that gate." He faintly indicated with his chin a little mean ruin of a
wooden gate at the side of the house.

"Have you seen Tom?"

"No, and I ain't partickler to see him. I can see a dirty man anywhere."

"He does not live in the house, then?" said Mr. Traveller, casting his
eyes upon the house anew.

"The man said," returned the Tinker, rather irritably,--"him as was here
just now, 'this what you're a laying on, mate, is Tom Tiddler's ground.
And if you want to see Tom,' he says, 'you must go in at that gate.' The
man come out at that gate himself, and he ought to know."

"Certainly," said Mr. Traveller.

"Though, perhaps," exclaimed the Tinker, so struck by the brightness of
his own idea, that it had the electric effect upon him of causing him to
lift up his head an inch or so, "perhaps he was a liar! He told some rum
'uns--him as was here just now, did about this place of Tom's. He
says--him as was here just now--'When Tom shut up the house, mate, to go
to rack, the beds was left, all made, like as if somebody was a-going to
sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now,
you'd see the ragged mouldy bedclothes a heaving and a heaving like seas.
And a heaving and a heaving with what?' he says. 'Why, with the rats
under 'em.'"

"I wish I had seen that man," Mr. Traveller remarked.