"Dear heart, Mr. Penfold, how you and I do take to one another, to be sure. But so we ought; for we are honest folk, the pair, and has had a hard time. Don't it never strike you rather curious that two thousand pounds was at the bottom of both our troubles, yourn and mine? I might have married Joe, and been a happy woman with him; but the Devil puts in my head-- There you go again hammering! Life ain't worth having next door to that lodging-house. Drat the woman, if she must peck, why don't she go in the churchyard and peck her own grave; which we shall never be quiet till she is there. And these here gimcrack houses, they won't stand no more pecking at than a soap-sud. Ay, that's what hurts me, Mr. Penfold. The Lord had given him and me health and strength and honesty; our betters had wed for love and wrought for money, as the saying is; but I must go again Nature, that cried 'Come couple'; and must bargain for two thousand pounds. So now I've lost the man, and not got the money, nor never shall. And, if I had, I'd burn-- Ah--ah--ah--ah--ah!" This tirade ended in stifled screams of terror, caused by the sudden appearance of a human hand, in a place and in a manner well adapted to shake the stoutest laundress's nerves. This hand came through the brick-work of the chimney-place, and there remained a moment or two. Then slowly retired, and as it retired something was heard to fall upon the shavings and tinsel of the fireplace. Nancy, by a feminine impulse, put her hands before her face, to hide this supernatural hand; and, when she found courage to withdraw them, and glare at the place, there was no aperture whatever in the brick-work; and, consequently, the hand appeared to have traversed the solid material, both coming and going. "Oh, Mr. Penfold," cried Nancy; "I'm a sinful woman. This comes of talking of the Devil arter sunset;" and she sat trembling so that the very floor shook. Mr. Penfold's nerves were not strong. He and Nancy both huddled together for mutual protection, and their faces had not a vestige of color left in them. However, after a period of general paralysis, Penfold whispered: "I heard it drop something on the shavings." "Then we shall be all in a blaze o' brimstone," shrieked Nancy, wringing her hands. And they waited to see. Then, as no conflagration took place, Mr. Penfold got up, and said he must go and see what it was the hand had dropped. Nancy, in whom curiosity was beginning to battle with terror, let him go to the fireplace without a word of objection, and then cried out: "Don't go anigh it, sir; it will do you a mischief; don't touch, it whatever. _Take the tongs."_