"Mr. Bones conducted me to some public-house—I can't recollect where it was, but I think it must have been in Brick Lane, St. Luke's,—and there he ordered bread and cheese and ale. What a glorious dinner did I make that day! Never had I tasted any thing so delicious before! The cheese was so nice—the bread so white and new,—and the ale—it was good beyond all description. At least, so the food and drink then appeared to me: and what was better still, was that I was allowed to eat as much as I chose! When we had ended our meal, Old Death began to talk very seriously to me—for we were alone in the room together. He gave me to understand that he had found me, when quite a baby, lying on the steps of a workhouse—that he had taken me to some good, kind woman whom he knew, and who had treated me well—that afterwards he had been obliged to place me, when I was three years old, with Mother Maggs—_and that I therefore owed every thing to him_. I naturally believed at the time that I was under the deepest obligations to him; and then he proceeded to inform me that I might be useful to him in certain ways, and that if I did all he told me and was a good boy, he would never desert me. I of course listened with as much respect as it was in my power or nature to show; and, though I did not quite understand all he said to me, I was nevertheless impressed with the conviction that he had a right to do what he chose with me, and that I was bound to obey him. "We remained some time at the public-house—indeed, if I remember right, until it was dusk; because Old Death had a great deal to say to me, and as I was so very young and so miserably ignorant, it was not an easy matter for him to make me understand his meaning. But there can be no doubt that he laboured to convince me of the right which certain privileged persons had to prey upon others who were not so privileged;—or, in plainer terms, that whenever I could obtain a handkerchief, a purse, or any thing else worth taking, and in such a manner that there was no chance of my being detected, I was perfectly justified in availing myself of the opportunity. My morals had not been so carefully attended to, as to excite any repulsive feelings at this species of reasoning: on the contrary, having from my infancy practised the art of pilfering pudding from cooks'-shops, bits of bacon from cheesemongers' windows, carrots and turnips from old women's stalls, and lumps of tripe or carrion from the boards of cats'-meat establishments, I was well prepared to go a step farther. There can be no doubt that Old Death was all along aware of the real nature of Mother Maggs's house and of the manner in which she reared the children entrusted to her. A man of his experience could not help knowing all this; and it was not probable that he was deceived by the lying statements she made to him relative to the manner in which I had been treated—although he took, as far as I recollect, no notice of her words. In fact, he had