"This gen'leman, Mrs. Cook, 's been and just took a child out o' the water ma'am. He 'ain't got a change in his wescut-pocket, so if you'll do what ye can for 'im, there's many on us'll be obliged to ye, ma'am." "Lor', whose child was it, Jim?" "I don't know as you know her, ma'am. The man's name's Potts. He keeps a public down about Limehouse, someveres." Thomas stood shivering--glad, however, that the man should represent his case for him. "The gentleman had better go to bed till we get his clo'es dried for him," said the landlady. "I think that's the best we can do for him." "Take a drop o' summat, sir," said the man, turning to Thomas. "They keeps good licker here. Put a name upon it, sir." "Well, I'll have a small glass of pale brandy," said Thomas--"neat, if you please. And what'll you have yourself? I'm much obliged to you for introducing me here, for I must look rather a queer customer." "It's what _you'll_ have, not what I'll have, sir, if you'll excuse _me_," returned the man. "I beg your pardon," said Thomas, who had just received his brandy. He drank it, and proceeded to put his hand in his pocket--no easy matter in the state of his garments. "_I'm_, a goin' to pay for this," interposed the man, in a determined tone, and Thomas was hardly in a condition to dispute it. At the same moment the landlady, who had left the bar after she had helped Thomas, returned, saying, "Will you walk this way, sir?" Thomas followed, and found himself in a neat enough little room, where he was only too glad to undress and go to bed. As he pulled off his coat, it occurred to him to see that his money was safe. He had put it, mostly in sovereigns, into a pocket-book of elaborate construction, which he generally carried in the breast-pocket of what the tailors call a lounging-coat. It was gone. His first conclusion was, that the man had taken it. He rushed back into the bar, but he was not there. It must be confessed that, in the midst of his despair, a fresh pang at the loss of his money shot through Thomas's soul. But he soon came to the conclusion that the man had not taken it. It was far more likely that, as he went overboard, the book slipped from his pocket into the water, and in this loss an immediate reward of almost his first act of self-forgetfulness had followed. The best thing that can happen to a man, sometimes, is to lose his money; and, while people are compassionate over the loss, God may regard it as the first step of the stair by which the man shall rise above it and many things besides with which not only his feet, but his hands and his head, are defiled. Then first he began to feel that he had no ground under his feet--the one necessity before such a man could find a true foundation. Until he lost it, he did not know how much, even in his misery, the paltry hundred pounds had been to him. Now it was gone, things looked black indeed. He emptied his pockets of two or three sovereigns and some silver, put his