“I don’t know how to do nothink, and I can’t get nothink to do. I’m wery poor and ill, and I thought I’d come back here when there warn’t nobody about, and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of Mr Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs Snagsby she was allus a chivying on me — like everybody everywheres.”

“Where have you come from?”

Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner’s knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of resignation.

“Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?”

“Tramp then,” says Jo.

“Now, tell me,” proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an expression of confidence, “tell me how it came about that you left that house, when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you, and take you home.”

Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation, and excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he’d sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone-a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs.

Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself to touch him. “Come, Jo. Tell me.”

“No. I dustn’t,” says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. “I dustn’t, or I would.”

“But I must know,” returns the other, “all the same. Come, Jo.”

After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, “Well, I’ll tell you somethink. I was took away. There!”

“Took away? In the night?”

“Ah!” Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him, and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding, and through the cracks in it, lest the object of his distrust should be looking over, or hidden on the other side.

“Who took you away?”

“I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir.”

“But I want, in the young lady’s name, to know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear.”

“Ah, but I don’t know,” replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, “as he don’t hear.”

“Why, he is not in this place.”

“Oh, ain’t he though?” says Jo. “He’s in all manner of places, all at wunst.”

Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.

“Aye!” says Allan. “Why, what had you been doing?”