a new hand, was, in fair proportion, as well
paid by the week as the rest. We, of course,
had nothing to do with the passing of false
money—we only manufactured it (sometimes
at the rate of four hundred pounds' worth in a
week); and left its circulation to be managed
by our customers in London and the large
towns. Whatever we paid for in Barkingham
was paid for in the genuine Mint coinage.
I used often to compare my own true guineas,
half-crowns and shillings with our imitations
under the doctor's supervision, and was
always amazed at the resemblance. Our
scientific chief had discovered a process
something like what is called electrotyping
now-a-days, as I imagine. He was very
proud of this; but he was prouder still of
the ring of his metal, and with reason: it
must have been a nice ear indeed that could
discover the false tones in the doctor's
coinage.

If I had been the most scrupulous man in
the world, I must still have received my
wages, for the very necessary purpose of
not appearing to distinguish myself invidiously
from my fellow-workmen. Upon the
whole, I got on well with them. Old File
and I struck up quite a friendship. Young
File and Mill worked harmoniously with me;
but Screw and I (as I had foreboded)
quarrelled. This last man was not on good terms
with his fellows, and had less of the doctor's
confidence than any of the rest of us.
Naturally not of a sweet temper, his isolated
position in the house had soured him, and he
rashly attempted to vent his ill-humour on
me, as a new-comer. For some days I bore
with him patiently; but at last he got the
better of my powers of endurance; and I
gave him a lesson in manners, one day, on the
educational system of Gentleman Jones. He
did not return the blow, or complain to the
doctor; he only looked at me wickedly, and
said: " I'll be even with you for that, some of
these days." I soon forgot the words and
the look.

With Old File, as I have said, I became
quite friendly. Excepting the secrets of our
prison-house, he was ready enough to talk
on subjects about which I was curious. He
had known the doctor as a young man, and
was perfectly familiar with all the events of
his career. From various conversations, at
odds and ends of spare time, I discovered that
our employer had begun life as a footman in
a gentleman's family; that his young mistress
had eloped with him, taking away with her
every article of value that wns her own
personal property, in the shape of jewellery and
dresses; that they had lived upon the sale
of these things for some time; and that the
husband, when the wife's means were
exhausted, had turned strolling-player for a
year or two. Abandoning that pursuit, he
had next turned quack-doctor, first in a
resident, then in a vagabond capacity—taking a
medical degree of his own conferring, and
holding to it as a good travelling title for the
rest of his life. From the selling of quack
medicines he had proceeded to the
adulterating of foreign wines, varied by lucrative
evening occupation in the Paris gambling-
houses. On returning to his native land,
he still continued to turn his chemical
knowledge to account, by giving his services
to that particular branch of our commercial
industry which is coarsely described as the
adulteration of commodities; and from this he
had gradually risen to the more refined pursuit
of adulterating gold and silver—or, to use the
common phrase again, making bad money.
According to Old File's account, though he
had never actually ill-used his wife, he had
never lived on kind terms with her: the
main cause of the estrangement between
them being a suspicion on the doctor's part
that Mrs. Knapton had kept some of her
possessions in jewellery concealed from him,
from the day of their marriage to the hour of
her death. Whether this suspicion was well
founded or not, and whether it had been
transferred to the daughter after her
mother's death, was more than my informant
could tell. He seemed, to my astonishment
and vexation, to know little or nothing about
Laura's relations with her father. That she
must long since have discovered him to
be not quite so respectable a man as he
looked, and that she might shrewdly suspect
what was going on in the house at the
present time, were, in Old File's opinion, matters
of certainty; but that she knew anything
positively on the subject of her father's actual
occupations, he seemed to doubt. The doctor
was not the sort of man to give his daughter,
or any other woman, the slightest chance of
ever surprising his secrets.

These particulars I gleaned during a
month of servitude and imprisonment in the
fatal red-brick house. During all that time
not the slightest intimation reached me of
Laura's whereabouts. Had she forgotten
me? I could not believe it. Unless the
dear brown eyes were the falsest hypocrites
in the world, it was impossible that she
should have forgotten me. Was she watched?
Were all means of communicating with me,
even in secret, carefully removed from her?
I looked oftener and oftener into the doctor's
study, as those questions occurred to me;
but he never quitted it without locking the
writing-desk first—he never left any papers
scattered on the table, and he was never
absent from the room at any special times
and seasons that could be previously
calculated upon. I began to despair, and to
feel in my lonely moments a yearning to
renew that childish experiment of crying,
which I have already adverted to, in the way
of confession. Moralists will be glad to
hear that I really suffered acute mental
misery at this time of my life. My state of
depression would have gratified the most
exacting of Methodists; and my penitent