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 buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written "Thames Court." Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or ale-house, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.

"Hast got it, Dummie?" said she quickly, as she closed the door on the guest.

"Noa, noa! not exactly—but I thinks as ow"

"Pish, you fool!" cried the woman interrupting him, peevishly: "Vy, it is no use desaving of me. You knows you has only stepped from my boosing ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So, 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