When the lion is on short commons, the jackal is generally in a very bad way. If Mr. D'Ossay Butler was hard up, the condition of tall-hatted Mr. Griffiths was necessarily frightful. That worthy member of society was financially at the lowest ebb, and had resorted to a trade which he reserved for the depths of despair, a mild cardsharping--a "three, two, and vun" game, in which it was an impossibility for the bystander to point out the exact position of the king--at low public-houses. During all his wanderings, however, he kept his eyes open to the necessity of obeying his instructions from D'Ossay Butler, to the necessity of discovering the whereabouts of Lizzy Ponsford, the holder of the bill. There was no slum that he visited; no public-house, where he first propitiated the landlord by the purchase of half-a-pint of ale, and then proceeded to suggest to the notice of the two or three sawney-looking men at the bar a "curous little game he had there, at which 'atfuls of money had been von, and which was the favourite recreation of the horficers of the Queen's Life-Guards at the Windsor Barracks, where he'd 'ad the pleasure of introducin' it 'imself;" no pedestrian ground, no penny-gaff, where he did not get into conversation with somebody connected with the premises, and try to worm out that all-important secret. But all was of no avail. Many of the persons he spoke to knew or had heard of Tony Butler, and paid many handsome compliments to the deceased--"a vide-avake vun and no mistake," "a feller as vould take your coat off your back on to his own," &c.; but very few had known Lizzie Ponsford, and those had not seen or heard of her for a considerable time. So Mr. Griffiths began to keep clear of Mr. Effingham. There was nothing to be got from his employer but abuse, and that was an article of which Mr. Griffiths perhaps had a surfeit, especially after he had picked up a few stray eighteenpences from the frequenters of the Pig and Whistle, at the noble game of the "three, two, and vun." But one night, finding himself in the neighbourhood of the Strand, and having had rather a successful evening,--he had won fifteen shillings from a sailor, at a public-house in Thames Street; a sailor who paid him rigidly, and then cursed him for an adjective swab and kicked him into the street,--Mr. Griffiths thought he would take a little refreshment at Johnson's. On presenting the crown of his hat within the swing-doors, that article was immediately recognized by Mr. Effingham, seated moodily in the nearest box, and its owner hailed in the nearest approach to a voice of thunder which that small gentleman could accomplish.