But when the Hunchback made himself known, and when More did the same; and when the Hunchback said he had got the certificate which rendered Eva’s marriage illegal; and when More raved to have it given to him, and when the Hunchback (as having some grains of misanthropy in him to the last) persisted in going into his dying agonies in a remote corner of his cage, and took unheard-of trouble not to die anywhere near the bars that were within More’s reach; MR. WHELKS applauded to the echo. At last the Hunchback was persuaded to stick the certificate on the point of a dagger, and hand it in; and that done, died extremely hard, knocking himself violently about, to the very last gasp, and certainly making the most of all the life that was in him. Still, More had yet to get out of his den before he could turn this certificate to any account. His first step was to make such a violent uproar as to bring into his presence a certain ‘Norman Free Lance’ who kept watch and ward over him. His second, to inform this warrior, in the style of the Polite Letter-Writer, that ‘circumstances had occurred’ rendering it necessary that he should be immediately let out. The warrior declining to submit himself to the force of these circumstances, Mr. More proposed to him, as a gentleman and a man of honour, to allow him to step out into the gallery, and there adjust an old feud subsisting between them, by single combat. The unwary Free Lance, consenting to this reasonable proposal, was shot from behind by the comic man, whom he bitterly designated as ‘a snipe’ for that action, and then died exceedingly game. All this occurred in one day—the bridal day of the Ladye of Lambythe; and now MR. WHELKS concentrated all his energies into a focus, bent forward, looked straight in front of him, and held his breath. For, the night of the eventful day being come, MR. WHELKS was admitted to the ‘bridal chamber of the Ladye of Lambythe,’ where he beheld a toilet table, and a particularly large and desolate four-post bedstead. Here the Ladye, having dismissed her bridesmaids, was interrupted in deploring her unhappy fate, by the entrance of her husband; and matters, under these circumstances, were proceeding to very desperate extremities, when the Ladye (by this time aware of the existence of the certificate) found a dagger on the dressing-table, and said, ‘Attempt to enfold me in thy pernicious embrace, and this poignard—!’ &c. He did attempt it, however, for all that, and he and the Ladye were dragging one another about like wrestlers, when Mr. More broke open the door, and entering with the whole domestic establishment and a Middlesex magistrate, took him into custody and claimed his bride.