e ticket upon twenty-seven in the third, and them as is in the
room will be your chums.'

'Are there many of them?' inquired Mr. Pickwick dubiously.

'Three,' replied Mr. Roker.

Mr. Pickwick coughed.

'One of 'em's a parson,' said Mr. Roker, filling up a little piece of
paper as he spoke; 'another's a butcher.'

'Eh?' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.

'A butcher,' repeated Mr. Roker, giving the nib of his pen a tap on the
desk to cure it of a disinclination to mark. 'What a thorough-paced
goer he used to be sure-ly! You remember Tom Martin, Neddy?' said Roker,
appealing to another man in the lodge, who was paring the mud off his
shoes with a five-and-twenty-bladed pocket-knife.

'I should think so,' replied the party addressed, with a strong emphasis
on the personal pronoun.

'Bless my dear eyes!' said Mr. Roker, shaking his head slowly from side
to side, and gazing abstractedly out of the grated windows before him,
as if he were fondly recalling some peaceful scene of his early
youth; 'it seems but yesterday that he whopped the coal-heaver down
Fox-under-the-Hill by the wharf there. I think I can see him now,
a-coming up the Strand between the two street-keepers, a little sobered
by the bruising, with a patch o' winegar and brown paper over his
right eyelid, and that 'ere lovely bulldog, as pinned the little boy
arterwards, a-following at his heels. What a rum thing time is, ain't
it, Neddy?'

The gentleman to whom these observations were addressed, who appeared
of a taciturn and thoughtful cast, merely echoed the inquiry; Mr. Roker,
shaking off the poetical and gloomy train of thought into which he had
been betrayed, descended to the common business of life, and resumed his
pen.

'Do you know what the third gentlemen is?' inquired Mr. Pickwick, not
very much gratified by this description of his future associates.

'What is that Simpson, Neddy?' said Mr. Roker, turning to his companion.

'What Simpson?' said Neddy.

'Why, him in twenty-seven in the third, that this gentleman's going to
be chummed on.'

'Oh, him!' replied Neddy; 'he's nothing exactly. He WAS a horse
chaunter: he's a leg now.'

'Ah, so I thought,' rejoined Mr. Roker, closing the book, and placing
the small piece of paper in Mr. Pickwick's hands. 'That's the ticket,
sir.'

Very much perplexed by this summary disposition of this person, Mr.
Pickwick walked back into the prison, revolving in his mind what he had
better do. Convinced, however,