But how had the mighty fallen! The charitable gentleman now seemed to require the aid of charity himself. His hat, which was originally a gossamer at four-and-nine, was now so fully ventilated about the crown, that it would have fetched nothing at a Jews' auction, even though George Robins himself had put it up for sale. His coat was out at the elbows, his trousers out at the knees, and his shoes out at the toes; he was out of _cash_ and out of _spirits_; and as he had none of the former, he trusted to the kindness of the frequenters of the _Dark House_ parlour to supply him with some of the latter, diluted with hot water, and rendered more agreeable by means of sugar. Indeed, at the moment when his voice fell upon Markham's ear, he was just about to apply his lips to a tumbler of gin-punch which a butcher had ordered for his behoof. "Well, Mr. Pocock," (this was Talbot's real name), said the butcher, "how does the world use you now?" "Very bad, indeed, Mr. Griskin," was the reply. "For the last three year, come Janivary, I havn't known, when I got up in the morning, where the devil I should sleep at night;--and that is God Almighty's truth." "I'm sorry to hear your affairs don't mend," said the butcher. "For my part, I'm getting on blooming. I was a bankrupt only seven weeks ago." "A strange manner of being successful in business," thought Markham. "But all my goods was seized by the landlord," added the butcher, in a triumphant tone of voice; "and so they was saved from the messenger of the Court, when he come down to take possession." "Ah! I suppose your bankruptcy has put you all right again," said Pocock. "Nothing like a bankruptcy now-a-days--it makes a man's fortune." "Yes--and no going to quod neither. I made a lot of friends of mine creditors, and so I got my certificate the wery same day as I passed my second examination; and now I'm as right as a trivet. But what ails you, though, old feller, that you can't contrive to get on?" "The fact is," said Pocock, sipping his gin-and-water, "I was led into bad company about three or four years ago, and I don't care before who I say it, or who knows what infernal scrapes I was partly the means of getting a nice young fellow into." "I suppose you fell in with flash company?" observed the butcher.