matter, will you?"

"Yes, sir!" responded the tame tiger of the excited and highly respectable
Adolphus Casay, shiveringly emerging from beneath the bed-clothes he had
diligently wrapped round his aching head, to deaden the incessant clamour
of the iron which was entering into the soul of his sleep. A
hastily-performed toilet, in which the more established method of encasing
the lower man with the front of the garment to the front of the wearer,
was curiously reversed, and the capture of the left slipper, which, as the
weakest goes to the wall, the right foot had thrust itself into, was
scarcely effected, ere another series of knocks at the door, and batch of
invectives from Mr. Adolphus Casay, hurried the partial sacrificer to the
Graces, at a Derby pace, over the cold stone staircase, to discover the
cause of the confounded uproar. The door was opened--a confused jumble of
unintelligible mutterings aggravated the eager ears of the shivering
Adolphus. Losing all patience, he exclaimed, in a tone of thunder--

"What is it, you villain? Can't you speak?"

"Yes, sir, in course I can."

"Then why don't you, you imp of mischief?"

"I'm a-going to."

"Do it at once--let me know the worst. Is it fire, murder, or thieves?"

"Neither, sir; it's A1, with a dark lantern."

"What, in the name of persecution and the new police, does A1, with a dark