'
'Who is Mr. Tope?' inquired Dick Datchery.
The waiter explained that he was the Verger, and that Mrs. Tope had
indeed once upon a time let lodgings herself or offered to let
them; but that as nobody had ever taken them, Mrs. Tope's window-
bill, long a Cloisterham Institution, had disappeared; probably had
tumbled down one day, and never been put up again.
'I'll call on Mrs. Tope,' said Mr. Datchery, 'after dinner.'
So when he had done his dinner, he was duly directed to the spot,
and sallied out for it. But the Crozier being an hotel of a most
retiring disposition, and the waiter's directions being fatally
precise, he soon became bewildered, and went boggling about and
about the Cathedral Tower, whenever he could catch a glimpse of it,
with a general impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope's was
somewhere very near it, and that, like the children in the game of
hot boiled beans and very good butter, he was warm in his search
when he saw the Tower, and cold when he didn't see it.
He was getting very cold indeed when he came upon a fragment of
burial-ground in which an unhappy sheep was grazing. Unhappy,
because a hideous small boy was stoning it through the railings,
and had already lamed it in one leg, and was much excited by the
benevolent sportsmanlike purpose of breaking its other three legs,
and bringing it down.
''It 'im agin!' cried the boy, as the poor creature leaped; 'and
made a dint in his wool.
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