r,' said Mr Squeers,
solemnly, 'is more easier conceived than described. Oh what a blessed
thing, sir, to be in a state of natur!'

Pending this philosophical discourse, the bystanders had been quite
stupefied with amazement, while Nicholas had looked keenly from Snawley
to Squeers, and from Squeers to Ralph, divided between his feelings of
disgust, doubt, and surprise. At this juncture, Smike escaping from his
father fled to Nicholas, and implored him, in most moving terms, never
to give him up, but to let him live and die beside him.

'If you are this boy's father,' said Nicholas, 'look at the wreck he is,
and tell me that you purpose to send him back to that loathsome den from
which I brought him.'

'Scandal again!' cried Squeers. 'Recollect, you an't worth powder and
shot, but I'll be even with you one way or another.'

'Stop,' interposed Ralph, as Snawley was about to speak. 'Let us
cut this matter short, and not bandy words here with hare-brained
profligates. This is your son, as you can prove. And you, Mr Squeers,
you know this boy to be the same that was with you for so many years
under the name of Smike. Do you?'

'Do I!' returned Squeers. 'Don't I?'

'Good,' said Ralph; 'a very few words will be sufficient here. You had a
son by your first wife, Mr Snawley?'

'I had,' replied that person, 'and there he stands.'

'We'll show that presently,' said Ralph. 'You and your wife were
separated, and she had the boy to live with her, when he was a year old.
You received a communication from her, when you had lived apart a year
or two, that the boy was dead; and you believed it?'

'Of course I did!' returned Snawley. 'Oh the joy of--'

'Be rational, sir, pray,' said Ralph. 'This is business, and
transports interfere with it. This wife died a year and a half ago, or
thereabouts--not more--in some obscure place, where she was housekeeper
in a family. Is that the case?'

'That's the case,' replied Snawley.

'Having written on her death-bed a letter or confession to you, about
this very boy, which, as it was not directed otherwise than in your
name, only reached you, and that by a circuitous course, a few days
since?'

'Just so,' said Snawley. 'Correct in every particular, sir.'

'And this confession,' resumed Ralph, 'is to the effect that his
death was an invention of hers to wound you--was a part of a system
of annoyance, in short, which you seem to have adopted towards each
other--that the boy lived, but