him stood a stunted and meagre girl, with a back like
a grasshopper; a deformity occasioned by the displacement of the
bladebone, and prevalent among the girls of Wodgate from the cramping
posture of their usual toil. Her long melancholy visage and vacant stare
at Morley as he passed, attracted his notice, and it occurring to
him that the opportunity was convenient to enquire something of the
individual of whom he was in search, he stopped and addressed the
workman:

"Do you happen to know friend a person here or hereabouts by name
Hatton?"

"Hatton!" said the youth looking up with a grin, yet still continuing
his labour, "I should think I did!"

"Well, that's fortunate; you can tell me something about him?"

"Do you see this here?" said the youth still grinning, and letting the
file drop from his distorted and knotty hand, he pointed to a deep scar
that crossed his forehead, "he did that."

"An accident?"

"Very like. An accident that often happened. I should like to have a
crown for every time he has cut my head open. He cut it open once with a
key and twice with a lock; he knocked the corner of a lock into my head
twice, once with a bolt and once with a shut; you know what that is;
the thing what runs into the staple. He hit me on the head with a hammer
once. That was a blow! I fell away that time. When I came to, master had
stopped the blood with some fur off his hat. I had to go on with my work
immediately; master said I should do my stint if I worked till twelve
o'clock at night. Many's the ash stick he has broken on my body;
sometimes the weals remained on me for a-week; he cut my eyelid open
once with a nutstick; cut a regular hole in it, and it bled all over the
files I was working at. He has pulled my ears sometimes that I thought
they must come off in his hand. But all this was a mere nothin to this
here cut; that was serous; and if I hadn't got thro' that they do say
there must have been a crowner's quest; though I think that gammon, tor
old Tugsford did for one of his prentices, and the body was never found.
And now you ask me if I know Hatton? I should think I did!" And the
lank, haggard youth laughed merrily, as if he had been recounting a
series of the happiest adventures.

"But is there no redress for such iniquitous oppression," said Morley,
who had listened with astonishment to this complacent statement. "Is
there no magistrate to apply to?"

"No no," said the filer with an air of obvious pr