erked round in his chair, escaping a gash by a
hair's-breadth, and addressed the heavy citizen--

"Mr. Pomphlett, sir, it was not for the sake of listening to your
observations upon public affairs that I came straight off my ship to
this shop, but to hear the news."

The barber coughed. Mr. Pomphlett feebly traced a curve in the air
with his pipe-stem, and answered sulkily--

"I s-said nun-nothing. I f-felt unwell."

"He suffers," interposed Mr. Pomphlett's neighbour on the settle, a
long-necked man in brown, "from the wind; don't you, Pomphlett?"

Mr. Pomphlett nodded with an aggrieved air, and sucked his pipe.

"Death," continued the man in brown, by way of setting the
conversation on its legs again, "has been busy in Harwich, Barker."

"Ah! now we come to business! Barber, who's dead?"

"Alderman Croten, sir."

"Tut-tut. Croten gone?"

"Yes, sir; palsy took him at a ripe age. And Abel's gone, the Town
Crier; and old Mistress Pinch's bad leg carried her from us last
Christmas Day, of all days in the year; and young Mr. Eastwell was
snatched away by a chain-shot in the affair with the Smyrna fleet;
and Mistress Salt--that was daughter of old Sir Jabez Tellworthy, and
broke her father's heart--she's a widow in straitened circumstances,
and living up at the old house again--"

"_What!_"

Captain Barker bounced off his chair like a dried pea from a shovel.

"There now! Your honour's chin is wounded."

"P'sh! give me your towel." He snatched it from the barber's arm and
mopped away the blood and lather from his jaw. "Mistress Salt a
widow? When? How?"

"I thought, maybe, your honour would know about it."

"Don't think. Roderick Salt dead? Tell me this instant, or--"

"He was drowned, sir, in a ditch, they tell me, but two months after
he sailed with his company of Foot Guards, in the spring of this
year. It seems 'twas a ditch that the Marshal Turenne had the
misfortune to forget about--"

"My hat--where is it? Quick!"

Already Captain Barker had plucked the napkin from his throat, caught
up his sword from a chair, and was buckling on the belt in a
tremendous hurry.

"But your honour forgets the wig, which is but half curled; and your
honour's face shaved on the one side only."

The hunchback's answer was to snatch his wig from between the
apprentice's tongs, clap it on his head, ram his hat on the top of
it, and flounce out at the shop door.

The streets were full of folk, but he