“Smashed!” was the general outcry.

“I ran slap into him,” said the gentleman.  “Who the deuce!—­no bones broken, that’s one thing.  The fellow—­there, look at him:  he’s like a glass tortoise.”

“It’s a chiwal glass,” Crickledon remarked, and laid finger on the star in the centre.

“Gentleman ran slap into me,” said Crummins, depositing the frame on the floor of the shop.

“Never had such a shock in my life,” continued the gentleman.  “Upon my soul, I took him for a door:  I did indeed.  A kind of light flashed from one of your houses here, and in the pitch dark I thought I was at the door of old Mart Tinman’s house, and dash me if I did n’t go in—­crash!  But what the deuce do you do, carrying that great big looking-glass at night, man?  And, look here tell me; how was it you happened to be going glass foremost when you’d got the glass on your back?”

“Well, ’t ain’t my fault, I knows that,” rejoined Crummins.  “I came along as careful as a man could.  I was just going to bawl out to Master Tinman, ‘I knows the way, never fear me’; for I thinks I hears him call from his house, ‘Do ye see the way?’ and into me this gentleman runs all his might, and smash goes the glass.  I was just ten steps from Master Tinman’s gate, and that careful, I reckoned every foot I put down, that I was; I knows I did, though.”

“Why, it was me calling, ‘I’m sure I can’t see the way.’

“You heard me, you donkey!” retorted the bearded gentleman.  “What was the good of your turning that glass against me in the very nick when I dashed on you?”

“Well, ’t ain’t my fault, I swear,” said Crummins.  “The wind catches voices so on a pitch dark night, you never can tell whether they be on one shoulder or the other.  And if I’m to go and lose my place through no fault of mine——­”

“Have n’t I told you, sir, I’m going to pay the damage?  Here,” said the gentleman, fumbling at his waistcoat, “here, take this card.  Read it.”

For the first time during the scene in the carpenter’s shop, a certain pomposity swelled the gentleman’s tone.  His delivery of the card appeared to act on him like the flourish of a trumpet before great men.

“Van Diemen Smith,” he proclaimed himself for the assistance of Ned Crummins in his task; the latter’s look of sad concern on receiving the card seeming to declare an unscholarly conscience.

An anxious feminine voice was heard close beside Mr. Van Diemen Smith.

“Oh, papa, has there been an accident?  Are you hurt?”

“Not a bit, Netty; not a bit.  Walked into a big looking-glass in the dark, that’s all.  A matter of eight or ten pound, and that won’t stump us.  But these are what I call queer doings in Old England, when you can’t take a step in the dark, on the seashore without plunging bang into a glass.  And it looks like bad luck to my visit to old Mart Tinman.”

“Can you,” he addressed the company, “tell me of a clean, wholesome lodging-house?  I was thinking of flinging myself, body and baggage, on your mayor, or whatever he is—­my old schoolmate; but I don’t so much like this beginning.  A couple of bed-rooms and sitting-room; clean sheets, well aired; good food, well cooked; payment per week in advance.”