d tea-pots; of an old apple woman in whose house a fortune was found
wrapped up in little scraps of paper; of "Vulture Hopkins" and
"Blewbury Jones" and many others whose riches after their death were
found hidden in strange places. While Wegg read, Mr. Boffin would
pretend to get tremendously excited about his dust mounds, so that Wegg
grew surer and surer there must be riches hidden in them.

Finally The Golden Dustman sold the mounds and had them carted away
little by little, Wegg watching every shovelful for fear he would miss
something.

Mr. Boffin hired a foreman to manage the removal of the dust who wore
Wegg down to skin and bone. He worked by daylight and torchlight, too.
Just as Wegg, tired out by watching all day in the rain, would crawl
into bed, the foreman, like a goblin, would reappear and go to work
again. Sometimes Wegg would be waked in the middle of the night, and
sometimes kept at his post for as much as forty-eight hours at a
stretch, till he grew so gaunt and haggard that even his wooden leg
looked chubby in comparison.

At last he could not keep quiet any longer and he told Mr. Boffin what
he had found. Mr. Boffin pretended the most abject dread. Wegg bullied
and browbeat him to his heart's content, and ended by ordering him, like
a slave, to be ready to receive him on a certain morning, and to have
the money ready to pay him.

When he went to the fine Boffin house to keep this appointment he
entered insolently, whistling and with his hat on. A servant showed him
into the library where Mr. Boffin and the secretary sat waiting, and
where the secretary at once astonished him by taking off the hat and
throwing it out of the window.

In another moment Wegg found himself seized by the cravat, shaken till
his teeth rattled, and pinned in a corner of the room, where the
secretary knocked his head against the wall while he told him in a few
words what a scoundrel he was.

When he learned that the will he had discovered was worthless paper,
Wegg lost all his bullying air and cringed before them. Mr. Boffin was
disposed to be merciful and offered to make good his loss of his ballad
business, but Wegg, grasping and mean to the last, set its value at such
a ridiculously high figure that Mr. Boffin put his money back into his
pocket.

Then, at a sign from John Rokesmith, one of the servants caught Wegg by
the collar, hoisted him on his back, ran down to the street with him and
threw him into a garbage