'Lord strike me dead!' I says each time, — and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens, — 'but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I'll make that boy a gentleman!' And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings o'yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat 'em!”

In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this.

It was the one grain of relief I had.

“Look'ee here!” he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his touch as if he had been a snake, “a gold 'un and a beauty: that's a gentleman's, I