he _did_ want a little rousing, and
not a little, prior to making any very warlike demonstration: unless,
indeed, against paupers, or other person or persons trained down for
the purpose.

'You are a fool,' said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; 'and had better hold your
tongue.'

'He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can't speak in a
lower tone,' said Monks, grimly. 'So! He's your husband, eh?'

'He my husband!' tittered the matron, parrying the question.

'I thought as much, when you came in,' rejoined Monks, marking the
angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she spoke. 'So
much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing with two people,
when I find that there's only one will between them. I'm in earnest.
See here!'

He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas bag, told
out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to the
woman.

'Now,' he said, 'gather them up; and when this cursed peal of thunder,
which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top, is gone, let's
hear your story.'

The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and break
almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks, raising his face from
the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should say. The
faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant over the small
table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also leant forward to
render her whisper audible. The sickly rays of the suspended lantern
falling directly upon them, aggravated the paleness and anxiety of
their countenances: which, encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness,
looked ghastly in the extreme.

'When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,' the matron began,
'she and I were alone.'

'Was there no one by?' asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper; 'No
sick wretch or idiot in some other bed? No one who could hear, and
might, by possibility, understand?'

'Not a soul,' replied the woman; 'we were alone. _I_ stood alone
beside the body when death came over it.'

'Good,' said Monks, regarding her attentively. 'Go on.'

'She spoke of a young creature,' resumed the matron, 'who had brought a
child into the world some years before; not merely in the same room,
but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.'

'Ay?' said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his shoulder,
'Blood! How things come about!'

'The child was the one you named to him last night,' said