it is, sir, that things are all wrong; and though I've been studying the matter these twenty years I can't see how to put 'em all right." Old Matt drew a long breath, for he had been speaking loudly and with vehemence; and now, upon reaching another post, he began gesticulating fiercely, for he had warmed to his subject. "But if I had time, sir, I'd go into the matter, sir. I'd take the poor man as he stands, and the rich man as _he_ stands; and I'd--" "Now, come; that's about enough for one night, anyhow. I don't mind a little, now and then, but they'll be hearing of you acrost the square d'reckly." "I'd take him, sir," continued Matt, "and hold him up for the whole world--" "O, ah! all right," said Matt's interrupter, the policeman on the beat; "I dessay you would; only the world wouldn't look at him. For why? 'cause the world's too busy. Good-night, old chap." "Good-night," said Matt, cooling down suddenly, and shuffling off in a quiet spiritless way, the fire out, and his head bent as he thrust his hands in his pockets. "Ah, he's about right; so he is. `The world's too busy!' so it is; and I ain't got a morsel of snuff left." Volume One, Chapter X. BROTHERLY LOVE. "There, there, there; sit down, sit down, sit down!" croaked old Octavius Hardon as he cowered over a miserable fire in his paper-strewn room. "Sit down, sit down, sit down," he kept on repeating, after just glancing over his shoulder as his brother, sleek, pompous, and black-clothed, entered the room--"such a gentlemanly man," as the old women of Somesham declared over cups of tea. "Sit down, Tom," croaked the withered, dry old man, pulling his black skull-cap close down to his yellow ears, and peering sideways from under his shaggy grey eyebrows at the chair he meant his brother to take. There was a dry, mocking sneer upon his thin lips, while the grey unshorn beard wagged and twitched about as he spoke, as, without taking further notice of his visitor, he made his chair scroop on the worn carpet as he dragged it closer to the fire and warmed his lean shins. Doctor Hardon slowly subsided into a seat, giving a hasty glance round the cheerless room as he did so, and then finishing with a long curious look at the lean figure before him, with its wrinkled bony face and attenuated form showing through the faded dressing-gown drawn tightly round him, and tucked-in between his knees, while the trembling hands were stretched out over the fire.