d I take his sister's money? Would
I touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through his white
hands--unless it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it back
to him? Peace, mother, and come away.

'And him so rich?' murmured the old woman. 'And us so poor!'

'Poor in not being able to pay him any of the harm we owe him,' returned
her daughter. 'Let him give me that sort of riches, and I'll take them
from him, and use them. Come away. Its no good looking at his horse.
Come away, mother!'

But the old woman, for whom the spectacle of Rob the Grinder returning
down the street, leading the riderless horse, appeared to have some
extraneous interest that it did not possess in itself, surveyed that
young man with the utmost earnestness; and seeming to have whatever
doubts she entertained, resolved as he drew nearer, glanced at her
daughter with brightened eyes and with her finger on her lip, and
emerging from the gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him on
the shoulder.

'Why, where's my sprightly Rob been, all this time!' she said, as he
turned round.

The sprightly Rob, whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the
salutation, looked exceedingly dismayed, and said, with the water rising
in his eyes:

'Oh! why can't you leave a poor cove alone, Misses Brown, when he's
getting an honest livelihood and conducting himself respectable? What do
you come and deprive a cove of his character for, by talking to him in
the streets, when he's taking his master's horse to a honest stable--a
horse you'd go and sell for cats' and dogs' meat if you had your way!
Why, I thought,' said the Grinder, producing his concluding remark as if
it were the climax of all his injuries, 'that you was dead long ago!'

'This is the way,' cried the old woman, appealing to her daughter, 'that
he talks to me, who knew him weeks and months together, my deary, and
have stood his friend many and many a time among the pigeon-fancying
tramps and bird-catchers.'

'Let the birds be, will you, Misses Brown?' retorted Rob, in a tone of
the acutest anguish. 'I think a cove had better have to do with lions
than them little creeturs, for they're always flying back in your face
when you least expect it. Well, how d'ye do and what do you want?' These
polite inquiries the Grinder uttered, as it were under protest, and with
great exasperation and vindictiveness.

'Hark how he speaks to an old friend, my deary!' said Mrs Brown, again
appe