comparison, but paused a moment, breathing hard, and then broke into another sentence. "He was selling something in a basket—matches, bootstraps, deuce knows what. He! a clever man, too! I should have liked to drop into that dd basket all the money I had about me."
"Why did not you?"
"Why? How could I? He would have recognized me. There would have been a scene—a row—a flare up—a mob round us, I dare say. I had no idea it would so upset me; to see him selling matches, too; glad we did not meet at Gatesboro'. Not even for that £100 do I think I could have faced him. No—as he said when we last parted: 'The world is wide enough for both.' Give me some brandy—thank you."
"You did not speak to the old man—he did not see you—but you wanted to get back the child; you felt sure she must be with him; you followed him home?"
"I? No; I should have had to wait for hours. A man like me, loitering about London Bridge!—I should have been too conspicuous—he would have soon caught sight of me, though I kept on his blind side. I employed a ragged boy to watch and follow him, and here is the address. Now, will you get Sophy back for me without any trouble to me, without my appearing? I would rather charge a regiment of Horse Guards than bully that old man."
"Yet you would rob him of that child—his sole comfort?"
"Bother!" cried Losely, impatiently: "the child can be only a burden to him; well out of his way; 'tis for the sake of that child he is selling matches! It would be the greatest charity we could do him to set him free from that child sponging on him, dragging him down; without her he'd find a way to shift for himself. Why, he's even cleverer than I am! And there—and there—give him this money, but don't say it came from me."
He thrust, without counting, several sovereigns—at least twelve or fourteen—into Mrs. Crane's palm; and so powerful a charm has goodness the very least, even in natures the most evil, that that unusual, eccentric, inconsistent gleam of human pity in Jasper Losely's benighted soul shed its relenting influence over the angry, wrathful, and vindictive feelings with which Mrs. Crane the moment before regarded the perfidious miscreant; and she gazed at him with a sort of melancholy wonder. What! though so little sympathizing with affection that he could not comprehend that he was about to rob the old man of a comfort which no gold could repay—what! though so contemptuously callous to his own child—yet there in her hand
