“Not related to her, sir?”

No, it appears.

“Excuse the apparent curiosity,” says Mr George. “It seemed to me probable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor creature because Miss Summerson had taken that unfortunate interest in him. ’Tis my case, sir, I assure you.”

“And mine, Mr George.”

The trooper looks sideways at Allan’s sun-burnt cheek and bright dark eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of him.

“Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Bucket took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted with the name, I can help you to it. It’s Tulkinghorn. That’s what it is.”

Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name.

“Tulkinghorn. That’s the name, sir. I know the man; and know him to have been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow.”

Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is?

“What kind of man! Do you mean to look at?”

“I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally, what kind of man?”

“Why, then I’ll tell you, sir,” returns the trooper, stopping short, and folding his arms on his square chest, so angrily, that his face fires and flushes all over; “he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He is a slow- torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood, than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man — by George! — that has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more dissatisfaction with myself, than all other men put together. That’s the kind of man Mr Tulkinghorn is!”

“I am sorry,” says Allan, “to have touched so sore a place.”

“Sore?” The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. “It’s no fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me. He is the man I spoke of just now, as being able to tumble me out of this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won’t hold off, and he won’t come on. If I have a payment to make him, or time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don’t see me, don’t hear me — passes me on to Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn, Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn passes me back again to him — he keeps me prowling and dangling about him, as if I was made of the same stone as himself. Why, I spend half my life now, pretty well, loitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? Nothing. Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He chafes and goads me, till — Bah! Nonsense — I am forgetting myself. Mr Woodcourt;” the trooper resumes his march; “all I say is, he is an old man; but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs to my horse, and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that chance, in one of the humours he drives me into — he’d go down, sir!”

Mr George has been so excited, that he finds it necessary to wipe his forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity away with the National Anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head and heavings of his chest still linger behind; not to mention an occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar, as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a choking sensation. In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about the going down of Mr Tulkinghorn on the field referred to.