This was, as I said, little Shum's twelfth tumler; and I knew
pritty well that he could git very little further; for, as reglar
as the thirteenth came, Shum was drunk. The thirteenth did come,
and its consquinzes. I was obliged to leed him home to John
Street, where I left him in the hangry arms of Mrs. Shum.

"How the d--," sayd he all the way, "how the d-dd--the deddy--
deddy--devil--could he have seen me TWICE?"


CHAPTER IV.


It was a sad slip on Altamont's part, for no sooner did he go out
the next morning than missis went out too. She tor down the
street, and never stopped till she came to her pa's house at
Pentonwill. She was clositid for an hour with her ma, and when she
left her she drove straight to the City. She walked before the
Bank, and behind the Bank, and round the Bank: she came home
disperryted, having learned nothink.

And it was now an extraordinary thing that from Shum's house for
the next ten days there was nothing but expyditions into the city.
Mrs. S., tho her dropsicle legs had never carred her half so fur
before, was eternally on the key veve, as the French say. If she
didn't go, Miss Betsy did, or misses did: they seemed to have an
attrackshun to the Bank, and went there as natral as an omlibus.

At last one day, old Mrs. Shum comes to our house--(she wasn't