hand nervously trembling at her lips; 'don't! Don't get into trouble any
more!'

'Hear me out, Captain, hear me out! All I was wishing to mention,
Captain, afore you took your departer,' said the sneaking Mr Riderhood,
falling out of his path, 'was, your handsome words relating to the
reward.'

'When I claim it,' said the man, in a tone which seemed to leave some
such words as 'you dog,' very distinctly understood, 'you shall share
it.'

Looking stedfastly at Riderhood, he once more said in a low voice, this
time with a grim sort of admiration of him as a perfect piece of evil,
'What a liar you are!' and, nodding his head twice or thrice over the
compliment, passed out of the shop. But, to Pleasant he said good-night
kindly.

The honest man who gained his living by the sweat of his brow remained
in a state akin to stupefaction, until the footless glass and the
unfinished bottle conveyed themselves into his mind. From his mind he
conveyed them into his hands, and so conveyed the last of the wine into
his stomach. When that was done, he awoke to a clear perception that
Poll Parroting was solely chargeable with what had passed. Therefore,
not to be remiss in his duty as a father, he threw a pair of sea-boots
at Pleasant, which she ducked to avoid, and then cried, poor thing,
using her hair for a pocket-handkerchief.

Chapter 13

A SOLO AND A DUETT

The wind was blowing so hard when the visitor came out at the shop-door
into the darkness and dirt of Limehouse Hole, that it almost blew him
in again. Doors were slamming violently, lamps were flickering or blown
out, signs were rocking in their frames, the water of the kennels,
wind-dispersed, flew about in drops like rain. Indifferent to the
weather, and even preferring it to better weather for its clearance of
the streets, the man looked about him with a scrutinizing glance. 'Thus
much I know,' he murmured. 'I have never been here since that night, and
never was here before that night, but thus much I recognize. I wonder
which way did we take when we came out of that shop. We turned to the
right as I have turned, but I can recall no more. Did we go by this
alley? Or down that little lane?'

He tried both, but both confused him equally, and he came straying
back to the same spot. 'I remember there were poles pushed out of upper
windows on which clothes were drying, and I remember a low public-house,
and the sound flowing down a narrow passage belonging to i