“Good night!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and meditation.

By this time the news has got into the court.  Groups of its inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr. Krook’s window, which they closely invest.  A policeman has already walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall back.  Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in young Perkins’ having “fetched” young Piper “a crack,” renews her friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion.  The potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable in station-houses.  People talk across the court out of window, and bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what’s the matter.  The general feeling seems to be that it’s a blessing Mr. Krook warn’t made away with first, mingled with a little natural disappointment that he was not.  In the midst of this sensation, the beadle arrives.

The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body.  The policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that must be borne with until government shall abolish him.  The sensation is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the beadle is on the ground and has gone in.

By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation, which has rather languished in the interval.  He is understood to be in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased.  Is immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing whatever.  Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that Mrs. Green’s son “was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better than anybody,” which son of Mrs. Green’s appears, on inquiry, to be at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the Lords of the Admiralty.  Beadle goes into various shops and parlours, examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.  Policeman seen to smile to potboy.  Public loses interest and undergoes reaction.  Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with