there's the poor cretur a, raving and a dying, and you--"

"Let I speak!" interrupted Dummie in his turn. "I tells you I vent
first to Mother Bussblone's, who, I knows, chops the whiners morning and
evening to the young ladies, and I axes there for a Bible; and she says,
says she, 'I 'as only a "Companion to the _H_alter," but you'll get a
Bible, I think, at Master Talkins', the cobbler as preaches.' So I goes
to Master Talkins, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the Bible,
--'cause vy? I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you'll be a getting it at
the butcher's hover the vay, -'cause vy? The butcher 'll be damned!' So
I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as not a Bible,
but I 'as a book of plays bound for all the vorld just like 'un, and
mayhap the poor cretur may n't see the difference.' So I takes the
plays, Mrs. Margery, and here they be sure_ly!_ And how's poor Judy?"

"Fearsome! she'll not be over the night, I'm a thinking."

"Vell, I'll track up the dancers!"

So saying, Dummie ascended a doorless staircase, across the entrance of
which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney,
afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber which
the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray.
The walls were whitewashed, and at sundry places strange figures and
grotesque characters had been traced by some mirthful inmate, in such
sable outline as the end of a smoked stick or the edge of a piece of
charcoal is wont to produce. The wan and flickering light afforded by a
farthing candle gave a sort of grimness and menace to these achievements
of pictorial art, especially as they more than once received
embellishments from portraits of Satan such as he is accustomed to be