There was not a phaze of the neighboring sick man's
malady, from the day he mis-buttoned his coat as he paced
his yard—to which pass he was brought, being a tradesman,
by the fall of wheat from twenty shillings to ten at

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a clap—down to that when he was laid shouting on his
bed, that Fyler Close had not watched. By the hour he
stood at his window—forgetting baker, blacksmith, and
haberdasher, in the earnest gaze with which he regarded
every turn of the disease; while the patient rambled the
yard, in its early stages, or lay strapped upon his couch,
at its height. The tears, the groans, the whims, the flights
and wanderings of the lunatic, were a delicious banquet
to Fyler. He meant to cut with a weapon of double edge,
and this sharpened it, both sides at once. The deed was
found—there could be no question of that—which helped
Hobbleshank back into the farm-house whence Fyler had
dislodged him, by a master-stroke, many years ago.
Should he succeed in recovering possession, there would
be a long and heavy arrear of rents to be returned. This
would never do. The boy, to be sure, must be found—
must be proved to be alive. Notwithstanding the bold
and hardy face with which he gave out that such as would
find the child must grope in the earth, digging deep, an
uneasy conviction that he lived kept crowding into his
mind. Vague rumors to this effect, traceable to no clear
source it is true, had from time to time prevailed. He
knew of Leycraft's death; Ishmael had brought in the
news the second day after. He had been found on his knees,
the branch bent and twisted from its place by an unearthly
struggle, his head turned to one side, as if regarding an
object that stood at his side, just behind him—and his
hands clasped firmly together.

Fyler, on hearing these circumstances, had merely called
the man a fool, wondered he had n't taken poison, which
would have been a quieter death—and dismissed the subject,
apparently, from his mind. To be sure, he had had
an unpleasant vision the night after, in which Leycraft
appeared, on his knees, knocking at the door of his closet,
and begging, in God's name, to be let in. But what of
that?—The dream had passed away; and getting up the
next morning a quarter of an hour earlier than usual, he
opened his door cautiously, and finding no such supplicant
there—as in truth he had half expected to—he put himself
at ease.

Then there was the bracelet—which he knew Leycraft
had carried on his person for years, but which Ishmael's

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stealthy scrutiny had failed to find there now—another
clue to the child. The cloud, he confessed to himself,
began to thicken a little; and now he meant to clear all
obstacles and entanglements at a bound. In a few days
the forge was silent; the anvil uttered not so much as a
tinkle—the broker had levied his judgment, which had
hung dangling, like a great chain, for months over the
blacksmith's head:—the blacksmith's fire was quenched,
and his hammers muffled forever. A few days more, and
the haberdasher—thriftless woman—was forced to send
her children out privily to beg; Fyler had swept her shop
with a comprehensive bill of sale. The piano in the
yellow house had gone gouty in the legs long ago; and
was now taken to the hospital in the square, out of a movement
of pure benevolence in the bosom of Mr. Close. As
to the baker, on a close scrutiny of accounts, the broker,
finding a clear balance against himself of four-and-threepence,
with a fraction, thought it not expedient to move
him just at present. All that remained was the Row, to
show to the world that Fyler Close was worth a cent; and
Fyler chaunted a psalm to the tune of a rattling song he
had heard at a cheap place of entertainment, when he was a
young man, with great spirit, as he chinked the silver in
his hand and thought of this. He had finished the psalm,
and getting into a more advanced stage of pleasantry,
was striving, with whimsical success, to adapt some common-metre
measure that he might recall, to the fitful
shouts of his neighbor; when Mr. Small came in, bearing
upon his left arm a pile of clothes, hung loosely over, and
in his right a crook-necked staff, with which he had thrust
the door open, and which he now employed in putting it
to again. Upon his head, covering and extinguishing
the glory of his own individual cap, rested a straw hat,
stretching out before and behind, twisted up convulsively
at the sides, and discolored and stained in every strand
with sweat. Mr. Small might have been mistaken by a
rash observer at first sight, as he stood resting on his crook,
for a patriarch gone to seed. The broker knew him for
what he was, and hailed him at sight.

