be available; but in the mean time, as he is spared the possession of his faculties, and we all agree, gentlemen, whatever particular form of faith may be respectively ours, that some respect is due to futurity; I would say, that a clergyman, at all events, might make him advantageously a visit tomorrow, and afford him an opportunity at least of considering the interests of his soul."

"Oh! da-a-am his shoul, it's his body. We must try to keep him together," said Mr. Goldshed impatiently. "If he dies the money's all lost, every shtiver; if he don't, he's a sound speculation; we must raise a doctor among us, Mr. Larkin.'

It is highly probable indeed that before long the unfortunate gentleman may require medical advice," said Mr. Larkin, who had a high opinion of the "speculation," whose pulse was at this moment unfortunately at a hundred and twenty. "The fever, my dear sir, if such it be, will have declared itself in a day or two; in the mean time, nursing is all that is really needful, and Miss Rumble, I have no doubt, will take care that the unhappy gentleman is properly provided in that respect.

The attorney, who did not want at that moment to be drawn into a discussion on contributing to expenses, smiled affectionately on Miss Rumble, to whom he assigned the part of good Samaritan.

"He'll want some one at night, sir, please; I could not undertake myself, sir, for both day and night," said brown Miss Rumble, very quietly.

"There! That'sh it!" exclaimed Levi, with a vicious chuckle, and a scowl, extending his open hand energetically toward Miss Rumble, and glaring from Mr. Larkin to his part

ner.

Nothing but pay; down with the dust, Goldshed and Levi. Bleed like a pair o' beashtly pigs, Goldshed and Levi, do! There's death in that fellow's face, I say. It's all bosh, doctors and nurses; throwing good money after bad, and then, five pounds to bury him, drat him !"

"Bury? ho! no, the parish, the workhoushe, the authorities shall bury him," said Mr. Goldshed, briskly. "Dead as a Mameluke, dead as a Janizary bowstrung!" exclaimed Mr. Dingwell, and went off into an

VOL. LXX.—NO. CCCCXVII.

indistinct conversation in a foreign language.

"Stuff a stocking down his throat, will you ?" urged Mr. Levi; a duty, however, which no one undertook. "I see that cove's booked; he looks just like old Solomons looked when he had it. It isn't no use; all rot, throwing good money arter bad, I say; let him be; let him die."

"I'll not let him die; no, he shan't. I'll make him pay. I made the Theatre of Fascination pay," said Mr. Goldshed serenely, alluding to a venture of his devising, by which the partnership made ever so much money in spite of a prosecution and heavy fines and other expenses. “I say 'tisn't my principle to throw up the game, by no meansno-with my ball in hand and the stakes in the pocket-never !"

Here Mr. Goldshed wagged his head slowly with a solemn smile, and Mr. Dingwell, from the bed, said—

"Move it, will you? That way—I wish you'd help-b-bags, sir-sacks, sir-awfully hard lying-full of ears and noses-egad!-why not?-cut them all off, I say. D them all off, I say. D-n the Greeks! Will you move it? Do move that sack-it hurts his ribs-ribs-I never got the bastinado."

"Not but what you deserved it," remarked Mr. Levi.

And Mr. Dingwell's babbling went on, but too indistinctly to be unravelled.

"I say," continued Mr. Goldshed, sublimely, "if that 'ere speculative thing in the bed there comes round, and gets all square and right, I'll make him pay. I'm not funked-who's afraid?-wiry old brick !"

"I think so," acquiesced Mr. Larkin with gentle solemnity; "Mr. Dingwell is certainly, as you say, wiry. There are many things in his favour, and Providence, Mr. Goldshed -Providence is over us all."

"Providence, to be sure," said Mr. Goldshed, who did not disdain help from any quarter. "Where does he keep his money, ma'am?"

"Under his bolster, please, sir—under his head," answered Sarah Rumble.

"Take it out, please," said Mr. Goldshed.

She hesitated.

"Give the man hish money, woman, ca-a-an't you?" bawled Mr. Lovi

20

fiercely, and extending his arm toward the bed.

"You had better-yes, ma'am, the money belongs to Messrs. Goldshed and Levi," said Mr. Larkin, interposing in the character of the vir pietate gravis.

Sally Rumble, recollecting Mr. Dingwell's direction, "Let 'em have the money, too, if they press for it," obeyed, and slid her hand under his bolster, and under his head, from the other side, where she was standing; and Dingwell, feeling the motion, I suppose, raised his head and stared with sunken eyes dismally at the three gentlemen, whom he plainly did not recognise, or possibly saw in the shapes of foxes, wolves, or owls, which Æsop would have metaphorically assigned them, and with a weary groan he closed his wandering eyes again, and sank down on the pillow.

Miss Rumble drew forth a roll of bank notes with a string tied round them.

"Take the money, Levi," said Goldshed, drawing a step backward.

Take it yourself, gov'nor," said Levi, waving back Miss Sally Rumble, and edging back a little himself. Well," said Goldshed, quietly, "I see you're afraid of that infection."

"I believe you," answered Levi. "So am I," said Goldshed, uneasily.

"And no wonder!" added Mr. Larkin, anticipating himself an invitation to accept the questionable trust.

Put them notes down on the table there," said Mr. Goldshed.

And the three gentlemen eyed the precious roll of paper as I have seen people at a chemical lecture eye the explodable compounds on the pro

fessor's table.

"I tell you what, ma'am," said Goldshed, "you'll please get a dry bottle and a cork, and put them notes into it, and cork it down, ma'am, and give it to Mr. Levi."

"And count them first, please, Miss Rumble-shan't she, Mr. Goldshed?" suggested Mr. Larkin.

