the enterprising Roderick Random;
and this idea, though conquered and reconquered, gradually swelled and
increased at his heart, even as swelleth that hairy ball found in the
stomach of some suffering heifer after its decease. Among these projects
of enterprise the reader will hereafter notice that an early vision of
the Green Forest Cave, in which Turpin was accustomed, with a friend,
a ham, and a wife, to conceal himself, flitted across his mind. At this
time he did not, perhaps, incline to the mode of life practised by the
hero of the roads; but he certainly clung not the less fondly to the
notion of the cave.

The melancholy flow of our hero's life was now, however, about to be
diverted by an unexpected turn, and the crude thoughts of boyhood to
burst, "like Ghilan's giant palm," into the fruit of a manly resolution.

Among the prominent features of Mrs. Lobkins's mind was a sovereign
contempt for the unsuccessful. The imprudence and ill-luck of Paul
occasioned her as much scorn as compassion; and when for the third time
within a week he stood, with a rueful visage and with vacant pockets,
by the dame's great chair, requesting an additional supply, the tides of
her wrath swelled into overflow.

"Look you, my kinchin cove," said she,--and in order to give peculiar
dignity to her aspect, she put on while she spoke a huge pair of tin
spectacles,--"if so be as how you goes for to think as how I shall go
for to supply your wicious necessities, you will find yourself planted
in Queer Street. Blow me tight, if I gives you another mag."

"But I owe Long Ned a guinea," said Paul; "and Dummie Dunnaker lent me
three crowns. It ill becomes your heir apparent, my dear dame, to fight
shy of his debts of honour."

"Taradididdle, don't think for to wheedle me with your debts and your
honour," said the dame, in a passion. "Long Ned is as long in the forks
[fingers] as he is in the back; may Old Harry fly off with him! And as
for Durnmie Dunnaker, I wonders how you, brought up such a swell, and
blest with the wery best of hedications, can think of putting up with
such wulgar 'sociates. I tells you what, Paul, you'll please to break
with them, smack and at once, or devil a brad you'll ever get from Peg
Lobkins." So saying, the old lady turned round in her chair, and helped
herself to a pipe of tobacco.

Paul walked twice up and down the apartment, and at last stopped
opposite the dame's chair. He was a youth of high spirit; and