'spises the flat that is done brown by the blowens. I 'as a mattris."

"A mattress! a mattress! Well, what has that to do with the money?"

"Vy, I lines it."

Percival looked puzzled. "Oh," said he, after a thoughtful pause, and in
a tone of considerable compassion, "I understand: you sew your money in
your mattress. My poor, poor lad, you can do better than that! There
are the savings banks."

Beck looked frightened. "I 'opes your honour von't tell no vun. I 'opes
no vun von't go for to put my tin vere I shall know nothing vatsomever
about it. Now, I knows vere it is, and I lays on it."

"Do you sleep more soundly when you lie on your treasure?"

"No. It's hodd," said Beck, musingly, "but the more I lines it, the
vorse I sleeps."

Percival laughed, but there was melancholy in his laughter; something in
the forlorn, benighted, fatherless, squalid miser went to the core of his
open, generous heart.

"Do you ever read your Bible," said he, after a pause, "or even the
newspaper?"

"I does not read nothing; cos vy? I haint been made a scholard, like
swell Tim, as was lagged for a forgery."