. And not for them.'

Riderhood, looking fixedly at him, gradually arose from his recumbent
posture while the schoolmaster said these words with the utmost
concentration of rage and hatred. So, when the words were all spoken,
he too kneeled on one knee on the grass, and the two men looked at one
another.

'Oh!' said Riderhood, very deliberately spitting out the grass he had
been chewing. 'Then, I make out, T'otherest, as he is a-going to her?'

'He left London,' answered Bradley, 'yesterday. I have hardly a doubt,
this time, that at last he is going to her.'

'You ain't sure, then?'

'I am as sure here,' said Bradley, with a clutch at the breast of his
coarse shirt, 'as if it was written there;' with a blow or a stab at the
sky.

'Ah! But judging from the looks on you,' retorted Riderhood, completely
ridding himself of his grass, and drawing his sleeve across his mouth,
'you've made ekally sure afore, and have got disapinted. It has told
upon you.'

'Listen,' said Bradley, in a low voice, bending forward to lay his hand
upon the Lock-keeper's shoulder. 'These are my holidays.'

'Are they, by George!' muttered Riderhood, with his eyes on the
passion-wasted face. 'Your working days must be stiff 'uns, if these is
your holidays.'

'And I have never left him,' pursued Bradley, waving the interruption
aside with an impatient hand, 'since they began. And I never will leave
him now, till I have seen him with her.'

'And when you have seen him with her?' said Riderhood.

'--I'll come back to you.'

Riderhood stiffened the knee on which he had been resting, got up, and
looked gloomily at his new friend. After a few moments they walked side
by side in the direction the boat had taken, as if by tacit consent;
Bradley pressing forward, and Riderhood holding back; Bradley getting
out his neat prim purse into his hand (a present made him by penny
subscription among his pupils); and Riderhood, unfolding his arms to
smear his coat-cuff across his mouth with a thoughtful air.

'I have a pound for you,' said Bradley.

'You've two,' said Riderhood.

Bradley held a sovereign between his fingers. Slouching at his side with
his eyes upon the towing-path, Riderhood held his left hand open, with
a certain slight drawing action towards himself. Bradley dipped in his
purse for another sovereign, and two chinked in Riderhood's hand, the
drawing action of which, promptly strengthening, drew them home to his
pocket.

'Now, I m