“Hasn’t he? It does not much signify. I only mentioned it because I thought I understood him to say that he would.” And then Mr. Sowerby went on swinging himself. How was it that he felt so averse to mention that little sum of £500 to a young man like John Robarts, a fellow without wife or children or calls on him of any sort, who would not even be injured by the loss of the money, seeing that he had an ample salary on which to live? He wondered at his own weakness. The want of the money was urgent on him in the extreme. He had reasons for supposing that Mark would find it very difficult to renew the bills, but he, Sowerby, could stop their presentation if he could get this money at once into his own hands. “Can I do anything for you?” said the innocent lamb, offering his throat to the butcher. But some unwonted feeling numbed the butcher’s fingers, and blunted his knife. He sat still for half a minute after the question, and then jumping from his seat, declined the offer. “No, no; nothing, thank you. Only write to Mark, and say that I shall be there to-morrow,” and then, taking his hat, he hurried out of the office. “What an ass I am,” he said to himself as he went: “as if it were of any use now to be particular!” He then got into a cab and had himself driven half way up Portman Street towards the New Road, and walking from thence a few hundred yards down a cross-street he came to a public-house. It was called the “Goat and Compasses,”—a very meaningless name, one would say; but the house boasted of being a place of public entertainment very long established on that site, having been a tavern out in the country in the days of Cromwell. At that time the pious landlord, putting up a pious legend for the benefit of his pious customers, had declared that—“God encompasseth us.” The “Goat and Compasses” in these days does quite as well; and, considering the present character of the house, was perhaps less unsuitable than the old legend. “Is Mr. Austen here?” asked Mr. Sowerby of the man at the bar. “Which on ’em? Not Mr. John; he ain’t here. Mr. Tom is in—the little room on the left-hand side.” The man whom Mr. Sowerby would have preferred to see was the elder brother, John; but as he was not to be found, he did go into the little room. In that room he found—Mr. Austen, Junior, according to one arrangement of nomenclature, and Mr. Tom Tozer according to another. To gentlemen of the legal profession he generally chose to introduce himself as belonging to the respectable family of the Austens; but among his intimates he had always been—Tozer.