hoking him till he gasped and then putting the spoon
down his throat.

Such was the guardian Jonas chose to keep old Chuffey quiet in London,
while he himself courted Pecksniff's daughter at her father's house. And
it was not very long before he proposed to Mercy and they were married.

If Pecksniff had searched London he could not have found a worse man for
his daughter to marry. But Pecksniff cared for nothing but money, and,
as Jonas was now rich, he pretended great love for his new son-in-law
and went around with his hands clasped and his eyes lifted to Heaven in
pious thankfulness. As for Jonas, he began to treat Mercy brutally and
soon she was miserable.

Jonas, meanwhile, had fallen in with a very prosperous individual. This
was none other than Montague Tigg, the bold, jaunty, swaggering,
shabby-genteel Tigg, who had once been glad to beg a coin from any one
he knew. Now he had changed in both appearance and name. His face was
covered with glossy black whiskers, his clothes were the costliest and
his jewelry the most expensive. He was known now as "Mr. Tigg Montague,"
and was president of the great "Anglo-Bengalee Company."

The Anglo-Bengalee Company was a business which pretended to insure
people's lives. It had fine offices with new furniture, new paper and a
big brass plate on the door. It looked most solid and respectable, but
it was really a trap, for Tigg and its other officers were only waiting
until they had taken in enough money to run away with it to a foreign
country. Jonas, sharp as he was, was deceived into believing it an
honest enterprise. He came there to get his wife's life insured, and so
he met Tigg.

Tigg, however, knowing Jonas of old, knew he had a great deal of money
of his own, and thought, too, that he might influence Mr. Pecksniff, now
his father-in-law. Tigg flattered Jonas accordingly, telling him what a
sharp man he was and offered to make him a director in the company. He
assured Jonas that there would be enormous profits and showed him how,
by putting his own money into it, he could cheat other people out of
much more. This idea tickled Jonas and he agreed.

Having got thus far, Tigg hired a spy named Nadgett to see if he could
discover whether Jonas had ever committed any crime, the knowledge of
which would put him in their power. Nadgett began his work, got on the
right side of Sairey Gamp, the nurse, found out that old Chuffey was
locked up for fear he might talk, and soon