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

[figure description] Page 247.[end figure description]

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
hadn'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 stealthy scrutiny had failed
to find there now, another clew 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 for ever.
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 chanted 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.

“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 don't see how I can avoid going out of my
wits.”

“Anyhow, 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'm 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 shouldn't wonder
if it disagreed with me so much as to make me
twist my face and beat myself, and do such goings-on
that everybody'll say, `Fyler has lost
his reason.”'

“I shouldn't 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 edgewise 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 milk-wagons
was on the jump, and the red-cheeked
chambermaids puttin' their houses into clean
faces, like queens'—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

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than a evil spirit. He couldn't hold back; so
up the alley he bolts, leaving 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 through the
railin', he sees that vicious old coat that was
to be his undoin', a hangin' 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 coalhole
was up—the old chap pitches headlong in, and
slidin' 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 trousers 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, wouldn'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 couldn'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 wasn't the broker. Ishmael,
unbending 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 wasn't Fyler Close—he'd stake his life
on it—it wasn'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
he could do to refrain from shedding 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 after 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?”

“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.