e you or I might have
remitted, will hang by him till death.

Uncle Mo may have detected, through the mere blood-poisoning of the
prison, the inherent baseness of the man, or may have recoiled from the
type. Anyway, his instinct was to get rid of him. And evidently the less
he said about anyone in Sapps Court the better. So he replied, surlily
enough considering his really amiable disposition:--"No--I could _not_
say what countrywoman she is, master." Then he thought a small trifle of
fiction thrown in might contribute to the detachment of this man's
curiosity from Mrs. Prichard, and added carelessly:--"Some sort of a
foringer I take it." Which accounted, too, for his knowing nothing about
her. No true Englishman knows anything about that benighted class.

Now the boy Michael, all eyes and ears, had somehow come to an imperfect
knowledge that Mrs. Prichard had been in Australia once on a time. The
imperfection of this knowledge had affected the name of the place, and
when he officiously struck in to supply it, he did so inaccurately.
"Horstrian she is!" He added:--"Rode in a circus, she did." But this was
only the reaction of misinterpretation on a too inventive brain.

"Then she ain't any use to me. Austrian, is she?" Thus the stranger; who
then, after a slow glare up and down the Court, in search of further
widows perhaps, turned to go, saying merely:--"I'll wish you a
good-morning, guv'nor. Good-morning!" Uncle Mo watched him as he lurched
up the Court, noting the oddity of his walk. This man, you see, had been
chained to another like himself, and his bias went to one side like a
horse that has gone in harness. This gait is known in the class he
belonged to as the "darby-roll," from the name by which fetters are
often spoken of.

"How long has that charackter been makin' the Court stink, young
Carrots?" said Uncle Moses to Michael.

"Afore you come up, Mr. Moses."

"Afore I come up. How long afore I come up?"

Michael appeared to pass through a paroxysm of acute calculation, ending
in a lucid calm with particulars. "Seven minute and a half," said he
resolutely. "Wanted my name, he did!"

"What did you tell him?"

"I told 'im a name. Orl correct it was. Only it warn't mine. I was too
fly for him."

"What name did you tell him?"

"Mr. Eking's at the doctor's shop. He'll find that all right. He can
read it over the door. He's got eyes in his head." No doubt sticklers
for conscience will quarrel with the vi