out any expression whatever on his countenance. Presently he took
up an ill-folded epistle addressed to "Mister Denham" in a round and
rather rugged hand.

"Begging," he muttered with a slight frown.

"`Dear Uncle' (`eh!' he exclaimed,--turned over the leaf in surprise,
read the signature, and turned back to the beginning again, with the
least possible tinge of surprise still remaining), `I'm sorry' (humph)
`to have to inform you that the _Nancy_ has become a total wreck,'
(`indeed!') `on the Goodwin Sands.' (`Amazing sands these. What a
quantity of wealth they have swallowed up!') `The cargo has been
entirely lost,'--(`ah! it was insured to its full value,') `also two of
the hands.' (`H'm, their lives wouldn't be insured. These rough
creatures never do insure their lives; wonderfully improvident!') `I am
at present disabled, from the effects of a blow on the head received
during the storm.' (Very awkward; particularly so just now.) `No doubt
Bax will be up immediately to give you particulars.'" (Humph!)

"`The cause of the loss of your schooner was, in _my_ opinion,' (Mr
Denham's eyebrows here rose in contemptuous surprise), `_unseaworthiness
of vessel and stores_.'"

Mr Denham made no comment on this part of the epistle. A dark frown
settled on his brow as he crumpled the letter in his hand, dropped it on
the ground as if it had been a loathsome creature, and set his foot on
it.

Denham was uncommonly gruff and forbidding all that day. He spoke
harshly to old Mr Crumps; found fault with the clerks to such an
extent, that they began to regard the office as a species of Pandemonium
which _ought_ to have smelt sulphurous instead of musty; and rendered
the life of Peekins so insupportable that the poor boy occupied his few
moments of leisure in speculating on the average duration of human life
and wondering whether it would not be better, on the whole, to make
himself an exception to the general rule by leaping off London Bridge at
high water--blue-tights, buttons, and all!

Things continued in this felicitous condition in the office until five
in the afternoon, when there was a change, not so much in the moral as
in the physical atmosphere. It came in the form of a thick fog, which
rolled down the crooked places of Redwharf Lane, poured through
keyholes, curled round the cranes on the warehouses, and the old
anchors, cables, and buoys in the lumber-yards; travelled over the
mudflats, and crept out upon th