him in a disagreeable predicament from which he might have some
difficulty in extricating himself, Nicholas soon slackened his pace,
and suffered Newman Noggs to come up with him: which he did, in so
breathless a condition, that it seemed impossible he could have held out
for a minute longer.

'I will go straight to Bray's,' said Nicholas. 'I will see this man.
If there is a feeling of humanity lingering in his breast, a spark of
consideration for his own child, motherless and friendless as she is, I
will awaken it.'

'You will not,' replied Newman. 'You will not, indeed.'

'Then,' said Nicholas, pressing onward, 'I will act upon my first
impulse, and go straight to Ralph Nickleby.'

'By the time you reach his house he will be in bed,' said Newman.

'I'll drag him from it,' cried Nicholas.

'Tut, tut,' said Noggs. 'Be yourself.'

'You are the best of friends to me, Newman,' rejoined Nicholas after a
pause, and taking his hand as he spoke. 'I have made head against many
trials; but the misery of another, and such misery, is involved in this
one, that I declare to you I am rendered desperate, and know not how to
act.'

In truth, it did seem a hopeless case. It was impossible to make any use
of such intelligence as Newman Noggs had gleaned, when he lay concealed
in the closet. The mere circumstance of the compact between Ralph
Nickleby and Gride would not invalidate the marriage, or render Bray
averse to it, who, if he did not actually know of the existence of some
such understanding, doubtless suspected it. What had been hinted with
reference to some fraud on Madeline, had been put, with sufficient
obscurity by Arthur Gride, but coming from Newman Noggs, and obscured
still further by the smoke of his pocket-pistol, it became wholly
unintelligible, and involved in utter darkness.

'There seems no ray of hope,' said Nicholas.

'The greater necessity for coolness, for reason, for consideration,
for thought,' said Newman, pausing at every alternate word, to look
anxiously in his friend's face. 'Where are the brothers?'

'Both absent on urgent business, as they will be for a week to come.'

'Is there no way of communicating with them? No way of getting one of
them here by tomorrow night?'

'Impossible!' said Nicholas, 'the sea is between us and them. With the
fairest winds that ever blew, to go and return would take three days and
nights.'

'Their nephew,' said Newman, 'their old clerk.'

'What could either