Mr Bombasty said no more, but drew from his coat pocket a snuff-box of enormous dimensions. From it he grasped between his thumb and finger a moderate handful of stable-smelling dust. His nose and India handkerchief partook of it in equal shares, and then he rang his bell with presidential dignity, and ordered up his customary lunch of chops and porter. A few hours afterwards I was again upon the world, ready to begin the fight of life anew, and armed with fifteen guineas for the coming struggle. Mr Clayton had kept his word with me, and did not desert me until I was once more fairly on the road to ruin. One of the first consequences of my unlooked-for meeting with the faithful Thompson, was the repayment of the five shillings which he had so generously spared me when I was about to leave him for Birmingham, without as many pence in my scrip. During my absence, however, fortune had placed my honest friend in a new relation to a sum of this value. Five shillings were not to him, as before, sixty pence. The proprietor of the house in which he lived, and which he had found it so difficult to let out to his satisfaction, had died suddenly, and had thought proper to bequeath to his tenant the bulk of his property, amounting, perhaps, to five thousand pounds. Thompson, who was an upholsterer by trade, left the workshop in which he was employed as journeyman immediately, and began to work upon his own account. He was a prosperous and a thriving man when I rejoined him. His manner was, as the reader has seen, kind and straightforward as ever, and the only change that his wealth had wrought in him, was that which gold may be supposed to work a heart alive to its duties, simple and honest in its intentions, and lacking only the means to make known its strong desire of usefulness. His generosity had kept pace with his success, his good wishes outstripped both. His home was finer, yet scarcely more sightly and happier than the one large room, which, with its complement of ten children, sire and dame, had still a nook for the needy and friendless stranger. The old house had been made over for a twelvemonth to the various tenants, free of all charge. At the end of that period it was the intention of Thompson to pull it down, and build a better in its place. A young widow, with her three orphans, lodged on the attic floor, and the grateful prayers of the four went far to establish the buoyancy of the landlord's spirit, and to maintain the smile that seldom departed from his manly cheek. Well might the poor creature, whom I once visited in her happy lodging, talk of the sin of destroying so comfortable a residence, and feel assured, that "let them build a palace, they would never equal the present house, or make a sleeping-room where a body might rest so peacefully and well." Thompson's mode of life had scarcely varied. He was not idle amongst his men. When labour was suspended, he was with his children; another had been added to the number, and there