cal, 'and I can never forget
that you have been shamefully defrauded. So as there's nobody looking,
you had better give your Uncle Ned a kiss. There, you rogue,' resumed
Mr Bloomfield, when the ceremony had been daintily performed, 'this very
pretty young lady is yours, and a vast deal more than you deserve. But
now, let us get back to the houseboat, get up steam on the launch, and
away back to town.'

'That's the thing!' cried Gideon; 'and tomorrow there will be no
houseboat, and no Jimson, and no carrier's cart, and no piano; and when
Harker awakes on the ditchside, he may tell himself the whole affair has
been a dream.'

'Aha!' said Uncle Ned, 'but there's another man who will have a
different awakening. That fellow in the cart will find he has been too
clever by half.'

'Uncle Ned and Julia,' said Gideon, 'I am as happy as the King of
Tartary, my heart is like a threepenny-bit, my heels are like feathers;
I am out of all my troubles, Julia's hand is in mine. Is this a time
for anything but handsome sentiments? Why, there's not room in me for
anything that's not angelic! And when I think of that poor unhappy devil
in the cart, I stand here in the night and cry with a single heart God
help him!'

'Amen,' said Uncle Ned.

CHAPTER XIII. The Tribulations of Morris: Part the Second

In a really polite age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye
again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of
the day; it presents, besides, features of a high, almost a repulsive,
morality; and if it should prove the means of preventing any respectable
and inexperienced gentleman from plunging light-heartedly into crime,
even political crime, this work will not have been penned in vain.

He rose on the morrow of his night with Michael, rose from the leaden
slumber of distress, to find his hand tremulous, his eyes closed with
rheum, his throat parched, and his digestion obviously paralysed.
'Lord knows it's not from eating!' Morris thought; and as he dressed
he reconsidered his position under several heads. Nothing will so well
depict the troubled seas in which he was now voyaging as a review
of these various anxieties. I have thrown them (for the reader's
convenience) into a certain order; but in the mind of one poor human
equal they whirled together like the dust of hurricanes. With the same
obliging preoccupation, I have put a name to each of his distresses;
and it will be observed with pity tha