“Oh! what it is very spicy, is it?  Come, hand it over.  There’s the two bob.”

“My poverty and not my will consents,” sighed the trader.

“There, you be off, or we shall have all the brats coming round us.”

The peddler complied and moved off, and so willing was he to oblige his customers that on turning the corner he shouldered his pack and ran with great agility down the street, till he gained a network of small alleys in which he wriggled and left no trace.

Meantime sunken-eyes had put his tongue to the envelope and drawn out the contents.  “I’ll go into the light and see what it is all about.”

mephistopheles left alone had hardly given his pipe two sucks ere brutus returned black with rage and spouting oaths like a whale.

“Why, what is the matter?”

“Matter!  Didn’t he sell this to me for a flash story?”

“Why he didn’t say so.  But certainly he dropped a word about loose books.”

“Of course he did.”

“Well! and ain’t they?”

“Ain’t they!” cried the other with fury.  “Here, you young shaver, bring the candle out here.  Ain’t they?  No they ain’t——­and——­and——­the ——­ ——.  Look here!”

mephisto. “‘Mend your Ways,’ a tract.”

brutus.  “I’ll break his head instead.”

mephisto. “‘Narrative of Mr. James the Missionary.’”

brutus.  “The cheating, undermining rip.”

mephisto.  “And here is another to the same tune.”

brutus.  “Didn’t I tell you so.  The hypocritical, humbugging rascal—­”

mephisto.  “Stop a bit.  Here is a little one:  ’Memoirs of a Gentleman’s Housekeeper.’”

brutus.  “Oh! is there?  I did not see that.”

mephisto.  “You are so hasty.  The case mayn’t be so black as it looks.  The others might be thrown in to make up the parcel.  Hold the candle nearer.

brutus.  “Ay! let us see about the housekeeper.”

The two men read “The Housekeeper” eagerly, but as they read the momentary excitement of hope died out of their faces.  Not a sparkle of the ore they sought; all was dross.  “The Housekeeper” was one of those who make pickles, not eat them—­and in a linen apron a yard wide save their master’s money from the fangs of cook and footman, not help him scatter it in a satin gown.

There was not even a stray hint or an indelicate expression for the poor fellow’s two shillings.  The fraud, was complete.  It was not like the ground coffee, pepper and mustard in a London shop—­in which there is as often as not a pinch of real coffee, mustard and pepper to a pound of chicory and bullock’s blood, of red lead, dirt, flour and turmeric.  Here the do was pure.

Then brutus relieved his swelling heart by a string of observations partly rhetorical, partly zoological.  He devoted to horrible plagues every square inch of the peddler, enumerating more particularly those interior organs that subserve vitality, and concluded by vowing solemnly to put a knife into him the first fair opportunity.  “I’ll teach the rogue to—­” Sell you medicine for poison, eh?