“This is a melancholy affair, Ishmael,” said the broker,
shaking his head dolefully.

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“It can't be helped?” asked Ishmael, while a lurking
smile crept upon his visage.

“I am afraid it can't,” rejoined Mr. Close; “I do'nt see
how I can avoid going out of my wits.”

“Any how, uncle Fyler,” said Ishmael, “I hope for
my sake you'll not go so far, you can't come back again.
You'll be good enough to recollect that!”

“It's very painful, though,” continued Fyler; “Here
am I, Ishmael, this morning in full possession of all my
faculties according to human observation, equal to a calculation
in compound interest, or the drawing of a mortgage
with extra-conditions and policy-clauses—before
night what'll I be?”

“I am afraid to say,” said Ishmael, starting back and
lifting both hands as though to shut out a disagreeable
vision.

“But I'm not,” answered Fyler, twitching his whiskers,
“a miserable wreck, an insane rag-picker; what'll be my
business? To go about running into gutters, and poking
street-pools and rag-heaps—and I should'nt wonder if it
disagreed with me so much as to make me twist my face
and beat myself, and do such goings-on, that every body'll
say, `Fyler has lost his reason.”'

“I should'nt wonder!” echoed Mr. Small, and at the
prospect of so cheerful a result presented so vividly, both
Fyler and Ishmael broke into a gentle laugh.

“Was he in his right mind always?” asked Fyler, looking
up edge-wise at Ishmael from where he sat, allowing
his glance to rest a moment, in its way, upon the garments
over his arm. “Was the owner of these always
right?”

“Wonderfully so,” answered Ishmael; “The very
sanest picker I ever knew. He was a extraordinary
chap—that old fellow,” pursued Mr. Small. “He would
pick a couple of hogsheads a day, sir, and with a run
jump over 'em at night, standing on end, as lively as a
grasshopper in the first line o' business. He had a ambition
above rags, and that was the ruin of him. One
morning—it was a lovely one—the baker's winders was
all full of smoking rolls and fresh gingerbread, the milkwagons
was on the jump, and the red-cheeked chambermaids
puttin' their houses into clean faces, like queens'—

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our friend goes out in prime spirits to pick a little before
breakfast. There was a big heap in Hanover Square to
be overhauled that afternoon, and the thoughts of that before
him put him in such a flow, he could hardly hold in
for joy. Well, sir, he was a-goin' along all well enough,
till he comes to 'Publican Alley, and there he balked—
he wanted to be an old clo' man, and there was something
up that alley that tempted him worse than a evil spirit.
He could'nt hold back: so up the alley he bolts, leavin'
his basket (which he begun to be ashamed of,) at the
mouth; he comes to a airy, a very deep but very delicious
airy, too, for there, as he peeps thro' the railin', he sees
that vicious old coat that was to be his undoin', a hanging
in its old place over the back of a chair, close up by the
winder; the winder was up—the old chap listened—
there was nobody stirrin'—he laid himself close up against
the rail, and stretched down his stick till he gets the old
feller by the collar, and begins to tug. Tuggin' was fatal
work; he was too wiolent; the gate he was leanin' agin
gives way—the gratin' to the coal-hole was up—the old
chap pitches headlong in, and sliding on his belly to the
very bottom—cracks his neck. There was the vanity
of 'spirin' above his sphere! He was a bosom friend o'
mine; and as he forgot to mention me in his will, I bought
his hat and trowsers and stick and basket, from the crowner's
man, for a couple of plugs, to remember him by.
They was cheap at that!”

“I wonder if they would fit me, Ishmael—it would be
curious to try, would n't it?”

