My uncle, Mr Oliver Brown, was in the iron trade; and in connection with his business, which was a very large one, was in the habit of paying periodical visits to the manufacturing town of Bolton, near to which his principal iron-works were situated. He usually paid these visits alone; but on the occasion of which I am about to speak he was accompanied by my aunt, who deemed it her duty to be with her husband, as it was winter-time and he had only just recovered from a severe illness. It was late in the evening of a bleak November day that the coach which conveyed Mr and Mrs Oliver Brown from their comfortable country-seat, distant some fifty miles from Bolton, entered the noisy ill-paved streets of that bustling town, and proceeded to what at that period was the principal inn of the place. Both travellers were tired by their journey, and after a hasty dinner, were glad to retire to rest. 'Did you say number twenty-seven, second floor?' inquired Mrs Oliver, addressing the lady at the bar, as she took a chamber candlestick from her hand and proceeded to mount the stairs. 'Twenty-seven, second floor,' responded the landlady with an affirmative nod and a gracious smile. 'Twenty-seven, second floor,' repeated my uncle as he followed in the wake of his more active and enterprising helpmate, who, threading her way up the spiral staircase and along a labyrinth of corridors and passages, had already arrived at the dormitory in question. Mr and Mrs Oliver were soon in bed; and there we will leave them, whilst we look in at number twenty-nine on the same floor, and make the acquaintance of Mr and Mrs Wormwood Scrubbs, the occupants of that apartment. They, like their neighbours at number twenty-seven, were in comfortable circumstances, and like the latter, not much given to travelling for pleasure's sake on a cold raw day in November; but an affair of business which demanded their presence at Bolton had compelled them to sacrifice their ease and comfort, and come to that town on this bleak November day. Mr Scrubbs had long been subject to attacks of gout in the foot; and as he had heard of this disease having a tendency sometimes to shift its seat to the brain or the stomach, when it was apt to assume a more serious type, he had made it a rule to carry about his person in the daytime, and to place under his pillow at night, a certain medicine which an eminent physician had assured him would speedily arrest any such erratic tendency on the part of the malady from which he suffered.