Breakfast removed any lingering misgivings, but might have created them in a more sophisticated mind. It was an English breakfast fit for a foreign potentate; there were soles, kidneys, eggs and bacon, hot rolls, and lashings of such coffee as made Mr. Croucher forget a previous craving for alcohol. He thought it funny that so generous a repast should be served on a black old table without a cloth, and he did not fancy the leathern chairs with the great big nails, more fit for a museum than a private gentleman's house. But a subsequent cigar, in which the private gentleman did not join him, was up to the visitor's highest standard, and the subject of a more articulate appreciation than all that had gone before. "You shall smoke the box if you care to stay with me," said Doctor Dollar, with a warmer smile. "Stay with you!" exclaimed Croucher, suffering a return of his worst suspicions. "Why should I stay with you?" "Because there are worse places, Croucher, and one of them has left you a bit of a wreck." "A bit of one!" cried the other, in a sudden snarling whine. "They've just about done me in, doctor, if you want to know. Two munfs' 'ard, that I was never ordered, on top of one in the condemned cell for what I never done! That's 'ow they've tret me--somefink crool--wuss than wot you'd treat a dawg wot give you 'ydrophobia. And wot _'ad_ I done? 'Elped meself when the stuff was under my nose, an' me starvin', an' the jooler's winder ready broke for a cove by them as never 'ad his temptitions. I don't say it was right, mind you; but that much I did do, and not what they said I 'ad an' couldn't prove. They couldn't prove it, because I never done it; they couldn't 'ang me, because they didn't dare; but they made me sweat an' shiver just the same. They took ten years off of me life; they give me such a time as I shan't forget till my dying day. And as if that wasn't thick enough, they give me two munfs' 'ard on their own--no judge or jury for that little lot--an' turn me out wot _you_ calls a bit of a wreck, but _I_ calls a creepin' corpse!" And the animated remains wiped a forehead wet already with the throes of deglutition, and eyes that were not wet at all, before applying a flickering light to his neglected Upmann.