nce. I know where to find you, and I'll come to
your Lock.'

'But, T'otherest Governor,' urged Mr Riderhood again, 'no luck never
come yet of a dry acquaintance. Let's wet it, in a mouth-fill of rum and
milk, T'otherest Governor.'

Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public-house, haunted by
unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts,
farmers' men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human
nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after
their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering
about the sloppy bar failed to discern at a glance in the passion-wasted
nightbird with respectable feathers, the worst nightbird of all.

An inspiration of affection for a half-drunken carter going his way led
to Mr Riderhood's being elevated on a high heap of baskets on a waggon,
and pursuing his journey recumbent on his back with his head on his
bundle. Bradley then turned to retrace his steps, and by-and-by struck
off through little-traversed ways, and by-and-by reached school and
home. Up came the sun to find him washed and brushed, methodically
dressed in decent black coat and waistcoat, decent formal black tie, and
pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his decent silver watch in its pocket,
and its decent hair-guard round his neck: a scholastic huntsman clad for
the field, with his fresh pack yelping and barking around him.

Yet more really bewitched than the miserable creatures of the
much-lamented times, who accused themselves of impossibilities under a
contagion of horror and the strongly suggestive influences of Torture,
he had been ridden hard by Evil Spirits in the night that was newly
gone. He had been spurred and whipped and heavily sweated. If a record
of the sport had usurped the places of the peaceful texts from Scripture
on the wall, the most advanced of the scholars might have taken fright
and run away from the master.

Chapter 12

MEANING MISCHIEF

Up came the sun, steaming all over London, and in its glorious
impartiality even condescending to make prismatic sparkles in the
whiskers of Mr Alfred Lammle as he sat at breakfast. In need of some
brightening from without, was Mr Alfred Lammle, for he had the air of
being dull enough within, and looked grievously discontented.

Mrs Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair of swindlers, with
the comfortable tie between them that each had swindled the other, sat
moodily obse