nd offered a shilling for coach-hire
home. Mr Dolls, accepting the shilling, promptly laid it out in
two threepennyworths of conspiracy against his life, and two
threepennyworths of raging repentance. Returning to the Chambers with
which burden, he was descried coming round into the court, by the wary
young Blight watching from the window: who instantly closed the outer
door, and left the miserable object to expend his fury on the panels.

The more the door resisted him, the more dangerous and imminent became
that bloody conspiracy against his life. Force of police arriving,
he recognized in them the conspirators, and laid about him hoarsely,
fiercely, staringly, convulsively, foamingly. A humble machine, familiar
to the conspirators and called by the expressive name of Stretcher,
being unavoidably sent for, he was rendered a harmless bundle of torn
rags by being strapped down upon it, with voice and consciousness gone
out of him, and life fast going. As this machine was borne out at the
Temple gate by four men, the poor little dolls' dressmaker and her
Jewish friend were coming up the street.

'Let us see what it is,' cried the dressmaker. 'Let us make haste and
look, godmother.'

The brisk little crutch-stick was but too brisk. 'O gentlemen,
gentlemen, he belongs to me!'

'Belongs to you?' said the head of the party, stopping it.

'O yes, dear gentlemen, he's my child, out without leave. My poor bad,
bad boy! and he don't know me, he don't know me! O what shall I do,'
cried the little creature, wildly beating her hands together, 'when my
own child don't know me!'

The head of the party looked (as well he might) to the old man for
explanation. He whispered, as the dolls' dressmaker bent over the
exhausted form and vainly tried to extract some sign of recognition from
it: 'It's her drunken father.'

As the load was put down in the street, Riah drew the head of the party
aside, and whispered that he thought the man was dying. 'No, surely
not?' returned the other. But he became less confident, on looking, and
directed the bearers to 'bring him to the nearest doctor's shop.'

Thither he was brought; the window becoming from within, a wall of
faces, deformed into all kinds of shapes through the agency of globular
red bottles, green bottles, blue bottles, and other coloured bottles. A
ghastly light shining upon him that he didn't need, the beast so furious
but a few minutes gone, was quiet enough now, with a strange