"What for?-isn't the money ours ?" howled Mr. Levi, with a ferocious stare on the attorney's meek face.

Only, Mr. Goldshed, with a view to distinctness, and to prevent possible confusion in any future account," said

Mr. Larkin, who knew that Dingwell had got money from the Verneys, and thought that if there was anything recovered from the wreck, he had as good a right to his salvage as another.

Mr. Goldshed met his guileless smile with an ugly sneer, and said'Oh, count them, to be sure, for the gentleman. It isn't a ha'penny to me."

So Miss Rumble counted seventyfive pounds in bank notes and four pounds in gold, two of which Mr. Goldshed committed to her in trust for the use of the patient, and the remainder were duly bottled and corked down according to Mr. Goldshed's grotesque precaution, and in this enclosure Mr. Levi consented to take the money in hand, and so it was deposited for the night in the iron safe in Messrs. Goldshed and Levi's office, to be uncorked in the morning by old Solomons, the cashier, who would, no doubt, be puzzled by the peculiarity of the arrangement, and with the aid of a cork-screw, lodged to the credit of the firm.

Mr. Goldshed next insisted that Dingwell's life, fortunately for that person, was too important to the gentlemen assembled there to be trifled with; and said that sage

"We'll have the best doctor in London-six pounds' worth of him—d'ye see? And under him a clever young doctor to look in four times a day, and we'll arrange with the young 'un on the principle of no cure no pay—that is, we'll give fifty pounds this day six weeks, if the party in bed here is alive at that date."

And upon this basis I believe an arrangement was actually completed. The great Doctor Langley, when he called, and questioned Miss Rumble, and inspected the patient, told Mr. Levi, who was in waiting, that the old gentleman had been walking about in a fever for more than a week before he took to his bed, and that the chances were very decidedly against his recovery.

A great anxiety overcame Mr. Larkin like a summer cloud, and the serene sunshine of that religious mind was overcast with storm and blackness. For the recovery of Mr. Dingwell were offered up, in one synagogue at least, prayers as fervent as any ever made for that of our

He had got just two steps into the room towards the little table on which the patient's desk stood, when from the other side of that piece of furniture, and the now open desk, there rose up the tall form of Mr. Jos. Larkin, of the Lodge.

The gentlemen eyed one another for a few seconds in silence, for the surprise was great. Mr. Larkin did not even set down the parcel of letters, which he had been sorting like a hand at whist, when Mr. Levi had stepped in to divert his attention.

I thought, Mr. Larkin'sh, I might as well drop in just to give you a lift,” said Levi, with an elaborate bow, a politeness, and a great smile, that rather embarrassed the good attorney.

66

Certainly, Mr. Levi, I'm always happy to see you-always happy to see any man--I have never done anything I am ashamed of, nor shrunk from any duty, nor do I mean to do

so now.

"Your hands looksh pretty full." 'Yes, sir, pretty tolerably full, sir," said Mr. Larkin, placing the letters on the desk; "and I may add so do yours, Mr. Levi; those keys, as you observe, might have given one a lift in opening this desk, had I not preferred the other course," said Mr. Larkin loftily, "of simply requesting Mr. Dingwell's friend, the lady at present in charge of his papers, to afford me, at her own discretion, such access to the papers possibly affecting my client, as I may consider necessary or expedient, as his legal adviser."

You have changed your view of your_duty, something; haven't you, Mr. Larkinsh?"

“No, sir, no; simply my action on a point of expediency. Of course, there was some weight, too, sir, in the suggestions made by a gentleman of Mr. Goldshed's experience and judgment; and I don't hesitate to say that his -his ideas had their proper weight with me. And I may say, once for all, Mr. Levi, I'll not be hectored, or lectured, or bullied by you, Mr. Levi," added Mr. Larkin, in a new style, feeling, perhaps, that his logical and moral vein was not quite so happy as usual.

Don't frighten ush, Larkin, pray don't, only just give me leave to see

what them letters is about," said Levi, taking his place by him; "did you put any of them in your pocket?'

"No, sir; upon my soul, Mr. Levi, I did no such thing," said Mr. Larkin, with a heartiness that had an effect upon the Jew. The occasion is so serious that I hardly regret having used the expression," said Mr. Larkin, who had actually blushed at his own oath. "There was just one letter possibly worth looking at."

'That da-a-am foolish letter you wrote him to Constantinople?

"I wrote him no foolish letter, sir. I wrote him no letter, sir, I should fear to have posted on the market cross, or read from the pulpit, Mr. Levi. Í only wonder, knowing all you do of Mr. Dingwell's unfortunate temper, and reckless habits of assertion, that you should attach the smallest weight to an expression thrown out by him in one of his diabolical and-andlamentable frenzies. As to my having abstracted a letter of his-an imputation at which I smile-I can, happily, cite evidence other than my own. He waved his hand toward Miss Rumble. "This lady has, happily, I will say, been in the room during my very brief examination of my client's half-dozen papers. Pray, madam, have I taken one of these or, in fact, put it in my pocket?"

"No, sir, please," answered Miss Rumble, who spoke in good faith, having, with a lively remembrance of Mr. Dingwell's description of the three gentlemen who had visited the sick that day, as three robbers," kept her eye very steadily upon the excellent Mr. Larkin, during the period of his search.

Mr. Levi would have liked to possess that letter. It would have proved possibly a useful engine in the hands of the Firm in future dealings with the adroit and high-minded Mr. Larkin. It was not to be had, however, if it really existed at all; and when some more ironies and moralities had been fired off at both sides, the gentlemen subsided into their ordinary relations, and ultimately went away together to dine on turtle, sturgeon, salmon, and I know not what meats, at the famous "Three Roses" in Milk-lane.