to it and to him. As he had imperceptibly come
into possession  of the dim den up in the corner
of a court off Lombard-street, on whose grimy
windows the inscription Barbox Brothers had
for many long years daily interposed itself between
him and the sky, so ho had insensibly
found himself a personage held in chronic distrust,
whom it was essential to screw tight to
every transaction in which he engaged, whose
word was never to be taken without his attested
bond whom all dealers with openly set up guards
and wards against. This character had come
upon him through no act of his own. It was as
if the original Barbox had stretched himself
down upon the office-floor, and had thither caused
to be conveyed Young Jackson in his sleep, and
had there effected a metempsychosis and exchange
of persons with him. The discovery
——aided in its turn by the deceit of the only
woman he had ever loved, and the deceit of the
only friend he had ever made: who eloped from
him to be married together——the discovery, so
followed up, completed what his earliest rearing
had begun. He shrank, abashed, within the
form of Barbox, and lifted up his head and heart
no more.

But he did at last effect one great release in
his condition. He broke the oar he had plied so
long, and he scuttled and sank the galley. He
prevented the gradual retirement of an old
conventional business from him, by taking the
initiative and retiring from it. With enough to
live on (though after all with not too much), he
obliterated the firm of Barbox Brothers from the
pages of the Post-office Directory and the face
of the earth, leaving nothing of it but its name
on two portmanteaus.

"For one must have some name in going
about, for people to pick up," he explained to
Mugby High-street, through the Inn-window,
"and that name at least was real once. Whereas,
Young Jackson! Not to mention its being a
sadly satirical misnomer for Old Jackson."

He took up his hat and walked out, just in
time to see, passing along on the opposite side
of the way, a velveteen man, carrying his day's
dinner in a small bundle that might have been
larger without suspicion of gluttony, and pelting
away towards the Junction at a great pace.

"There's Lamps!" said Barbox Brothers.
'.' And by-the-by——-"

Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so
self-contained, and not yet three days
emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand
rubbing his chin in the street, in a brown study
about Comic Songs.

"Bedside?" said Barbox Brothers, testily.
"Sings them at the bedside? Why at the
bedside, unless he goes to bed drunk? Does, I
shouldn't wonder. But it's no business of mine.
Let me see. Mugby Junction, Mugby Junction.
Where shall I go next? As it came into
my head lust night when I woke from an uneasy
sleep in the carriage and found myself here, I
can go anywhere from here. Where shall I go?
I'll go and look at the Junction by daylight.
There's no hurry, and I may like the look of one
Line better than another."

But there were so many Lines. Gazing down
upon them from a bridge at the Junction, it was
as if the concentrating Companies formed a
great Industrial Exhibition of the works of
extraordinary ground-spiders that spun iron. And
then so many of the Lines went such wonderful
ways, so crossing and curving among one
another, that the eye lost them. And then
some of them appeared to start with the fixed
intention of going five hundred miles, and all
of a sudden gave it up at an insignificant
barrier, or turned off into a workshop. And
then others, like intoxicated men, went a little
way very straight, and surprisingly slued round
and came back again. And then others were
so chock-full of trucks of coal, others were so
blocked with trucks of casks, others were so
gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so
set apart for wheeled objects like immense iron
cotton-reels: while others were so bright and
clear, and others were so delivered over to rust
and ashes and idle wheelbarrows out of work,
with their legs in the air (looking much like their
masters on strike), that there was no beginning,
middle, or end, to the bewilderment.

Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge,
passing his right hand across the lines on his
forehead, which multiplied while he looked down,
as if the railway Lines were getting themselves
photographed on that sensitive plate. Then, was
heard a distant ringing of bells and blowing of
whistles. Then, puppet-looking heads of men
popped out of boxes in perspective, aud popped
in again. Then, prodigious wooden razors set
up on end, began shaving the atmosphere. Then,
several locomotive engines in several directions
began to scream and be agitated. Then, along
one avenue a train came in. Then, along another
two trains appeared that didn't come in,
but stopped without. Then, bits of trains broke
off. Then, a struggling horse became involved
with them. Then, the locomotives shared the
bits of trains, and ran away with the whole.

"I have not made my next move much
clearer by this. No hurry. No need to make
up my mind to-day, or to-morrow, nor yet the
day after. I'll take a walk."

It fell out somehow (perhaps he meant it
should) that the walk tended to the platform at
which he had alighted, and to Lamps's room.
But Lamps was not in his room. A pair of
velveteen shoulders were adapting themselves
to one of the impressions on the wall by Lamps's
fireplace, but otherwise the room was void. In
passing back to get out of the station again, he
learnt the cause of this vacancy, by catching sight
of Lamps on the opposite line of railway, skipping
along the top of a train, from carriage to
carriage, and catching lighted namesakes thrown
up to him by a coadjutor.

"He is busy. He has not much time for
composing or singing Comic Songs this moming,
I take it."

The direction he pursued now, was into the
country, keeping very near to the side of one
great Line ot railway, and within easy view of
others. " I have half a mind," he said, glancing
around, " to settle the question from this point,