“Everything else between you and me, Mr. Wegg,” said Venus, “now explains itself, and you can now make out, sir, without further words from me. But totally to prevent any unpleasantness or mistake that might arise on what I consider an important point, to be made quite clear at the close of our acquaintance, I beg the leave of Mr. Boffin and Mr. John Harmon to repeat an observation which I have already had the pleasure of bringing under your notice. You are a precious old rascal!”

“You are a fool,” said Wegg, with a snap of his fingers, “and I’d have got rid of you before now, if I could have struck out any way of doing it. I have thought it over, I can tell you. You may go, and welcome. You leave the more for me. Because, you know,” said Wegg, dividing his next observation between Mr. Boffin and Mr Harmon, “I am worth my price, and I mean to have it. This getting off is all very well in its way, and it tells with such an anatomical Pump as this one,” pointing out Mr. Venus, “but it won’t do with a Man. I am here to be bought off, and I have named my figure. Now, buy me, or leave me.”

“I’ll leave you, Wegg, said Mr. Boffin, laughing, “as far as I am concerned.”

“Bof—fin!” replied Wegg, turning upon him with a severe air, “I understand your new-born boldness. I see the brass underneath your silver plating. you have got your nose out of joint. Knowing that you’ve nothing at stake, you can afford to come the independent game. Why, you’re just so much smeary glass to see through, you know! But Mr. Harmon is in another sitiwation. What Mr. Harmon risks, is quite another pair of shoes. Now, I’ve heerd something lately about this being Mr. Harmon — I make out now, some hints that I’ve met on that subject in the newspaper — and I drop you, Bof—fin, as beneath my notice. I ask Mr. Harmon whether he has any idea of the contents of this present paper?”

“It is a will of my late father’s, of more recent date than the will proved by Mr. Boffin (address whom again, as you have addressed him already, and I’ll knock you down), leaving the whole of his property to the Crown,” said John Harmon, with as much indifference as was compatible with extreme sternness.

“Right you are!” cried Wegg. “Then,” screwing the weight of his body upon his wooden leg, and screwing his wooden head very much on one side, and screwing up one eye: “then, I put the question to you, what’s this paper worth?”

“Nothing,” said John Harmon.

Wegg had repeated the word with a sneer, and was entering on some sarcastic retort, when, to his boundless amazement, he found himself gripped by the cravat; shaken until his teeth chattered; shoved back, staggering, into a corner of the room; and pinned there.

“You scoundrel!” said John Harmon, whose seafaring hold was like that of a vice.

“You’re knocking my head against the wall,” urged Silas faintly.

“I mean to knock your head against the wall,” returned John Harmon, suiting his action to his words, with the heartiest good will; “and I’d give a thousand pounds for leave to knock your brains out. Listen, you scoundrel, and look at that Dutch bottle.”

Sloppy held it up, for his edification.

“That Dutch bottle, scoundrel, contained the latest will of the many wills made by my unhappy self-tormenting father. That will gives everything absolutely to my noble benefactor and yours, Mr. Boffin, excluding and reviling me, and my sister (then already dead of a broken heart), by name. That Dutch bottle was found by my noble benefactor and yours, after he entered on possession of the estate. That Dutch bottle distressed him beyond measure, because, though I and my sister were both no more, it cast a slur upon our memory which he knew we had done nothing in our miserable youth, to deserve. That Dutch bottle, therefore, he buried in the Mound belonging to him, and there it lay while you, you thankless wretch, were prodding and poking — often very near it, I dare say. His intention was, that it should never see the light; but he