And then he chuckled so heartily, while his toothless jaws wagged up and down so horribly, that he appeared to be a corpse under a process of galvanism; for if a dead body could be made to utter sounds, they would not be more sepulchral than those which now emanated from the throat of Old Death. Mrs. Bunce considered it to be her duty to chuckle also; and her querulous tones seemed a humble accompaniment to the guttural sounds which we have attempted to describe. At length the chuckling ceased on both sides; and Mrs. Bunce replenished the mugs with hot gin-and-water. "But even as it is," suddenly observed Old Death, after a hasty glance at the letter, which he now slowly folded up and returned to his greasy pocket-book,—"but even as it is, we may still make something of the business. If we could only find a clue to the mother of that boy, it would be a fortune in itself. I tell you what we must do!" he exclaimed emphatically. "What?" asked his ancient mistress. "Get that boy into our own keeping," replied Bones, with a sly smile; "and then we can pump him of all he may happen to know concerning the deceased Sarah Watts." "Excellent!" cried Mrs. Bunce, clapping her hands, "But how will you find out where Mr. Rainford lives?" "Jacob is after him. For several reasons I want to know as much as I can about that strange fellow. The very day that I made the bargain with him about smashing all the flimsies he might bring me, he wrote an extraordinary note to the very lady whom he had robbed the night before; and he made her go into the witness-box at Bow Street and deliberately perjure herself to serve him. Then he starts off to Pall Mall, when the Jewess prisoner was brought up, and delivers a note at the house of Lord Ellingham; and Lord Ellingham comes straight down to the Police-Court and swears black and blue that the Jewess is innocent." "And was she?" asked Mrs. Bunce. "That's more than I can say," answered Old Death; "seeing that I know nothing at all about the affair. Well, these two strange things, showing an extraordinary influence on the part of Rainford over Lady Hatfield on the one side, and Lord Ellingham on the other, have quite puzzled me. He is an enigma that I must solve." "Does not Tullock know all about him?" demanded Mrs. Bunce. "Tullock knows only that Tom took to the road some years ago, down in the country; for Tullock then did at Winchester just what I do now in London: only," added Bones, with a knowing glance and a compressed smile of the lips which puckered up his hideous face into one unvaried mass of wrinkles,—"only, my dear Betsy, Tullock never had the connexion which I have. He had no correspondent at Hamburg to whom he could send over the notes that are stolen, and stopped at the Bank: he had no well-contrived places to receive goods—places," continued Old Death, emphatically, "which have baffled the police for thirty years, and will baffle them as long again——if I live."