Most unexpected, the mystery come out one day at Egham Races.  The Public was shy of bein pulled in, and Chops was ringin his little bell out of his drawing-room winder, and was snarlin to me over his shoulder as he kneeled down with his legs out at the back-door—­for he couldn’t be shoved into his house without kneeling down, and the premises wouldn’t accommodate his legs—­was snarlin, “Here’s a precious Public for you; why the Devil don’t they tumble up?” when a man in the crowd holds up a carrier-pigeon, and cries out, “If there’s any person here as has got a ticket, the Lottery’s just drawed, and the number as has come up for the great prize is three, seven, forty-two!  Three, seven, forty-two!” I was givin the man to the Furies myself, for calling off the Public’s attention—­for the Public will turn away, at any time, to look at anything in preference to the thing showed ’em; and if you doubt it, get ’em together for any indiwidual purpose on the face of the earth, and send only two people in late, and see if the whole company an’t far more interested in takin particular notice of them two than of you—­I say, I wasn’t best pleased with the man for callin out, and wasn’t blessin him in my own mind, when I see Chops’s little bell fly out of winder at a old lady, and he gets up and kicks his box over, exposin the whole secret, and he catches hold of the calves of my legs and he says to me, “Carry me into the wan, Toby, and throw a pail of water over me or I’m a dead man, for I’ve come into my property!”

Twelve thousand odd hundred pound, was Chops’s winnins.  He had bought a half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it had come up.  The first use he made of his property, was, to offer to fight the Wild Indian for five hundred pound a side, him with a poisoned darnin-needle and the Indian with a club; but the Indian being in want of backers to that amount, it went no further.

Arter he had been mad for a week—­in a state of mind, in short, in which, if I had let him sit on the organ for only two minutes, I believe he would have bust—­but we kep the organ from him—­Mr. Chops come round, and behaved liberal and beautiful to all.  He then sent for a young man he knowed, as had a wery genteel appearance and was a Bonnet at a gaming-booth (most respectable brought up, father havin been imminent in the livery stable line but unfort’nate in a commercial crisis, through paintin a old gray, ginger-bay, and sellin him with a Pedigree), and Mr. Chops said to this Bonnet, who said his name was Normandy, which it wasn’t: 

“Normandy, I’m a goin into Society.  Will you go with me?”

Says Normandy:  “Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate that the ’ole of the expenses of that move will be borne by yourself?”

“Correct,” says Mr. Chops.  “And you shall have a Princely allowance too.”

The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair, to shake hands with him, and replied in poetry, with his eyes seemingly full of tears: