pp!--How are you, my dear sir?--What brings you so far from
home?"

"I am on a visit to my daughter, Anna Maria. She has not been long
married--to young Jessop. Old Jessop is one of the principal merchants
at Ouzelford--very respectable worthy family. The young couple are
happily settled in a remarkably snug villa--that is it with the portico,
not a hundred yards behind us, to the right. Very handsome town,
Ouzelford; you are bound to it, of course?--we can walk together. I am
going to look at the papers in the City Rooms--very fine rooms they
are. But you are straight from London, perhaps, and have seen the day's
journals? Any report of the meeting in aid of the Ragged Schools?"

"Not that I know of. I have not come from London this morning, nor seen
the papers."

"Oh!--there's a strange-looking fellow following us; but perhaps he is
your servant?"

"Not so, but my travelling companion--indeed my guide. In fact, I come
to Ouzelford in the faint hope of discovering there a poor old friend of
mine, of whom I have long been in search."

"Perhaps the Jessops can help you; they know everybody at Ouzelford. But
now I meet you thus by surprise, Mr. George, I should very much like
to ask your advice on a matter which has been much on my mind the last
twenty-four hours, and which concerns a person I contrived to discover
at Ouzelford, though I certainly was not in search of him--a person
about whom you and I had a conversation a few years ago, when you were
staying with your worthy father."

"Eh?" said George, quickly; "whom do you speak of?" "That singular
vagabond who took me in, you remember--called himself Chapman--real
name William Losely, a returned convict. You would have it that he was
innocent, though the man himself had pleaded guilty on his trial."

"His whole character belied his lips then. Oh, Mr. Hartopp, that man
commit the crime imputed to him!--a planned, deliberate robbery--an
ungrateful, infamous breach of trust! That man--that! he who rejects the
money he does not earn, even when pressed on him by anxious imploring
friends--he who has now gone voluntarily forth, aged and lonely, to
wring his bread from the humblest calling rather than incur the risk
of injuring the child with whose existence he had charged himself!--the
dark midnight thief! Believe him not, though his voice may say it. To
screen, perhaps, some other man, he is telling you a noble lie. But what
of him? Have you really seen him, and at