ve come to ask something," said the youth, sitting down on a
low box for the convenience of conversation, "and I hope, Tottie, that
you'll tell me the truth. Here's a half-crown for you. The truth,
mind, whether you think it will please me or not; I don't want to be
pleased--I want the truth."

"I'd tell you the truth without _that_," said Tottie, eyeing the
half-crown which Aspel still held between his fingers, "but hand it
over. We want a good many o' these things here, bein' pretty hard up at
times."

She spun the piece deftly in the air, caught it cleverly, and put it in
her pocket.

"Well, tell me, now, did you post the letter I gave you the night I took
tea with Miss Lillycrop?"

"Yes, I did," answered the child, with a nod of decision.

"You're telling the truth?"

"Yes; as sure as death."

Poor Tottie had made her strongest asseveration, but it did not convey
to Aspel nearly so much assurance as did the earnest gaze of her bright
and truthful eyes.

"You put it in the pillar?" he continued.

"Yes."

"At the end of the street?"

"Yes, at the end of the street; and oh, you've no idea what an awful
time I was about it; the slit was so high, an' I come down sitch a
cropper w'en it was done!"

"But it went in all right?"

"Yes, all right."

George Aspel sat for some moments in gloomy silence. He now felt
convinced of that which at first he had only suspected--namely, that his
intending patron was offended because he had not at once called in
person to thank him, instead of doing so by letter. Probably, also, he
had been hurt by the expressions in the letter to which Philip Maylands
had objected when it was read to him.

"Well, well," he exclaimed, suddenly giving a severe slap to his
unoffending thigh, "I'll have nothing to do with him. If he's so
touchy--as that comes to, the less that he and I have to say to each
other the better."

"Oh! _please_, sir, hush!" exclaimed Tottie, pointing with a look of
alarm to a bundle which lay in a dark corner, "you'll wake 'im."

"Wake who?"

"Father," whispered the child.

The visitor rose, took up the pint-bottle, and by the aid of its flaring
candle beheld something that resembled a large man huddled together in a
heap on a straw mattress, as he had last fallen down. His position,
together with his torn and disarranged garments, had destroyed all
semblance to human form save where a great limb protruded. His visage
was terribly disfigured by