"Ah! but you mustn't run down the _Mercury_, either. They've asked me to write a description of the sailing of your herring-fleet. So I must stop here for a few days, and I want you to change me a Bank-of-England note." "Ja, ja! with pleasure! Wass always likes dis Bank-of-England notes; ist goot, and clean, and so better as dirty Austrich Prussich money. Ah! he is not the same as I give you other day! He is quite new and clean for twenty pounds! Ja, ja!" he added, after holding the note up to the light, "his vater-mark is raight! A. F.! Vot is A. F., 17 April? Ah, you don't know! You don't become it from A. F.? Course not! Vell, vell, let me see die course of 'Change--denn I put him into my leetle stock von English bank-note!" The old man took up a newspaper that lay on the counter before him and consulted it, made a rapid calculation on a piece of paper, and was about to turn round towards the drawer where, as George remembered, he kept his cash-box, when he stopped, handed George the pen from behind his ear, dipped it into the ink, and said: "Vell, just write his name, Vart--Paul Vart, on his back--m-ja? And his date of month. So! Vart--Paul Vart!--m-ja! ist goot. Here's die guldens." George Dallas swept the gold pieces into his pocket, nodded to the old man, and left the shop. Mr. Schaub carefully locked away the note, made an entry of its number and amount in his ledger, and resumed his reading. CHAPTER XVII. A DILEMMA. South Molton-street had apparently a strong attraction for Mr. James Swain. Perhaps he found it a profitable and productive situation in point of odd and early jobs, perhaps he had some less professional reason for frequenting it. However that may be, the fact existed that no day passed without his tousled head and imperfectly clad form making their appearance in the street two or three times between dawn and dark. He would hang about the precincts of the house in which Routh and Harriet lodged, and evinced an extraordinary preference for the archway in the vicinity as a dining-room. He might have been seen at irregular hours devouring saveloys, polonies, or, when jobs odd or even were not plentiful, hunches of bread and cheese, within the shelter of the archway, in the most unsophisticated attitudes, and with great apparent enjoyment. Mr. James Swain's face was not free from the underlying expression of care and anxiety which is always to be found by the careful observer in the countenance of the London street-boy, but it had more than the usual complement of sauciness, cunning, readiness, and impudence.