“Why, I have told you,” returned Bounderby. “Speak up like a man, since you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination.”

“Wi’ yor pardon, sir,” said Stephen Blackpool, “I ha’ nowt to sen about it.”

Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a wind, finding something in his way here, began to blow at it directly.

“Now, look here, Harthouse,” said he, “here’s a specimen of ’em. When this man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous strangers who are always about⁠—and who ought to be hanged wherever they are found⁠—and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction. Now, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon him, he is such a slave to them still, that he’s afraid to open his lips about them?”

“I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo’ o’ openin’ my lips.”