“The same to you, sir, and many of them!  Amin—­I pray the sweet queen o’ heaven this day!”

“Darby,” said M’Slime, who looked upon his mingling up religious expressions peculiar to his class as a proof of his sincerity—­“Darby,” said he in a low, condensed, and collected voice—­“I said I had the execution of a commission to entrust to you.”

“But, sir,” said Darby, whose ears, could they have shaped themselves according to his wishes, would have ran into points in order to hear with more acuteness—­“Sir,” said he, “I doubt I’m not worthy of such a trust.”

“Perfectly worthy, Darby,” continued Solomon, “if I did not think so I would not employ you—­I have engaged another person to prepare, as it were, the way for you; but the truth is, it would never do to allow that person and the young person of whom you are going to take charge to be seen together.  Evil constructions would most assuredly be put on innocent actions, Darby, as they often are; and for this reason it is that I have partly changed my mind, and will entrust one-half the commission I speak of to you.”  As if, however, he feared that the very walls might justify the old proverb by proving that they had ears, he stood up and whispered a short, but apparently most interesting communication to Darby, who appeared to listen to a tale that was calculated rather to excite admiration than any other feeling.  And we have little doubt, indeed, that the tale in question was given as illustrating the exertion of as pure an instance of Christian compassion and benevolence as ever was manifested in the secret depths of that true piety which shuns the light; for Darby’s journey was most assuredly to be made in the dark and still hours of the night.  On opening the door a party of three or four clients were about to knock, but having given them admission he went away at rather a brisk, if not a hasty pace.

Darby having concluded this interview was proceeding, not exactly in the direction of M’Clutchy’s, but as the reader shall soon hear, to a very different person, no other than the Rev. Phineas Lucre, D.D., Rector of the Parish of Castle Cumber; a living at that time worth about eighteen hundred a year.

The Rev. Phineas Lucre, then, was a portly gentleman, having a proud, consequential air stamped upon his broad brow and purple features.  His wife was niece to a nobleman, through whose influence he had been promoted over the head of a learned and pious curate, whose junior Mr. Lucre had been in the ministry only about the short period of twenty-five years.  Many persons said that the curate had been badly treated in this transaction, but those persons must have known that he had no friends except the poor and afflicted of his parish, whose recommendation of him to his bishop, or the minister of the day, would have had little weight.  His domestic family, too, was large, a circumstance rather to his disadvantage; but he himself was of studious, simple, and inexpensive habits.