'You would hardly have known me from my voice, I suppose, Mr Nickleby?' he said.

'No,' returned Ralph, bending a severe look upon him. 'Though there is something in that, that I remember now.'

'There is little in me that you can call to mind as having been there eight years ago, I dare say?' observed the other.

'Quite enough,' said Ralph, carelessly, and averting his face. 'More than enough.'

'If I had remained in doubt about YOU, Mr Nickleby,' said the other, 'this reception, and YOUR manner, would have decided me very soon.'

'Did you expect any other?' asked Ralph, sharply.

'No!' said the man.

'You were right,' retorted Ralph; 'and as you feel no surprise, need express none.'

'Mr Nickleby,' said the man, bluntly, after a brief pause, during which he had seemed to struggle with an inclination to answer him by some reproach, 'will you hear a few words that I have to say?'

'I am obliged to wait here till the rain holds a little,' said Ralph, looking abroad. 'If you talk, sir, I shall not put my fingers in my ears, though your talking may have as much effect as if I did.'

'I was once in your confidence--' thus his companion began. Ralph looked round, and smiled involuntarily.

'Well,' said the other, 'as much in your confidence as you ever chose to let anybody be.'

'Ah!' rejoined Ralph, folding his arms; 'that's another thing, quite another thing.'

'Don't let us play upon words, Mr Nickleby, in the name of humanity.'

'Of what?' said Ralph.

'Of humanity,' replied the other, sternly. 'I am hungry and in want. If the change that you must see in me after so long an absence--must see, for I, upon whom it has come by slow and hard degrees, see it and know it well--will not move you to pity, let the knowledge that bread; not the daily bread of the Lord's Prayer, which, as it is offered up in cities like this, is understood to include half the luxuries of the world for the rich, and just as much coarse food as will support life for the poor--not that, but bread, a crust of dry hard bread, is beyond my reach today--let that have some weight with you, if nothing else has.'

'If this is the usual form in which you beg, sir,' said Ralph, 'you have studied your part well; but if you will take advice from one who knows something of the world and its ways, I should recommend a lower tone; a little lower tone, or you stand a fair chance of being starved in good earnest.'

As he said this, Ralph clenched his left wrist tightly with his right hand, and inclining his head a little on one side and dropping his chin upon his breast, looked at him whom he addressed with a frowning, sullen face. The very picture of a man whom nothing could move or soften.

'Yesterday was my first day in London,' said the old man, glancing at his travel-stained dress and worn shoes.

'It would have been better for you, I think, if it had been your last also,' replied Ralph.

'I have been seeking you these two days, where I thought you were most likely to be found,' resumed the other more humbly, 'and I met you here at last, when I had almost given up the hope of encountering you, Mr Nickleby.'

He seemed to wait for some reply, but Ralph giving him none, he continued:

'I am a most miserable and wretched outcast, nearly sixty years old, and as destitute and helpless as a child of six.'

'I am sixty years old, too,' replied Ralph, 'and am neither destitute nor helpless. Work. Don't make fine play-acting speeches about bread, but earn it.'

'How?' cried the other. 'Where? Show me the means. Will you give them to me--will you?'

'I did once,' replied Ralph, composedly; 'you scarcely need ask me whether I will again.'

'It's twenty years ago, or more,' said the man, in a suppressed voice, 'since you and I fell out. You remember that? I claimed a share in the profits of some business I brought to you, and, as I persisted, you arrested me for an old advance of ten pounds, odd shillings, including interest at fifty per cent, or so.'

'I remember something of it,' replied Ralph, carelessly.