he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and | right on end, if you want him to, ag the King's Bench Office, and the long as ever you like." Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know the kind of document, sir wanting employ?" It is quite dark now, and the gaslamps have acquired their full effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and defendants, and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life-diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what, Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of Coavins's, the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in Coavins's windows. Coavins's coffeeroom is at the back, and the shadows of several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr. Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head, to glance over his shoulder at his little woman, and to make apologetic motions with his mouth to this effect: "Tul-king-horn-rich- and collects about us nobody knows in-flu-en-tial !" "Oh ! "With the greatest pleasure, sir!" Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his black coat, takes his hat from its peg. here is my little woman!" he says aloud. 66 'My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one of the lads to look after the shop, while I step across the lane with Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir-I shan't be two minutes, my love !" Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office, refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently curious. "You will find that the place is rough, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, walking deferentially in the road, and leaving the narrow pavement to the lawyer; "and the party is very rough. But they 're a wild lot in general, sir. advantage of this particular man is, that he never wants sleep. He'll go at it whence or how we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it, we find it necessary to shovel it away -the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a Rag and Bottle shop, and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook. This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer. "This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly. "Thank you." "Are you not going in, sir?" "No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good evening. Thank you!" Mr. Snags by lifts his hat, and returns to his little woman and his tea. But, Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blotheaded candle in his hand. "Pray is your lodger within ?" Krook. The copying." rowly. Mr. Krook has eyed his man nar- an indistinct impression of his aristo- | one of the two chairs, serves for cabinet cratic repute. "Did you wish to see him, sir ?" "It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin. "Shall I call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!" "I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr. Krook, with his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Hi-hi!" he says, when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly disappeared. lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat expands her wicked mouth, and snarls at him. 66 The or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The floor is bare; except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discolored shutters are drawn together; and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in-the Banshee of the man upon the bed. For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork, lean. ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just within the door way, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the Order, Lady Jane! Behave your-spectral darkness of a candle that has self to visitors, my lady! You know what they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two. "What do they say of him?" 66 "They say he has sold himself to the Enemy; but you and I know better --he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so black-humoured and gloomy, that I believe he'd as soon make that bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!" Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing BO. The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it, if he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if Poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner by the chimney, stand a deal table and a broken desk; a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. In another corner, a ragged old portmanteau on guttered down, until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has doubled over, and left a tower of winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard-the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness and faintness, and the odor of stale tobacco, there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium. 'Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick against the door. He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away, but his eyes are surely open. "Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo! Hallo !” As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long, goes out, and leaves him in the dark; with the gaunt eyes in the shutters staring down upon the bed. "It's gone out. Here it is." Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing, and calls "Miss Flite! Flite ! Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!" Krook follows him with his eyes, and, while he is calling, finds op| portunity to steal to the old portmanteau, and steal back again. "Run, Flite, run! : The nearest doc "What have you done with your tor! Run!" So Mr. Krook addresses candle ?" a crazy little woman, who is his female lodger who appears and vanishes in a breath: who soon returns, accompanied by a testy medical man, brought from his dinner-with a broad snuffy upper lip, and a broad Scotch tongue. Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his lodger, that he will go down stairs and bring a lighted candle from the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs outside. The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up, with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "Does the man generally sleep like this?" inquires the lawyer, in a low voice. "Hi! I don't know," says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows. "I know next to nothing of his habits, except that he keeps himself very close." Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes upon the bed. "God save us !" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!" Krook drops the heavy hand he has taken up, so suddenly that the arm swings over the bedside. They look at one another for a moment. "Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings. Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at them after a moment's examination. "He's just as dead as Phairy!" Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has been dead any time? "Any time, sir?" says the medical gentleman. "It's probable he wull have been dead aboot three hours." "About that time, I should say," observes a dark young man, on the other side of the bed. "Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?" inquires the first. The dark young man says yes. "Then I'll just tak' my depairture," replies the other; "for I'm nae gude here!" With which remark, he finishes his brief attendance, and returns to finish his dinner. The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face, and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one. "I knew this person by sight, very well," says he. "He has purchased opium of me, for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related to him?" glancing round upon the three bystanders. "I was his landlord," grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from the sur geon's outstretched hand. "He told me once, I was the nearest relation he had." "He has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is no doubt. The room is strongly flavored with it. There is enough here now," taking an old teapot from Mr. Krook, "to kill a dozen people." "Do you think he did it on purpose?" asks Krook. "Took the over-dose ?" "Yes!" Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible interest. "I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?" "I suppose he was. His roomdon't look rich," says Krook who might have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around. "But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to name his circumstances to me." "Did he owe you any rent?" "He will never pay it!" says the young man, resuming his examination. "It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare say good-looking." He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on the bedstead's edge, with his face towards that other face, and his hand upon the region of the heart. "I recollect once thinking there was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall in life. Was that so?" he continues, looking round. Krook replies, "You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose heads of hair I have got in sacks down stairs. Than that he was my lodger for a year and a half, and lived-or didn't live by law-writing, I know no more of him." During this dialogue, Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibitc: near the bed from the young surgeon's professional interest in death, noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case. He now interposes; addressing the young surgeon, in his unmoved, professional way. "I looked in here," he observes, just before you, with the intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some employment at his trade of copying. had heard of him from my stationer-Snagsby of Cook's Court. Since no one here knows anything about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!" to the little crazy woman, who has often seen him in Court, and whom he has often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the law stationer. "Suppose you do!" While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation, and covers its subject with the ratchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing; but stands, ever, near the old portmanteau. Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily, in his grey coat and his black sleeves. "Dear me, dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! Bless my soul !" "Can you give the person of the house any information about this unfortunate creature, Snagsby?" inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He was in arrears And he must with his rent, it seems. be buried, you know." 66 'Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind his hand; "I really don't know what advice I could offer, except sending for the beadle." "I don't speak of advice," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. " ("No one better, sir, I am sure," says Mr. Snagsby, with his deferential cough.) "I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he came from, or to anything concerning him.” "I assure you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, after prefacing his reply with his cough of general propitiation, " that I no more know where he came from, than I know "I could advise | little woman hasn't a good ear for "Where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon, to help him out. A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook, with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next. "As to his connexions, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "if a person was to say to me, 'Snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you in the Bank of England, if you'll only name one of 'em,' I couldn't do it, sir! About a year and a half ago-to the best of my belief at the time when he first came to lodge at the present Rag and Bottle Shop-" "That was the time!" says Krook, with a nod. "About a year and a half ago," says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, "he came into our place one morning after breakfast, and, finding my little woman (which name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation) in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting, and gave her to understand that he was in wants of copying work to do, and was not to put too fine a point upon it" a favourite apology for plainspeaking with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative frankness, "hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to strangers, particular-not to put too fine a point upon it-when they want anything. But she was rather took by something about this person; whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, I leave you to judge; and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My "Hadn't you better see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, "whether he had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an Inquest, and you will be asked the question. You can read?" "No, I can't," returns the old man, with a sudden grin. "Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. He will get into some trouble or difficulty, otherwise. Being here, I'll wait, if you make haste; and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. you will hold the candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is anything to help you." If "In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby. Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though there is very little else, Heaven knows. The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer conducts the search. The surgeon leans against a corner of the chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door. The apt oid scholar of the |