“Nor sold him anything, perhaps?” “No,” replied Mrs. Bumble. “You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring?” said Mr. Brownlow. “Certainly not,” replied the matron. “What are we brought here to answer to such nonsense as this for?” Again Mr. Brownlow nodded to Mr. Grimwig, and again that gentleman limped away with extraordinary readiness. But not again did he return with a stout man and wife, for this time he led in two palsied women, who shook and tottered as they walked. “You shut the door the night old Sally died,” said the foremost one, raising her shrivelled hand, “but you couldn’t shut out the sound nor stop the chinks.” “No, no,” said the other, looking round her, and wagging her toothless jaws. “No, no, no.” “We heard her try to tell you what she’d done, and saw you take a paper from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the pawnbroker’s shop,” said the first. “Yes,” added the second, “and it was a ‘locket and gold ring.’ We found out that, and saw it given you. We were bye. Oh! we were bye.” “And we know more than that,” resumed the first, “for she told us often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling she should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time that she was taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of the child.” “Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself?” asked Mr. Grimwig with a motion towards the door. “No,” replied the woman; “if he”—she pointed to Monks—“has been coward enough to confess, as I see he has, and you have sounded all these hags till you found the right ones, I have nothing more to say. I _did_ sell them, and they’re where you’ll never get them. What then?” “Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “except that it remains for us to take care that you are neither of you employed in a situation of trust again. You may leave the room.” “I hope,” said Mr. Bumble, looking about him with great ruefulness as Mr. Grimwig disappeared with the two old women, “I hope that this unfortunate little circumstance will not deprive me of my porochial office?” “Indeed it will,” replied Mr. Brownlow; “you must make up your mind to that, and think yourself well off besides.” “It was all Mrs. Bumble—she _would_ do it—” urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room. “That is no excuse,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the more guilty of the two in the eye of the law, for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.” “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that is the eye of the law, the law’s a bachelor, and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”