ese pieces of artillery he regularly fired every Easter Monday
in celebration of what he called the joyfullest anniversary of his
life. From which it is to be assumed that Sloper and his wife had not
lived together very happily. But though the Whitechapel County Court
records have been searched and inquiries made in that part of London
where Sloper's shop was situated, it has not been discovered that Mrs.
Sloper's end was hastened by her husband's cruelty; that, in short,
more happened between them than constant quarrels. Yet it must be said
that Sloper behaved as though, in truth (as the old adage would put
it), his little figure contained no more than the ninth part of a
soul, when he mounted his guns and rudely and noisily triumphed over
the dead whom he perhaps might have been afraid of in life, and
coarsely emphasised with blasts of gunpowder his annual joy over his
release.

Now in the east end of London, not above twenty minutes' walk from
Sloper's old shop, there lived a sailor, named Joseph Westlake. This
man had served when a boy under Collingwood, had smelt gunpowder at
Navarino under Codrington, had been concerned in several dashing
cutting-out jobs in the West Indies, and was altogether as hearty and
worthy a specimen of an old English sailor of the vanished school as
you could ask to see.

He had been shot in the leg; he carried a great scar over his brow; he
was as full of yarns as a piece of ancient ship's biscuit of weevils;
he swore with more oaths than a Dutchman; sneered prodigiously at
steam; and held the meanest opinion of the then existing race of
seamen, who, he said, never could have won the old battles which had
been the making of this kingdom, whether under Howe's or gallant
Jervis's, or the lion-hearted Nelson's flag.

The country had no further need of his services on his being paid off
out of his last ship, and he was somewhat at a loss, until happening
to be in the neighbourhood of Wapping, and looking in upon an old
shipmate who kept a public house, he learnt that a lawyer had been
making inquiries for him. He called upon that lawyer, and was
astounded to hear that during his absence from England a fortune of
L15,000 had been left to him by an aunt in Australia.

Joe Westlake on this took a little house in the Stepney district, and
endeavoured to settle down as an east-end gent; but his efforts to
ride to a shore-going anchor were hopeless. His mind was always
roaming. He had followe