"Smart you are, you think--smart; but you'll find that cheek don't pay in this shop, Mr. Dick Remington. D'ye twig the name printed underneath this portrait. 'That's a face I've seen afore,' says I to myself when it meets my eye. I looks at another paper." Mr. Higgins turned over the sheet and brought into view another portrait of Dick--"and strike me straight!' Why, there it is agin,' I says. 'And here it is agin,' I says." He turned over the third sheet, "and underneath 'em all the name of Dick Remington. 'What luck!' says I to myself. 'What a slice o' luck for a second-hand dealer in odds and ends as tries hard to get a honest living, and as everybody puts upon--with trade that bad that it couldn't be wus--taking down your shutters and putting 'em up agin to the tune of two and sevenpence, which won't as much as half pay your rent.'" "Stop your whining," said Dick, "and cut it short. What is it you want?" "Quartern o' rum." The answer seemed to be so settled a formula when a question of this kind was put to him that it mechanically popped out like a bullet from a gun. Pending compliance with his demand, as to which Dick did not hesitate, and the pouring of the liquor down his throat, as if it were the mouth of a vat, there was an interval of silence. Then, with a wandering finger on the portrait, Mr. Higgins "cut it short" in two words. "True bill?" "True bill," replied Dick, with an assenting nod, "and what of it?" "What of it?" cried Mr. Higgins, with venom in his voice. "Rope and grapnel of it!" He thrust his twitching face forward to within an inch or two of Dick's. "Oh, that's the game," said Dick, concealing his uneasiness. "And what a game it is--oh, what a game it is! Says I to myself, when I gets detective Lambert's evidence read out to me--'there's a man for you! with eyes all over him, and one to spare'--says I to myself when I hears that evidence, 'rope and grapnel over the wall--by the Lord, he's hit it!' Then I asks the boy that's reading the paper to me, 'And who may that be the picture of?' 'That,' says he, 'is the picture of Mr. Dick Remington, nephew of Inspector Robson, and cousin of the young lady as goes and marries the son of Samuel Boyd on the sly.' He's a sharp little boy, almost as sharp as you, Mr. Dick Remington. 'O-ho!' says I to him, 'and does Mr. Dick Remington give evidence at the inquest?' 'Yes, he does,' says the boy, and he reads it out to me. 'You've missed something,' I says. 'You've missed what Mr. Dick Remington says about the rope and grapnel.' 'He don't say nothing at all about it,' says the boy. 'It must be in another paper,' I says, and I buys 'em all, and has 'em all read out to me, word for word, and if you'll believe me there ain't a word in one of 'em about the use that Mr. Dick Remington makes of the rope and grapnel he bought of a honest tradesman as sweats hisself thin to get a living, and then can't get it. That's what I call a coinci-dence. What do _you_ call it?"