He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in
some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. 'Yours!' said he. 'Mind!
Your own.'

I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good
manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he
gave Mr. Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave
me only a look with his aiming eye--no, not a look, for he shut it
up, but wonders may be done with an eye by hiding it.

On the way home, if I had been in a humor for talking, the talk
must have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at
the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home
with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air
as possible. But I was in a manner stupified by this turning up
of my old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could think of
nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented our-
selves in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual cir-
cumstance to tell her about the bright shilling. 'A bad un, I'll be
bound,' said Mrs. Joe, triumphantly, 'or he wouldn't have given it
to the boy? Let's look at it.'

I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. 'But
what's this?' said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catch-
ing up the paper. Two One-Pound notes?'

Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that
seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all
the cattle markets in the country. Joe caught up his hat again, and
ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner.
While he was gone I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacant-
ly at my sister, feeing pretty sure that the man would not be there.

Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that
he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the
notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put
them under some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the
top of a press in the state parlour. There they remained a night-
mare to me many and many a night and day.

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of
the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of
the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms

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