le in his hand.

"So I have caught you at last," said he; "I'll teach ye, you young
highwayman, to come skulking about my properties!"

Young as I was, I remarked that his manner of speaking was different from
that of any people with whom I had been in the habit of associating. It
was quite as strange as his appearance, and yet it nothing resembled the
foreign English which I had been in the habit of hearing through the
palisades of the prison; he could scarcely be a foreigner.

"Your properties!" said I; "I am in the King's Lane. Why did you put
them there, if you did not wish them to be seen?"

"On the spy," said the woman, "hey? I'll drown him in the sludge in the
toad-pond over the hedge."

"So we will," said the man, "drown him anon in the mud!"

"Drown me, will you?" said I; "I should like to see you! What's all this
about? Was it because I saw you with your hands full of straw plait, and
my mother there--"

"Yes," said the woman; "what was I about?"

_Myself_. How should I know? Making bad money, perhaps!

And it will be as well here to observe, that at this time there was much
bad money in circulation in the neighbourhood, generally supposed to be
fabricated by the prisoners, so that this false coin and straw plait
formed the standard subjects of conversation at Norman Cross.

"I'll strangle thee," said the beldame, dashing at me. "Bad money, is
it?"

"Leave him to me, wifelkin," said the man, interposing; "you shall now
see how I'll baste him down the lane."

_Myself_. I tell you what, my chap, you had better put down that thing
of yours; my father lies concealed within my tepid breast, and if to me
you offer any harm or wrong, I'll call him forth to help me with his
forked tongue.

_Man_. What do you mean, ye Bengui's bantling? I never heard such
discourse in all my life: playman's speech or Frenchman's talk--which, I
wonder? Your father! tell the mumping villain that if he comes near my
fire I'll serve him out as I will you. Take that--Tiny Jesus! what have
we got here! Oh, delicate Jesus! what is the matter with the child?

I had made a motion which the viper understood; and now, partly
disengaging itself from my bosom, where it had lain perdu, it raised its
head to a level with my face, and stared upon my enemy with its
glittering eyes.

The man stood like one transfixed, and the ladle with which he had aimed
a blow at me, now hung in the air like the hand which held it: his