ages, and been ducked in a horse-pond,
instead of flourishing in the nineteenth
century, and taking charge of a Christian
house.

"You'll please to excuse my son, Benjamin,
won't you, sir?" says this witch without a
broomstick, pointing to the man behind her,
propped against the bare wall of the dining-room,
exactly as he had been propped against
the bare wall of the passage. "He's got his
inside dreadful bad again, has my son
Benjamin. And he won't go to bed, and he will
follow me about the house, up-stairs and
down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber, as
the song says, you know. It's his indisgestion,
poor dear, that sours his temper and makes
him so agravating—and indisgestion is a
wearing thing to the best of us, ain't it, sir?"

"Ain't it, sir?" chimes in agravating
Benjamin, winking at the candle-light like an
owl at the sunshine.

Trottle examined the man curiously, while
his horrid old mother was speaking of him.
He found " My son Benjamin" to be little
and lean, and buttoned-up slovenly in a
frowsy old great-coat that fell down to his
ragged carpet-slippers. His eyes were very
watery, his cheeks very pale, and his lips
very red. His breathing was so uncommonly
loud, that it sounded almost like a snore.
His head rolled helplessly in the monstrous
big collar of his great-coat; and his limp,
lazy hands pottered about the wall on either
side of him, as if they were groping for an
imaginary bottle. In plain English, the
complaint of " My son Benjamin" was drunkenness,
of the stupid, pig-headed, sottish kind.
Drawing this conclusion easily enough, after
a moment's observation of the man, Trottle
found himself, nevertheless, keeping his eyes
fixed much longer than was necessary on the
ugly drunken face rolling about in the
monstrous big coat collar, and looking at it
with a curiosity that he could hardly account
for at first. Was there something familiar
to him in the man's features? He turned
away from them for an instant, and then
turned back to him again. After that second
look, the notion forced itself into his mind,
that he had certainly seen a face somewhere,
of which that sot's face appeared like a kind
of slovenly copy. " Where? " thinks he to
himself, "where did I last see the man
whom this agravatiug Benjamin, here, so
very strongly reminds me of?"

It was no time, just then—  with the cheerful
old woman's eye searching him all over,
and the cheerful old woman's tongue talking
at him, nineteen to the dozen—for Trottle to
be ransacking his memory for small matters
that had got into wrong corners of it. He
put by in his mind that very curious
circumstance respecting Benjamin's face, to be taken
up again when a fit opportunity offered itself;
and kept his wits about him in prime order
for present necessities.

"You wouldn't like to go down into the
kitchen, would you?" says the witch without
the broomstick, as familiar as if she had
been Trottle's mother, instead of Benjamin's.

"There's a bit of fire in the grate, and the
sink in the back kitchen don't smell to matter
much to-day, and it's uncommon chilly up
here when a person's flesh don't hardly cover
a person's bones. But you don't look cold,
sir, do you? And then, why, Lord bless my
soul, our little bit of business is so very, very
little, it's hardly worth while to go downstairs
about it, after all. Quite a game at
business, ain't it, sir? Give-and-take—that's
what I call it—give-and-take!"

With that, her wicked old eyes settled
hungrily on the region round about Trottle's
waistcoat-pocket, and she began to chuckle
like her son, holding out one of her skinny
hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm
with the knuckles of the other. Agravating
Benjamin, seeing what she was about, roused
up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation
of her, got an idea of his own into his
muddled head all of a sudden, and bolted it out
charitably for the benefit of Trottle.

"I say! " says Benjamin, settling himself
against the wall and nodding his head
viciously at his cheerful old mother. "I
say! Look out. She'll skin you!"

Assisted by these signs and warnings,
Trottle found no difficulty in understanding
that the business referred to was the giving
and taking of money, and that he was
expected to be the giver. It was at this stage
of the proceedings that he first felt decidedly
uncomfortable, and more than half inclined
to wish he was on the street-side of the
house-door again.

He was still cudgelling his brains for an
excuse to save his pocket, when the silence
was suddenly interrupted by a sound in the
upper part of the house.

It was not at all loud it was a quiet, still,
scraping sound so faint that it could hardly
have reached the quickest ears, except in an
empty house.

"Do you hear that, Benjamin? " says the
old woman. " He's at it again, even in the
dark, ain't he? P'raps you'd like to see him,
sir! " says she, turning on Trottle, and
poking her grinning face close to him. " Only
name it; only say if you'd like to see him
before we do our little bit of business and
I'll show good Forley's friend upstairs, just
as if he was good Mr. Forley himself. My
legs are all right, whatever Benjamin's may
be. I get younger and younger, and stronger
and stronger, and jollier and jollier, every
day that's what I do! Don't mind the
stairs on my account, sir, if you'd like to see
him."

"Him? " Trottle wondered whether
"him," meant a man, or a boy, or a domestic
animal of the male species. Whatever it
meant, here was a chance of putting off that
uncomfortable give-and-take-business, and,
better still, a chance perhaps of finding out