ner who had died the night before, awaiting
the mockery of an inquest. The body! It is the lawyer's term for the
restless, whirling mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes, and
griefs, that make up the living man. The law had his body; and there it
lay, clothed in grave-clothes, an awful witness to its tender mercy.

'Would you like to see a whistling-shop, Sir?' inquired Job Trotter.

'What do you mean?' was Mr. Pickwick's counter inquiry.

'A vistlin' shop, Sir,' interposed Mr. Weller.

'What is that, Sam?--A bird-fancier's?' inquired Mr. Pickwick.

'Bless your heart, no, Sir,' replied Job; 'a whistling-shop, Sir, is
where they sell spirits.' Mr. Job Trotter briefly explained here, that
all persons, being prohibited under heavy penalties from conveying
spirits into debtors' prisons, and such commodities being highly prized
by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein, it had occurred to some
speculative turnkey to connive, for certain lucrative considerations, at
two or three prisoners retailing the favourite article of gin, for their
own profit and advantage.

'This plan, you see, Sir, has been gradually introduced into all the
prisons for debt,' said Mr. Trotter.

'And it has this wery great advantage,' said Sam, 'that the turnkeys
takes wery good care to seize hold o' ev'rybody but them as pays 'em,
that attempts the willainy, and wen it gets in the papers they're
applauded for their wigilance; so it cuts two ways--frightens other
people from the trade, and elewates their own characters.'

'Exactly so, Mr. Weller,' observed Job.

'Well, but are these rooms never searched to ascertain whether any
spirits are concealed in them?' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Cert'nly they are, Sir,' replied Sam; 'but the turnkeys knows
beforehand, and gives the word to the wistlers, and you may wistle for
it wen you go to look.'

By this time, Job had tapped at a door, which was opened by a gentleman
with an uncombed head, who bolted it after them when they had walked
in, and grinned; upon which Job grinned, and Sam also; whereupon Mr.
Pickwick, thinking it might be expected of him, kept on smiling to the
end of the interview.

The gentleman with the uncombed head appeared quite satisfied with this
mute announcement of their business, and, producing a flat stone bottle,
which might hold about a couple of quarts, from beneath his bedstead,
filled out three glasses of gin, which Job Trotter and Sam disposed of
in a most wor