Things now wore a dismal aspect at home. At length, one day, the broker sent his men into the shop, who threw all the greengrocery about like peelings of onions. They carted away Mr Brandon's deals and planks, and timber, and, not content with all this, they also took away the best of the household furniture. My nurse called Mr Cate a devil in a white sheet--her husband acted as he always would do when he was offended and found himself strong enough: he gave the reverend gentleman, most irreverently, a tremendous beating. The sheep sadly gored the shepherd. Afterwards, when he had nearly killed his pastor, he seceded from his flock, and gave him, under his own hand, a solemn abjuration of the Caterian tenets. How Brandon came to launch out into this expensive and ill-advised undertaking of green-groceries and sawpits, how he afterwards became involved, and how much the preacher had been guilty in deceiving him, I never clearly understood. However, my nurse never, for a long time after, spoke of the reverend gentleman without applying the corner of her apron to her eyes, or her husband without a hearty malediction. We removed to our old neighbourhood, but, instead of taking a respectable house, we were forced to burrow in mean lodgings. CHAPTER EIGHT. ANOTHER MIGRATION--FROM THE RURALITIES OF CUT-THROAT LANE TO THE GROVES OF ACADEMUS--I AM FORCED INTO GOOD CLOTHES AND THE PATHS OF LEARNING IN SPITE OF MY TEETH, THOUGH I USE THEM SPITEFULLY. Misfortunes never come single. I don't know why they should. They are but scarecrow, lean-visaged, miserable associates, and so they arrive in a body to keep each other in countenance. I had been but a few weeks in our present miserable abode, and had fully recovered my health, though I think that I was a little crazed with the prints, and the subjects of them, over which I daily pored in the large Bible, when the greatest misfortune of all came upon the poor Brandons--and that was, to add to their other losses, the loss of my invaluable self. The misery was unexpected--it was sudden--it was overwhelming. Brandon was toeing a chalked line on a heavy log of mahogany, unconscious of the mischief that was working at home. He afterwards told me, and I believe him, that he would have opposed the proceeding by force, if force had been requisite. A plain private or hired carriage drove up to the door, and, after ascertaining that the Brandons lived at the house, a business-like looking, elderly gentleman stepped out, paid every demand immediately, and ordered my best clothes on. When I was thus equipped, my nurse was told that she was perfectly welcome to the remainder of my effects, and that I must get into the carriage.