n the old familiar attitude, and skip about smartly.

"I don't want to hurt you, friend," said Ned at last, "but I _can_, you
see!" and he gave the man a slight pat on his right cheek with one hand
and a tap on the forehead with the other.

This might have convinced the rough, but he would not be convinced. Ned
therefore gave him suddenly an open-handed slap on the side of the head
which sent him through his own doorway; through his own kitchen--if we
may so name it--and into his own coal-cellar, where he measured his
length among cinders and domestic _debris_.

"I didn't want to do it, friends," said Ned in a mild voice, as soon as
the laughter had subsided, "but, you see, in the Bible--a book I'm
uncommon fond of--we're told, as far as we can, to live peaceably with
all men. Now, you see, I couldn't live peaceably wi' this man to-day.
He wouldn't let me, but I think I'll manage to do it some day, for I'll
come back here to-morrow, and say I'm sorry I had to do it. Meanwhile I
have a word to say to you about this matter."

Here Ned got upon the door-step of his adversary, and finished off by
what is sometimes styled "improving the occasion."

Of course, one of the first things that Ned Frog did, on coming to his
"right mind," was to make earnest and frequent inquiries as to the fate
of his wife and family. Unfortunately the man who might have guided him
to the right sources of information--the City missionary who had brought
him to a knowledge of the truth--was seized with a severe illness, which
not only confined him to a sick-bed for many weeks, but afterwards
rendered it necessary that he should absent himself for a long time from
the sphere of his labours. Thus, being left to himself, Ned's search
was misdirected, and at last he came to the heart-breaking conclusion
that they must have gone, as he expressed it, "to the bad;" that perhaps
his wife had carried out her oft-repeated threat, and drowned herself,
and that Bobby, having been only too successful a pupil in the ways of
wickedness, had got himself transported.

To prosecute his inquiries among his old foes, the police, was so
repugnant to Ned that he shrank from it, after the failure of one or two
attempts, and the only other source which might have been successful he
failed to appeal to through his own ignorance. He only knew of George
Yard and the Home of Industry by name, as being places which he had
hated, because his daughter Hetty was so tak