tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful

manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher,

extinguished the light, and went out.

Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he

went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the

darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs,

followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in

no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again, for it

was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.

Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of

his father’s honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house

fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another,

held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering

northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another

disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.

Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond

the winking lamps, and the more than winking watchman, and

were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up

hereand that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been

superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the

gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself in two.

The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three

stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the

bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a

blind lane, of which the wallthere, risen to some eight or ten feet

highformed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up

the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw was the form of his

honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded

moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the

second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped

softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little

listening perhaps. Then they moved away on their hands and

knees.

It was now Young Jerry’s turn to approach the gate: which he

did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there,

and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through

some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyardit

was a large churchyard that they were inlooking on like ghosts

in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a

monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and

stood upright. And then they began to fish.

They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured

parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great

corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard,

until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young

Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father’s.

But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these

matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him