Meanwhile the conversation at Button's was fast and brilliant. "By
Wood's thirteens, and the divvle go wid 'em," cried the Church dignitary
in the cassock, "is it in blue and goold ye are this morning, Sir
Richard, when you ought to be in seebles?"

"Who's dead, Dean?" said the nobleman, the dean's companion.

"Faix, mee Lard Bolingbroke, as sure as mee name's Jonathan
Swift--and I'm not so sure of that neither, for who knows his father's
name?--there's been a mighty cruel murther committed entirely. A child
of Dick Steele's has been barbarously slain, dthrawn, and quarthered,
and it's Joe Addison yondther has done it. Ye should have killed one of
your own, Joe, ye thief of the world."

"I!" said the amazed and Right Honorable Joseph Addison; "I kill Dick's
child! I was godfather to the last."

"And promised a cup and never sent it," Dick ejaculated. Joseph looked
grave.

"The child I mean is Sir Roger de Coverley, Knight and Baronet. What
made ye kill him, ye savage Mohock? The whole town is in tears about the
good knight; all the ladies at Church this afternoon were in mourning;
all the booksellers are wild; and Lintot says not a third of the copies
of the Spectator are sold since the death of the brave old gentleman."
And the Dean of St. Patrick's pulled out the Spectator newspaper,
containing the well-known passage regarding Sir Roger's death. "I bought
it but now in 'Wellington Street,'" he said; "the newsboys were howling
all down the Strand."