The broker lifted the garments gently from Ishmael's
arm, displaced the hat, and, possessing himself of the
crook and basket, placidly withdrew to his closet, leaving
Mr. Small leaning against the casement, his cap jauntily
cocked and one leg crossed upon the other, regarding the
broker as he withdrew with a look of the profoundest admiration
and respect. It was capitally done—that he
could n't deny.

In a few minutes, during which audible laughter, kept
pretty well under though, had resounded from the closet,
an outlandish figure appeared from its concealments,
locking the door carefully behind and thrusting the key
in a pocket. It was n't the broker. Ishmael, unbending

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from the posture he had maintained, and spreading himself,
with a hand on either knee after the manner of a
jockey making himself familiar with the points of a horse
on show, said it was n't Fyler Close—he'd stake his life
on it—it was n't Fyler.

The figure moved out upon the floor, as if to give Mr. Small
an opportunity to confirm his impressions. They couldn't
be shaken: he clung to his first belief. There was the
old yellow hat, which helped the face underneath it to a
look so small and shrunken; then the roundabout and
trowsers, loose and flaunting, and washed by a thousand
showers and sweats and stains, out of all color; no reasonable
man could have thought of going out of his
senses, (even from an overgrown coat and short pantaloons,)
into such an ill-assorted apparel. Moving up and down,
the figure, keeping a hard, steady countenance, proceeded
to fish with the crooked stick which he carried in his hand,
in various sections of the apartment as in imaginary pools,
and drew up from time to time supposititious strips of canvass
and linen, which, with great care and skill, he deposited
in the bottom of a basket that hung upon his arm.
Excellent! Ishmael protested that it brought his friend,
the picker, back so vividly before his mind, that it was as
much as he could do to refrain from tears. After practising
in this way for better than a quarter of an hour, the
figure came and halted before Ishmael, letting the arm which
held the basket fall its full length, and in the other holding
the stick—as is the established custom of pickers—with
its crook downward, and regarding Mr. Small with melancholy
steadiness of visage.

“I'm a poor old man now, Ishmael,” said the old gentleman;
“Very poor—worth not so much as Mrs. Lettuce.
By-the-by, Ishmael, isn't it strange, Mrs. Lettuce has never
called for that balance on the mortgage in the master's
hand? It was just three shillings and a penny, and it's
very wrong in her not to look to it. You should mention
it when you see her; it's flying in the face of Providence
not to look to her own. Have you seen the poor woman
lately, Ishmael?”

Ishmael averred that he had—in the market.

“What did she say, Ishmael; did she seem to bear her
fortune meekly?”

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"She said," answered Ishmael, who was bursting
with suppressed satisfaction at the masterly manner in
which the old gentleman was carrying it off—"She said,
sir, that you was one of the greatest scoundrels that ever
went unhung; that you had robbed her of her radishes,
and 'sparagus, and stockings and money, and character,
like a heathen boy constrictor, she called it; and she'd
see, sir, whether she wouldn't have satisfaction out of you
yet!"

"I wonder what the poor old woman's living on that
makes her so savage?" asked Mr. Close mildly.

"As far as I can learn," answered Ishmael, "for the
last fortnight on b'iled turnip-tops—not such a very violent
species of food."

"Where does she get boiled turnip-tops, I'd like to know?"
asked Mr. Close, whose eyes began to gleam a little.

"They're given to her by her old friends in the market,"
replied Ishmael. "But they've cut off the supply at last;
it sp'ilt the sale. She'll beg a couple of weeks more with
an old cloak and red handkercher, they all say, and then
she'll go to the almshouse."

"The best thing the poor creature can do," said
Fyler: "I thought so long ago. She'll be much more
comfortable there than out of doors blabbing secrets and
ripping up old stories of no use to any one."

The interview with Mr. Small concluded, the broker
saying that he had a heavy day's work before him—four
squares, and better than a dozen streets to scour—pulled
open the door, and went forth—Ishmael following at a
distance.