After I had finished eating, he proposed to set off immediately; and, as we walked leisurely along, I wondered how it was possible for a big healthy fellow like this to be able to exist in any other manner than by selling. On coming to the first public house he politely invited me to enter, which I did, when he called for two pints of beer. He then became communicative, telling me he was a gridler, and a good one too; which I understood to mean a grinder, although I had not seen tools of any description either in his hands or in his pockets. He paid for two or three pints of beer in quick succession, and, not having had much drink for a considerable time, I began to feel somewhat elated, and began to make a laughing joke of my circumstances. "Now," said this man, "to business; for we must get the price of our beds and a little breakfast for the morning, not to mention the night's supper. All you have to do," he said again, "is to pick up the coppers as they come." Wondering what these words could mean, I followed him, on this pleasant afternoon, up several side streets, until we came to the end of one very long street, which had respectable looking houses on either side of the road. My strange companion walked several yards down this street, and then came to a sudden halt in the middle of the road. "Now," said he, for the third or fourth time, "all you have to do is to pick up the coppers. I ask you to do no more; except," he added, grinning rather unpleasantly, "except to see that we are not picked up by the coppers." His joke appeared simple enough, and I could not fail to understand it, but it was not at all to my relish. The last named coppers were police officers, who would be likely to take hold of us for illegally appropriating the copper coins of the realm. "Are you going to pick up the coppers?" he asked a little impatiently, seeing me standing irresolute and undecided as to what to do. Scarcely knowing how to answer him, I said that if I saw any coppers he need have no fear but what I would pick them up. "All right, that's good," he said, at the same time moving several feet away from me. I stood still watching these mysterious movements, and thinking of the coppers, wondering from what source they would be supplied. He now turned his back, without more ado, and, setting his eyes on the front windows before him, began, to my amazement, to sing a well known hymn, singing it in the most horrible and lifeless voice I have ever heard. In spite of the drink, which had now taken effect, making my head swell with stupidity, I still felt an overwhelming shame at finding myself in this position. I stood irresolute, not knowing whether to wait the result of this, or to leave him at once with short ceremony. But, whilst ruminating in this frame of mind, I heard a window open with a loud creak, saw the shaking of a fair hand, and then heard a copper coin fall on the hard earth within a yard of where I stood.