lden Dustman referred
me to you.'

Mr Lammle, striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel
to the story of the man from somewhere. Silence ensues upon the
proclamation.

'I assure you,' says Lightwood, glancing round the table, 'I have
nothing to tell.' But Eugene adding in a low voice, 'There, tell
it, tell it!' he corrects himself with the addition, 'Nothing worth
mentioning.'

Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely worth
mentioning, and become politely clamorous. Veneering is also visited by
a perception to the same effect. But it is understood that his attention
is now rather used up, and difficult to hold, that being the tone of the
House of Commons.

'Pray don't be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen,' says
Mortimer Lightwood, 'because I shall have finished long before you have
fallen into comfortable attitudes. It's like--'

'It's like,' impatiently interrupts Eugene, 'the children's narrative:

"I'll tell you a story
Of Jack a Manory,
And now my story's begun;
I'll tell you another
Of Jack and his brother,
And now my story is done."

--Get on, and get it over!'

Eugene says this with a sound of vexation in his voice, leaning back in
his chair and looking balefully at Lady Tippins, who nods to him as
her dear Bear, and playfully insinuates that she (a self-evident
proposition) is Beauty, and he Beast.

'The reference,' proceeds Mortimer, 'which I suppose to be made by my
honourable and fair enslaver opposite, is to the following circumstance.
Very lately, the young woman, Lizzie Hexam, daughter of the late Jesse
Hexam, otherwise Gaffer, who will be remembered to have found the body
of the man from somewhere, mysteriously received, she knew not from
whom, an explicit retraction of the charges made against her father, by
another water-side character of the name of Riderhood. Nobody believed
them, because little Rogue Riderhood--I am tempted into the paraphrase
by remembering the charming wolf who would have rendered society a great
service if he had devoured Mr Riderhood's father and mother in their
infancy--had previously played fast and loose with the said charges,
and, in fact, abandoned them. However, the retraction I have mentioned
found its way into Lizzie Hexam's hands, with a general flavour on it
of having been favoured by some anonymous messenger in a dark cloak and
slouched hat, and was by her forwarded, in her fath