philosophical owner of the universal penknife growled an
affirmative.

'I knowed you'd want a room for yourself, bless you!' said Mr. Roker.
'Let me see. You'll want some furniture. You'll hire that of me, I
suppose? That's the reg'lar thing.'

'With great pleasure,' replied Mr. Pickwick.

'There's a capital room up in the coffee-room flight, that belongs to a
Chancery prisoner,' said Mr. Roker. 'It'll stand you in a pound a week.
I suppose you don't mind that?'

'Not at all,' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Just step there with me,' said Roker, taking up his hat with great
alacrity; 'the matter's settled in five minutes. Lord! why didn't you
say at first that you was willing to come down handsome?'

The matter was soon arranged, as the turnkey had foretold. The Chancery
prisoner had been there long enough to have lost his friends, fortune,
home, and happiness, and to have acquired the right of having a room
to himself. As he laboured, however, under the inconvenience of often
wanting a morsel of bread, he eagerly listened to Mr. Pickwick's
proposal to rent the apartment, and readily covenanted and agreed
to yield him up the sole and undisturbed possession thereof, in
consideration of the weekly payment of twenty shillings; from which fund
he furthermore contracted to pay out any person or persons that might be
chummed upon it.

As they struck the bargain, Mr. Pickwick surveyed him with a painful
interest. He was a tall, gaunt, cadaverous man, in an old greatcoat and
slippers, with sunken cheeks, and a restless, eager eye. His lips were
bloodless, and his bones sharp and thin. God help him! the iron teeth
of confinement and privation had been slowly filing him down for twenty
years.

'And where will you live meanwhile, Sir?' said Mr. Pickwick, as he laid
the amount of the first week's rent, in advance, on the tottering table.

The man gathered up the money with a trembling hand, and replied that he
didn't know yet; he must go and see where he could move his bed to.

'I am afraid, sir,' said Mr. Pickwick, laying his hand gently and
compassionately on his arm--'I am afraid you will have to live in some
noisy, crowded place. Now, pray, consider this room your own when you
want quiet, or when any of your friends come to see you.'

'Friends!' interposed the man, in a voice which rattled in his throat.
'if I lay dead at the bottom of the deepest mine in the world; tight
screwed down and soldered in my coffin; rotting in th