ully
concentrating all the ingenious and laborious neatness he had ever
expended on map or plan in Mr Pecksniff's workroom. It was a very marvel
of a catalogue; for Tom sometimes thought he was really getting his
money too easily, and he had determined within himself that this
document should take a little of his superfluous leisure out of him.

So with pens and ruler, and compasses and india-rubber, and pencil, and
black ink, and red ink, Tom worked away all the morning. He thought a
good deal about Martin, and their interview of yesterday, and would have
been far easier in his mind if he could have resolved to confide it
to his friend John, and to have taken his opinion on the subject.
But besides that he knew what John's boiling indignation would be, he
bethought himself that he was helping Martin now in a matter of great
moment, and that to deprive the latter of his assistance at such a
crisis of affairs, would be to inflict a serious injury upon him.

'So I'll keep it to myself,' said Tom, with a sigh. 'I'll keep it to
myself.'

And to work he went again, more assiduously than ever, with the pens,
and the ruler, and the india-rubber, and the pencils, and the red ink,
that he might forget it.

He had laboured away another hour or more, when he heard a footstep in
the entry, down below.

'Ah!' said Tom, looking towards the door; 'time was, not long ago
either, when that would have set me wondering and expecting. But I have
left off now.'

The footstep came on, up the stairs.

'Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,' said Tom, counting. 'Now
you'll stop. Nobody ever comes past the thirty-eighth stair.'

The person did, certainly, but only to take breath; for up the footstep
came again. Forty, forty-one, forty-two, and so on.

The door stood open. As the tread advanced, Tom looked impatiently and
eagerly towards it. When a figure came upon the landing, and arriving
in the doorway, stopped and gazed at him, he rose up from his chair, and
half believed he saw a spirit.

Old Martin Chuzzlewit! The same whom he had left at Mr Pecksniff's, weak
and sinking!

The same? No, not the same, for this old man, though old, was strong,
and leaned upon his stick with a vigorous hand, while with the other
he signed to Tom to make no noise. One glance at the resolute face, the
watchful eye, the vigorous hand upon the staff, the triumphant purpose
in the figure, and such a light broke in on Tom as blinded him.

'You hav