"And I suppose you expect me to give you a shilling earnest?" he answered, irascibly. "But no, no, Timothy Brome is no fool. See here," he continued, slapping his pocket and looking shrewdly at me, "that guinea is not worth a groat to you; except to hang you." "No," I said, ruefully. "Well, I will give you five shillings for it, as gold, mind you; as gold, and not to pass. Are you content?" "It is not mine," I said doubtfully. "Take it or leave it!" he said, screwing up his eyes, and so plainly pleased with the bargain he was driving that I had no inkling of the kind heart that underlay that crabbed manner. "Take it or leave it, my man." Thus pressed, and my mind retaining no real doubt of the knavery of the man who had entrusted the guinea to me, I handed it to my new friend, and received in return a crown. And this being my last disposition of money not my own, I think it a fit season to record that from that day to this I have been enabled by God's help and man's kindness to keep the eighth commandment; and earning honestly what I have spent have been poor, but never a beggar. In gratitude for which, and both those good men being now dead, I here conjoin the names of Mr. Timothy Brome, of Fleet Street, newsmonger and author, whose sharp tongue and morose manners cloaked a hundred benefactions; and of Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my honoured patron, who never gave but his smile doubled the gift which his humanity dictated. The reader will believe that punctually on the morrow I went with joy and thankfulness to my new master, whom I found up three pairs of stairs in a room barely furnished, but heaped in every part with piles of manuscripts and dogs-eared books, and all so covered with dust that type and script were alike illegible. He wore a dingy morning-gown and had laid aside his wig; but the air of importance with which he nodded to me and a sort of dignity that clothed him as he walked to and fro on the ink-stained floor mightily impressed me, and drove me to wonder what sort of trade was carried on here. He continued, for some minutes after I entered, to declaim one fine sentence after another, rolling the long words over his tongue with a great appearance of enjoyment: a process which he only interrupted to point me to a stool and desk, and cry with averted eyes--lest he should cut the thread of his thoughts--"Write!" [Illustration: "HE WORE A DINGY MORNING-GOWN AND HAD LAID ASIDE HIS WIG"] On my hesitating, "Write!" he repeated, in the tone of one commanding a thousand troopers. And then he spoke thus--and as he spoke I wrote:--