e blackguard. As it was, he both drank and gambled;
nobody would have anything to do with him in Pendlebury; and, at the time
when I was made known to him in the chemist's shop, the other doctor, Mr.
Dix, who was not to be compared with him for surgical skill, but who was
a respectable man, had got all the practice; and Barsham and his old
mother were living together in such a condition of utter poverty, that it
was a marvel to everybody how they kept out of the parish workhouse."

"Benjamin and Benjamin's mother!"

"Exactly, ma'am. Last Thursday morning (thanks to your kindness, again)
I went to Pendlebury to my friend the chemist, to ask a few questions
about Barsham and his mother. I was told that they had both left the
town about five years since. When I inquired into the circumstances,
some strange particulars came out in the course of the chemist's answer.
You know I have no doubt, ma'am, that poor Mrs. Kirkland was confined
while her husband was at sea, in lodgings at a village called Flatfield,
and that she died and was buried there. But what you may not know is,
that Flatfield is only three miles from Pendlebury; that the doctor who
attended on Mrs. Kirkland was Barsham; that the nurse who took care of
her was Barsham's mother; and that the person who called them both in,
was Mr. Forley. Whether his daughter wrote to him, or whether he heard
of it in some other way, I don't know; but he was with her (though he had
sworn never to see her again when she married) a month or more before her
confinement, and was backwards and forwards a good deal between Flatfield
and Pendlebury. How he managed matters with the Barshams cannot at
present be discovered; but it is a fact that he contrived to keep the
drunken doctor sober, to everybody's amazement. It is a fact that
Barsham went to the poor woman with all his wits about him. It is a fact
that he and his mother came back from Flatfield after Mrs. Kirkland's
death, packed up what few things they had, and left the town mysteriously
by night. And, lastly, it is also a fact that the other doctor, Mr. Dix,
was not called in to help, till a week after the birth _and burial_ of
the child, when the mother was sinking from exhaustion--exhaustion (to
give the vagabond, Barsham, his due) not produced, in Mr. Dix's opinion,
by improper medical treatment, but by the bodily weakness of the poor
woman herself--"

"Burial of the child?" I interrupted, trembling all over. "T