And with that Mr. Cripps rushed off incontinent to spread the news wherever anybody would listen. He told the police, he told the loafers, he told Captain Nat and everybody in his bar; he told the watermen at the stairs, he shouted it to the purlmen in their boats, and he wriggled into conversation with perfect strangers to tell them too. So that it came to pass that Viney, being called upon by the coroner's officer, was fain to swallow his reluctance and come forward at the inquest. That was held at the Hole in the Wall twenty-four hours after the body had been hauled ashore. The two inquests were held together, in fact, Marr's and that of the broken-nosed man, stabbed in the passage. Two inquests, or even three, in a day, made no uncommon event in those parts, where perhaps a dozen might be held in a week, mostly ending with the same doubtful verdict--Found Drowned. But here one of the inquiries related to an open and witnessed murder, and that fact gave some touch of added interest to the proceedings. Accordingly a drifting group hung about the doors of the Hole in the Wall at the appointed time,--just such an idle, changing group as had hung there all the evening after the man had been stabbed; and in the midst stood Blind George with his fiddle, his vacant white eye rolling upward, his mouth full of noisy ribaldry, and his fiddle playing punctuation and chorus to all he said or sang. He turned his ear at the sound of many footsteps leaving the door near him. "There they go!" he sang out; "there they go, twelve on 'em!" And indeed it was the jury going off to view the bodies. "There they go, twelve good men an' true, an' bloomin' proud they are to fancy it! Got a copper for Blind George, gentlemen? Not a brown for pore George?... Not them; not a brass farden among the 'ole dam good an' lawful lot.... Ahoy! ain't Gubbins there,--the good an' lawful pork-butcher as 'ad to pay forty bob for shovin' a lump o' fat under the scales? Tell the crowner to mind 'is pockets!" The idlers laughed, and one flung a copper, which Blind George snatched almost before it had fallen. "Ha! ha!" he cried, "there's a toff somewhere near, I can tell by the sound of his money! Here goes for a stave!" And straightway be broke into:-- O they call me Hanging Johnny, With my hang, boys, hang!