The String of Pearls (1850), p. 202

that surely two such people as the beadle of St. Dunstan's, and his neighbour the shoemaker, would not be employed to unravel such a mystery. He sat down in an arm chair and rested his head upon his hand, and while he was in that attitude the door of his shop opened, and a man in the dress of a carter made his appearance.

"Be this Muster Todd's ?"
"Well," said Todd, "what then?"

"Why, then, this be for him like. It's a letter, but larning waren't much i'the fashion in my young days, so I can't read what's on it."

Todd stretched out his hand. An instant examination showed him it bore the Peckham post-mark.

"Ah!" he muttered, " from Fogg. Thank you, my man, that will do. That will do. What do you wait for?"

"Please to remember the carter, your honour?"

Todd looked daggers at him, and slowly handed out twopence, which the man took with a very ill grace.

"What," said Todd, "would you charge me more for carrying a letter than King George the Third does, you extortionate rascal?"

The carter gave a nod.

"Get out with you, or by—"

Todd snatched up a razor, and the carter was off like a shot, for he really believed, from the awful looks of Todd, that his life was not worth a minute's purchase. Todd opened the letter with great gravity.—It contained the following words:—

"Dear Sir,"

"The lad, T. R., I grieve to say, is no more. Let us hope he is gone where the weary are at rest, and where there is neither sin nor sorrow.
"I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,

Jacob B. Fogg."

"Humph!" said Todd.

He held the letter in the flame of the lamp until it fell a piece of airy tinder at his feet.

"Humph!" he repeated, and that humph was all that he condescended to say of poor Tobias Ragg, whom the madhouse -keeper had thought proper to say was dead; hoping that Todd might never be undeceived, for the barber was a good customer.

If, however, Tobias should turn up to the confusion of Fogg and of Todd, what could the latter do for the deceit that had been practised upon him?—literally nothing.

"No sooner," said Todd, "does one cloud disappear from my route than another takes its place. What can that story mean about the attic next door? It sounds to my ears strange and portentous. What am I to think of it?"

He rose and paced his shop with rapid strides. At length he paused, as though he had come to a determination.

"The want of a boy is troublesome to me/' he said. " I must get one, but for the present this must suffice."

He wrote upon a small slip of paper the words—"Gone to the Temple—will return shortly." He then, by the aid of a wafer, affixed this announcement to the upper part of the half-glass door leading into his shop. Locking this door securely on the inside, and starting a couple of bolts into their sockets, he lit a candle and left his shop. With a stealthy, cat-like movement, Todd passed through the room immediately behind his business apartment, and opening another door he made his way towards the staircase. Then he paused a moment. He thought some sound from above had come upon his ears, but he was not
quite sure. To suspect, however, was with such a man as Todd to be prepared for the worst, and accordingly he went back to the room behind his shop again, and from a table-drawer he took a knife, such as is used by butchers in their