A SCREW LOOSE. CHAPTER I. TICKETS FOR A BENEFIT, AND WHAT THEY LED TO. 66 'This is a very patient tracking beast. See, how he checks at it on yonder hillside, and mouths to it in a fair pasture.”—The Morisco Captain. THE lodgings in Portlock Street, as exemplified by that section of them known as Plumpton's Forest, beyond being earthy, mouldy, and imbued with a sepulchral smell, were habitable enough, and Webb got a tolerable supper, and passed a tolerable VOL. II. B night. Eager to commence his inquiries the following morning, Tapscott was summoned to solemn conclave. Whose were those blue books stowed away under the cheffonier? Mr. Plumpton's, to be sure, a very nice Parliament gentleman. Ah, to be sure, Webb remembered hearing the name; was a little in the Parliament line himself. Hard-worked, he supposed, with a good many odd sort of people, deputations and the like, calling upon him at times. Tapscott assented, but added, mostly people with county-made clothes from Slopeshire. Yes; but London callers, too; well, perhaps there might be. Had she ever noticed. anything particular about these visitors? What should she notice? Webb replied Could he see that he was only joking. Mrs. Flim? Not by any means; that lady was then engaged in reading Milton 66 in her bath. Well, he could wait till that was over. Ah, but she then took shrimps and arrowroot to the tune of " Rule Britannia" for half an hour, and for this purpose she retained a special organ-grinder at eighteen pence a week and punctuality to the minute. Well, and what then? Oh, she uses the dumb-bells, and makes one or two artificial flies likely to suit the kind of day it is. Then all chance of an interview was hopeless at present. Of course it was; Mrs. Flim would send for him when she wished to see him, but that she was not well-disposed to her new lodger just yet Tapscott opines, for that when she told Mrs. Flim last night through the keyhole that there was a gent had took the "Forest," that lady had muttered audibly something about the seventeenth beast in the Apocrypha with brass earrings, which |