The stranger looked at me again, — still cocking his eye, as if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun, — and said, “He's a likely young parcel of bones that.

What is it you call him?”

“Pip,” said Joe.

“Christened Pip?”

“No, not christened Pip.”

“Surname Pip?”

“No,” said Joe, “it's a kind of family name what he gave himself when a infant, and is called by.”

“Son of yours?”

“Well,” said Joe, meditatively, not, of