e in his
life, he saw himself addressed

"TITTLEBAT TITMOUSE, ESQUIRE."

If his room had been large enough to admit of it, he would have skipped
round it again and again in his frantic ecstasy. Having read over
several times the blessed letter of Mr. Gammon, he hastily folded it up,
crumpled up the bank-note in his hand, clapped his hat on his head, blew
out his candle, rushed down-stairs as if a mad dog were at his heels,
and in three or four minutes' time might have been seen standing
breathless before old Balls, whom he had almost electrified by asking,
with an eager and joyous air, for a return of the articles which he had
only an hour before pawned with him; at the same time laying down the
duplicates and the bank-note. The latter, old Balls scrutinized with
most anxious exactness, and even suspicion--but it seemed perfectly
unexceptionable; so he re-delivered to Titmouse his precious ornaments,
and the change out of his note, _minus_ a trifling sum for interest.
Titmouse then started off at top speed to Huckaback; but it suddenly
occurring to him as possible that that gentleman, on hearing of his
good fortune, might look for an immediate repayment of the ten
shillings he had recently lent to Titmouse, he stopped
short--paused--and returned home. There he had hardly been seated a
moment, when down he pelted again, to buy a sheet of paper and a wafer
or two, to write his letter to Mr. Gammon; which having obtained, he
returned at the same speed, almost overturning his fat landlady, who
looked after him as though he were a mad cat scampering up and
down-stairs, and fearing that he had gone suddenly crazy. The note he
wrote to Mr. Gammon was so exceedingly extravagant, that, candid as I
have (I trust) hitherto shown myself in the delineation of Mr.
Titmouse's character, I cannot bring myself to give the aforesaid letter
to the reader--making all allowances for the extraordinary excitement of
its writer.

Sleep, that night and morning, found and left Mr. Titmouse the assured
exulting master of TEN THOUSAND A-YEAR. Of this fact, the oftener he
read Mr. Gammon's letter, the stronger became his convictions. 'Twas
undoubtedly rather a large inference from small premises; but it secured
him unspeakable happiness, _for a time_, at a possible cost of future
disappointment and misery, which he did not pause to consider. The fact
is that logic (according to Dr. Watts, but not according to Dr.
Whateley