ne with it. Take this, for your trouble.'

Hugh stepped forward to receive the piece of money he held out to him.
As he put it in his hand, he added:

'If you should happen to find anything else of this sort, or to pick
up any kind of information you may think I would like to have, bring it
here, will you, my good fellow?'

This was said with a smile which implied--or Hugh thought it did--'fail
to do so at your peril!' He answered that he would.

'And don't,' said his patron, with an air of the very kindest patronage,
'don't be at all downcast or uneasy respecting that little rashness we
have been speaking of. Your neck is as safe in my hands, my good fellow,
as though a baby's fingers clasped it, I assure you.--Take another
glass. You are quieter now.'

Hugh accepted it from his hand, and looking stealthily at his smiling
face, drank the contents in silence.

'Don't you--ha, ha!--don't you drink to the drink any more?' said Mr
Chester, in his most winning manner.

'To you, sir,' was the sullen answer, with something approaching to a
bow. 'I drink to you.'

'Thank you. God bless you. By the bye, what is your name, my good soul?
You are called Hugh, I know, of course--your other name?'

'I have no other name.'

'A very strange fellow! Do you mean that you never knew one, or that you
don't choose to tell it? Which?'

'I'd tell it if I could,' said Hugh, quickly. 'I can't. I have been
always called Hugh; nothing more. I never knew, nor saw, nor thought
about a father; and I was a boy of six--that's not very old--when they
hung my mother up at Tyburn for a couple of thousand men to stare at.
They might have let her live. She was poor enough.'

'How very sad!' exclaimed his patron, with a condescending smile. 'I
have no doubt she was an exceedingly fine woman.'

'You see that dog of mine?' said Hugh, abruptly.

'Faithful, I dare say?' rejoined his patron, looking at him through his
glass; 'and immensely clever? Virtuous and gifted animals, whether man
or beast, always are so very hideous.'

'Such a dog as that, and one of the same breed, was the only living
thing except me that howled that day,' said Hugh. 'Out of the two
thousand odd--there was a larger crowd for its being a woman--the dog
and I alone had any pity. If he'd have been a man, he'd have been
glad to be quit of her, for she had been forced to keep him lean and
half-starved; but being a dog, and not having a man's sense, he was
sorry.'

'It w