I think?' said Quilp, still perfectly unmoved. 'I
might say, if I was inclined to be rude, how do I know but you are
dogging MY footsteps. Yes, I was at chapel. What then? I've read in
books that pilgrims were used to go to chapel before they went on
journeys, to put up petitions for their safe return. Wise men!
journeys are very perilous--especially outside the coach. Wheels come
off, horses take fright, coachmen drive too fast, coaches overturn. I
always go to chapel before I start on journeys. It's the last thing I
do on such occasions, indeed.'

That Quilp lied most heartily in this speech, it needed no very great
penetration to discover, although for anything that he suffered to
appear in his face, voice, or manner, he might have been clinging to
the truth with the quiet constancy of a martyr.

'In the name of all that's calculated to drive one crazy, man,' said
the unfortunate single gentleman, 'have you not, for some reason of
your own, taken upon yourself my errand? don't you know with what
object I have come here, and if you do know, can you throw no light
upon it?'

'You think I'm a conjuror, sir,' replied Quilp, shrugging up his
shoulders. 'If I was, I should tell my own fortune--and make it.'

'Ah! we have said all we need say, I see,' returned the other, throwing
himself impatiently upon a sofa. 'Pray leave us, if you please.'

'Willingly,' returned Quilp. 'Most willingly. Christopher's mother,
my good soul, farewell. A pleasant journey--back, sir. Ahem!'

With these parting words, and with a grin upon his features altogether
indescribable, but which seemed to be compounded of every monstrous
grimace of which men or monkeys are capable, the dwarf slowly retreated
and closed the door behind him.

'Oho!' he said when he had regained his own room, and sat himself down
in a chair with his arms akimbo. 'Oho! Are you there, my friend?
In-deed!'

Chuckling as though in very great glee, and recompensing himself for
the restraint he had lately put upon his countenance by twisting it
into all imaginable varieties of ugliness, Mr Quilp, rocking himself to
and fro in his chair and nursing his left leg at the same time, fell
into certain meditations, of which it may be necessary to relate the
substance.

First, he reviewed the circumstances which had led to his repairing to
that spot, which were briefly these. Dropping in at Mr Sampson Brass's
office on the previous evening, in the absence o