significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he

watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the

ear.

“What d’ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you

want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip! This boy is a

getting too many for me!” said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. “Him

and his hooroars! Don’t let me hear no more of you, or you shall

feel some more of me. D’ye hear?”

“I warn’t doing no harm,” Young Jerry protested, rubbing his

cheek.

“Drop it then,” said Mr. Cruncher; “I won’t have none of your

no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd.”

His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling

and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in

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which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the

dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of

the position. The position appeared by no means to please him,

however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach,

deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning

and calling out: “Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!” with many

compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat.

Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr.

Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and became excited,

when a funeral passed Tellson’s. Naturally, therefore, a funeral

with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he asked

of the first man who ran against him:

“What is it, brother? What’s it about?”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!”

He asked another man. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” returned the other man, clapping his hands to

his mouth, nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and

with the greatest ardour, “Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi-ies!”

At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case,

tumbled against him, and from this person he learned that the

funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly.

“Was He a spy?” asked Mr. Cruncher.

“Old Bailey spy,” returned his informant. “Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old

Bailey Spi-i-ies!”

“Why, to be sure!” exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which

he had assisted. “I’ve seen him. Dead, is he?”

“Dead as mutton,” returned the other, “and can’t be too dead.

Have ’em out, there! Spies! Pull ’em out, there! Spies!”

The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any

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idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly

repeating the suggestion to have ’em out, and to pull ’em out,

mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On

the crowd’s opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out

of himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so