Riderhood appeared to labour under a virtuous delusion that it was his own property. “And you,” he added, turning to his daughter, as he filled the footless glass, “if it warn’t wasting good sherry wine on you, I’d chuck this at you, for Poll Parroting with this man. It’s along of Poll Parroting that suchlike as him gets their suspicions, whereas I gets mine by argueyment, and being nat’rally a honest man, and sweating away at the brow as a honest man ought.” Here he filled the footless goblet again, and stood chewing one half of its contents and looking down into the other as he slowly rolled the wine about in the glass; while Pleasant, whose sympathetic hair had come down on her being apostrophised, rearranged it, much in the style of the tail of a horse when proceeding to market to be sold.

“Well? Have you finished?” asked the strange man.

“No,” said Riderhood, “I ain’t. Far from it. Now then! I want to know how George Radfoot come by his death, and how you come by his kit?”

“If you ever do know, you won’t know now.”