'I have told you once before to-night.'

'You have done nothing of the sort.'

'I tell you I have. That you take a great deal too much upon
yourself.'

'You added something else to that, if I remember?'

'Yes, I did say something else.'

'Say it again.'

'I said that in the part of the world I come from, you would be
called to account for it.'

'Only there?' cries Edwin Drood, with a contemptuous laugh. 'A
long way off, I believe? Yes; I see! That part of the world is at
a safe distance.'

'Say here, then,' rejoins the other, rising in a fury. 'Say
anywhere! Your vanity is intolerable, your conceit is beyond
endurance; you talk as if you were some rare and precious prize,
instead of a common boaster. You are a common fellow, and a common
boaster.'

'Pooh, pooh,' says Edwin Drood, equally furious, but more
collected; 'how should you know? You may know a black common
fellow, or a black common boaster, when you see him (and no doubt