instead of it, if you like,' was the coolly growled
reply. 'It's safer talk too.'

'What do you mean that I should understand by them?'

'Spites, affronts, offences giv' and took, deadly aggrawations, such
like,' answered Riderhood.

Do what Bradley Headstone would, he could not keep that former flush of
impatience out of his face, or so master his eyes as to prevent their
again looking anxiously up the river.

'Ha ha! Don't be afeerd, T'otherest,' said Riderhood. 'The T'other's got
to make way agin the stream, and he takes it easy. You can soon come up
with him. But wot's the good of saying that to you! YOU know how fur
you could have outwalked him betwixt anywheres about where he lost the
tide--say Richmond--and this, if you had a mind to it.'

'You think I have been following him?' said Bradley.

'I KNOW you have,' said Riderhood.

'Well! I have, I have,' Bradley admitted. 'But,' with another anxious
look up the river, 'he may land.'

'Easy you! He won't be lost if he does land,' said Riderhood. 'He must
leave his boat behind him. He can't make a bundle or a parcel on it, and
carry it ashore with him under his arm.'

'He was speaking to you just now,' said Bradley, kneeling on one knee on
the grass beside the Lock-keeper. 'What did he say?'

'Cheek,' said Riderhood.

'What?'

'Cheek,' repeated Riderhood, with an angry oath; 'cheek is what he said.
He can't say nothing but cheek. I'd ha' liked to plump down aboard of
him, neck and crop, with a heavy jump, and sunk him.'

Bradley turned away his haggard face for a few moments, and then said,
tearing up a tuft of grass:

'Damn him!'

'Hooroar!' cried Riderhood. 'Does you credit! Hooroar! I cry chorus to
the T'otherest.'

'What turn,' said Bradley, with an effort at self-repression that forced
him to wipe his face, 'did his insolence take to-day?'

'It took the turn,' answered Riderhood, with sullen ferocity, 'of hoping
as I was getting ready to be hanged.'

'Let him look to that,' cried Bradley. 'Let him look to that! It will
be bad for him when men he has injured, and at whom he has jeered, are
thinking of getting hanged. Let HIM get ready for HIS fate, when that
comes about. There was more meaning in what he said than he knew of, or
he wouldn't have had brains enough to say it. Let him look to it; let
him look to it! When men he has wronged, and on whom he has bestowed
his insolence, are getting ready to be hanged, there is a death-bell
ringing