search of refuse food or disregarded offal. These forms
were never beheld but in those nights of cold and gloom, when the
terrible spectres, who lie at all other times in the obscene
hiding-places of London, in archways, dark vaults and cellars, venture
to creep into the streets; the embodied spirits of Disease, and Vice,
and Famine. It was whispered by those who should have known, that
these were Sampson and his sister Sally; and to this day, it is said,
they sometimes pass, on bad nights, in the same loathsome guise, close
at the elbow of the shrinking passenger.

The body of Quilp being found--though not until some days had
elapsed--an inquest was held on it near the spot where it had been
washed ashore. The general supposition was that he had committed
suicide, and, this appearing to be favoured by all the circumstances of
his death, the verdict was to that effect. He was left to be buried
with a stake through his heart in the centre of four lonely roads.

It was rumoured afterwards that this horrible and barbarous ceremony
had been dispensed with, and that the remains had been secretly given
up to Tom Scott. But even here, opinion was divided; for some said Tom
dug them up at midnight, and carried them to a place indicated to him
by the widow. It is probable that both these stories may have had
their origin in the simple fact of Tom's shedding tears upon the
inquest--which he certainly did, extraordinary as it may appear. He
manifested, besides, a st