Basnett-street. As we shall have occasion to mention his name in a future chapter, we shall merely allude to it here. And there was the firm of M’Iver, M’Viccar, and M’Corquodale, never mentioned by us youngsters without the addition of the awfully bad joke about the old woman, a mythological old woman doubtless, going into their office and asking if they were the house of M’Viper, M’Adder, and M’Crocodile. But who is this “Goliath of Gath” whom we see approaching, and whom, if he had lived in these days and been a poor man, Barnum would certainly have bagged, and caravaned, and made a fortune out of as a giant? It is Roger Leigh, as kind-hearted a man as ever lived, with an amiable and benevolent smile ever playing upon and irradiating his huge countenance. He was a general favourite, as he walked amongst us like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. And what a character he was at an election! His activity and energy in such times were tremendous. But Roger was rather a paradox in his politics. A Roman Catholic in his religion, he was what was then called “a Church and King man” to the backbone; a Tory of Tories, in days when Tories were not the faint-hearted chickens which we now see them. Poor old Roger Leigh! Like Sir Abel Handy, he had always some scheme on the anvil for getting rich, but we fear that, like the rest of us, he sometimes took two steps backward for one forward. The stone of Sisyphus is the type of most of us. But, rich or poor, successful or otherwise, peace to his memory! We never heard harm of him. He had everybody’s good word. We wish that the world contained many more like him. CHAPTER X.