ew that the demands of Truth can
be satisfied by an authentic name applied to the wrong person.

It did not seem to grate on Uncle Moses, who only said:--"Sharp boy! But
don't you tell no more lies than's wanted. Only now and again to shame
the Devil, as the sayin' is. And you, little Dave, don't you tell
nothing but the truth, 'cos your Aunt M'riar she says not to it." Dave
promised to oblige.

Aunt M'riar, returning home with Dolly from a place known as "Chapel"--a
place generally understood to be good, and an antidote to The Rising
Sun, which represented Satan and was bad--only missed meeting this
visitor to Sapps by a couple of minutes. She might have just come face
to face with him the very minute he left the Court, if she had not
delayed a little at the baker's, where she had prevailed on
Sharmanses--the promoter of some latent heat in the bowels of the earth
which came through to the pavement, making it nice and dry and warm to
set upon in damp, cold weather--to keep the family Sunday dinner back
just enough to guarantee it brown all through, and the potatoes crackly
all over. Sharmanses was that obliging he would have kep' it in--it was
a shoulder of mutton--any time you named, but he declined to be
responsible that the gravy should not dry up. So Dolly carried her
aunt's prayer-book, feeling like the priests, the Sons of Levi, which
bare the Ark of the Covenant; and Aunt M'riar carried the Tin of the
Shoulder of Mutton, and took great care not to spill any of the Gravy.
The office of the Sons of Levi was a sinecure by comparison.

Why did our astute young friend Michael keep his counsel about the
identity of the bloke that come down the Court that Sunday morning?
Well--it was not mere astuteness or vulgar cunning on the watch for an
honorarium. It was really a noble chivalry akin to that of the schoolboy
who will be flogged till the blood comes, rather than tell upon his
schoolfellow, even though he loathes the misdemeanour of the latter. It
was enough for Michael that this man was wanted by Scotland Yard, to
make silence seem a duty--silence, at any rate, until interrogated. He
was certainly not going to volunteer information--was, in fact, in the
position of the Humanitarian who declined to say which way the fox had
gone when the scent was at fault; only with this difference--that the
hounds were not in sight. Neither was he threatened with the
hunting-whip of an irate M.F.H. "Give the beggar his chance!"--