Ah, me! ah, me! I paused here, in grief, too sorrowful to carry out the thread of my reflections. I had had but few interviews, with Blade-o'-Grass; but when, feeling my duty press heavily upon me, I had approached the subject which most grieved her friends, I had found her deaf and implacable to my words. She placed her back against the rock of natural affection, and every argument used against Tom Beadle struck her with a feather's weight. To break the tie seemed to me to be impossible. There remained, then, but one right thing to be done. To sanctify it by the sacrament of marriage, and thus fasten the hold which the thief had upon her. Let no man come between them then! This girl, in whom there was so much latent good, would be linked for life to a thief. His infamous life would be hers, his lot would be hers, and nothing should separate them but death! At the date of my present conversation with Rachel, I had not seen Blade-o'-Grass for many weeks, and I knew that Tom Beadle was out of prison and at work again in his bad way. I determined to seek her out that very night. I had promised to visit Jimmy Virtue in company with Robert Truefit. Jimmy had expressed a wish to see us, and he would most likely be able to tell me where I could find Blade-o'-Grass. These thoughts occupied but a very few moments in passing through my mind; and I turned again to Rachel. 'When I heard poor Blade-o'-Grass,' I said to her, 'speak to her baby, her voice sounded strangely familiar to me. Yet it seems scarcely possible that what you and I have in our minds with reference to her should be more than fancy.' But Rachel gently shook her head, and we diverged to other subjects. Robert Truefit and I met by appointment, and walked together to Jimmy Virtue's leaving-shop. Jimmy Virtue was in his parlour, and upon our entrance he hastily gathered up an old pack of cards, with which he had been playing. The deal table was bare of cloth, and was smeared over with chalk figures representing many thousands of pounds. 'Hallo!' exclaimed Jimmy Virtue; 'there you are! I've been 'avin' a game of All-fours with Jack.' I looked around for Jack, but saw no signs of him. There was but one tallow-candle burning in the room, and that was stuck in a ginger-beer bottle and was guttering down. 'I'll be with you in a minute,' said Jimmy Virtue; 'I've got a bundle to tie up in the shop.' 'This is a miserable place to live in,' I said to Robert Truefit when Jimmy Virtue had left the room. 'Who is Jack?' 'A shadow,' replied Robert Truefit; 'a shadow of Jimmy's creation, with whom he plays at cards in his loneliness, and cheats out of fabulous sums--money, Jack, and all being things of air. Look at the chalk-score on the table; Jimmy has won more than three thousand pounds of Jack. Is not truth stranger than fiction, Mr. Meadow? Jack sits there.'