e doctor.

'What do you want, then?' demanded the hunchback. 'Will you take
yourself off, before I do you a mischief? Curse you!'

'As soon as I think proper,' said Mr. Losberne, looking into the other
parlour; which, like the first, bore no resemblance whatever to
Oliver's account of it. 'I shall find you out, some day, my friend.'

'Will you?' sneered the ill-favoured cripple. 'If you ever want me,
I'm here. I haven't lived here mad and all alone, for five-and-twenty
years, to be scared by you. You shall pay for this; you shall pay for
this.' And so saying, the mis-shapen little demon set up a yell, and
danced upon the ground, as if wild with rage.

'Stupid enough, this,' muttered the doctor to himself; 'the boy must
have made a mistake. Here! Put that in your pocket, and shut yourself
up again.' With these words he flung the hunchback a piece of money,
and returned to the carriage.

The man followed to the chariot door, uttering the wildest imprecations
and curses all the way; but as Mr. Losberne turned to speak to the
driver, he looked into the carriage, and eyed Oliver for an instant
with a glance so sharp and fierce and at the same time so furious and
vindictive, that, waking or sleeping, he could not forget it for months
afterwards. He continued to utter the most fearful imprecations, until
the driver had resumed his seat; and when they were once more on their
way, they could see him some distance behind: beating his feet upon the
ground, and tearing his hair, in transports of real or pretended rage.

'I am an ass!' said the doctor, after a long silence. 'Did you know
that before, Oliver?'

'No, sir.'

'Then don't forget it another time.'

'An ass,' said the doctor again, after a further silence of some
minutes. 'Even if it had been the right place, and the right fellows
had been there, what could I have done, single-handed? And if I had had
assistance, I see no good that I should have done, except leading to my
own exposure, and an unavoidable statement of the manner in which I
have hushed up this business. That would have served me right, though.
I am always involving myself in some scrape or other, by acting on
impulse. It might have done me good.'

Now, the fact was that the excellent doctor had never acted upon
anything but impulse all through his life, and it was no bad compliment
to the nature of the impulses which governed him, that so far from
being involved in any peculiar trou