I wrote to her, therefore, begging her to pay all these debts, and promised myself on Monday morning again to be with my dear wife.  Gus carried off the letter, and promised to deliver it in Bernhard Street after church-time; taking care that Mary should know nothing at all of the painful situation in which I was placed.  It was near midnight when we parted, and I tried to sleep as well as I could in the dirty little sofa-bedstead of Mr. Aminadab’s back-parlour.

That morning was fine and sunshiny, and I heard all the bells ringing cheerfully for church, and longed to be walking to the Foundling with my wife:  but there were the three iron doors between me and liberty, and I had nothing for it but to read my prayers in my own room, and walk up and down afterwards in the court at the back of the house.  Would you believe it?  This very court was like a cage!  Great iron bars covered it in from one end to another; and here it was that Mr. Aminadab’s gaol-birds took the air.

They had seen me reading out of the prayer-book at the back-parlour window, and all burst into a yell of laughter when I came to walk in the cage.  One of them shouted out “Amen!” when I appeared; another called me a muff (which means, in the slang language, a very silly fellow); a third wondered that I took to my prayer-book yet.

“When do you mean, sir?” says I to the fellow—­a rough man, a horse-dealer.

“Why, when you are going to be hanged, you young hypocrite!” says the man.  “But that is always the way with Brough’s people,” continued he.  “I had four greys once for him—­a great bargain, but he would not go to look at them at Tattersall’s, nor speak a word of business about them, because it was a Sunday.”

“Because there are hypocrites,” sir, says I, “religion is not to be considered a bad thing; and if Mr. Brough would not deal with you on a Sunday, he certainly did his duty.”

The men only laughed the more at this rebuke, and evidently considered me a great criminal.  I was glad to be released from their society by the appearance of Gus and Mr. Smithers.  Both wore very long faces.  They were ushered into my room, and, without any orders of mine, a bottle of wine and biscuits were brought in by Mr. Aminadab; which I really thought was very kind of him.

“Drink a glass of wine, Mr. Titmarsh,” says Smithers, “and read this letter.  A pretty note was that which you sent to your aunt this morning, and here you have an answer to it.”

I drank the wine, and trembled rather as I read as follows:—­

“Sir,—­If, because you knew I had desined to leave you my proparty, you wished to murdar me, and so stepp into it, you are dissapointed.  Your villiany and ingratitude would have murdard me, had I not, by Heaven’s grace, been inabled to look for consalation elsewhere.

“For nearly a year I have been a martar to you.  I gave up everything,—­my