ong the Strand, and into Pall Mall, and had turned
up-hill towards Hyde Park Corner; Bradley Headstone waiting on the pace
and lead of Riderhood, and leaving him to indicate the course. So slow
were the schoolmaster's thoughts, and so indistinct his purposes when
they were but tributary to the one absorbing purpose or rather when,
like dark trees under a stormy sky, they only lined the long vista at
the end of which he saw those two figures of Wrayburn and Lizzie on
which his eyes were fixed--that at least a good half-mile was traversed
before he spoke again. Even then, it was only to ask:

'Where is your Lock?'

'Twenty mile and odd--call it five-and-twenty mile and odd, if you
like--up stream,' was the sullen reply.

'How is it called?'

'Plashwater Weir Mill Lock.'

'Suppose I was to offer you five shillings; what then?'

'Why, then, I'd take it,' said Mr Riderhood.

The schoolmaster put his hand in his pocket, and produced two
half-crowns, and placed them in Mr Riderhood's palm: who stopped at
a convenient doorstep to ring them both, before acknowledging their
receipt.

'There's one thing about you, T'otherest Governor,' said Riderhood,
faring on again, 'as looks well and goes fur. You're a ready money man.
Now;' when he had carefully pocketed the coins on that side of himself
which was furthest from his new friend; 'what's this for?'

'For you.'

'Why, o' course I know THAT,' said Riderhood, as arguing something that
was self-evident. 'O' course I know very well as no man in his right
senses would suppose as anythink would make me give it up agin when I'd
once got it. But what do you want for it?'

'I don't know that I want anything for it. Or if I do want anything
for it, I don't know what it is.' Bradley gave this answer in a stolid,
vacant, and self-communing manner, which Mr Riderhood found very
extraordinary.

'You have no goodwill towards this Wrayburn,' said Bradley, coming to
the name in a reluctant and forced way, as if he were dragged to it.

'No.'

'Neither have I.'

Riderhood nodded, and asked: 'Is it for that?'

'It's as much for that as anything else. It's something to be agreed
with, on a subject that occupies so much of one's thoughts.'

'It don't agree with YOU,' returned Mr Riderhood, bluntly. 'No! It
don't, T'otherest Governor, and it's no use a lookin' as if you wanted
to make out that it did. I tell you it rankles in you. It rankles in
you, rusts in you, and pisons you.'