`I never will believe it,' said Kate, indignantly; `never. It is some base conspiracy, which carries its own falsehood with it.'

`My dear,' said Ralph, `you wrong the worthy man. These are not inventions. The man is assaulted, your brother is not to be found; this boy, of whom they speak, goes with him--remember, remember.'

`It is impossible,' said Kate. `Nicholas!--and a thief too! Mamma, how can you sit and hear such statements?'

Poor Mrs Nickleby, who had, at no time, been remarkable for the possession of a very clear understanding, and who had been reduced by the late changes in her affairs to a most complicated state of perplexity, made no other reply to this earnest remonstrance than exclaiming from behind a mass of pocket-handkerchief, that she never could have believed it--thereby most ingeniously leaving her hearers to suppose that she did believe it.

`It would be my duty, if he came in my way, to deliver him up to justice,' said Ralph, `my bounden duty; I should have no other course, as a man of the world and a man of business, to pursue. And yet,' said Ralph, speaking in a very marked manner, and looking furtively, but fixedly, at Kate, `and yet I would not. I would spare the feelings of his--of his sister. And his mother of course,' added Ralph, as though by an afterthought, and with far less emphasis.

Kate very well understood that this was held out as an additional inducement to her to preserve the strictest silence regarding the events of the preceding night. She looked involuntarily towards Ralph as he ceased to speak, but he had turned his eyes another way, and seemed for the moment quite unconscious of her presence.

`Everything,' said Ralph, after a long silence, broken only by Mrs Nickleby's sobs, `everything combines to prove the truth of this letter, if indeed there were any possibility of disputing it. Do innocent men steal away from the sight of honest folks, and skulk in hiding-places, like outlaws? Do innocent men inveigle nameless vagabonds, and prowl with them about the country as idle robbers do? Assault, riot, theft, what do you call these?'

`A lie!' cried a voice, as the door was dashed open, and Nicholas came into the room.

In the first moment of surprise, and possibly of alarm, Ralph rose from his seat, and fell back a few paces, quite taken off his guard by this unexpected apparition. In another moment, he stood, fixed and immovable with folded arms, regarding his nephew with a scowl; while Kate and Miss La Creevy threw themselves between the two, to prevent the personal violence which the fierce excitement of Nicholas appeared to threaten.

`Dear Nicholas,' cried his sister, clinging to him. `Be calm, consider--` `Consider, Kate!' cried Nicholas, clasping her hand so tight in the tumult of his anger, that she could scarcely bear the pain. `When I consider all, and think of what has passed, I need be made of iron to stand before him.'

`Or bronze,' said Ralph, quietly; `there is not hardihood enough in flesh and blood to face it out.'

`Oh dear, dear!' cried Mrs Nickleby, `that things should have come to such a pass as this!'

`Who speaks in a tone, as if I had done wrong, and brought disgrace on them?' said Nicholas, looking round.

`Your mother, sir,' replied Ralph, motioning towards her.

`Whose ears have been poisoned by you,' said Nicholas; `by you--who, under pretence of deserving the thanks she poured upon you, heaped every insult, wrong, and indignity upon my head. You, who sent me to a den where sordid cruelty, worthy of yourself, runs wanton, and youthful misery stalks precocious; where the lightness of childhood shrinks into the heaviness of age, and its every promise blights, and withers