who was by this time looking at the fire over his leg.

'Not at all!' cried Tom.

'You must know then, to make short of a long story,' said Martin,
beginning with a kind of effort, as if the revelation were not
agreeable to him; 'that I have been bred up from childhood with great
expectations, and have always been taught to believe that I should be,
one day, very rich. So I should have been, but for certain brief
reasons which I am going to tell you, and which have led to my being
disinherited.'

'By your father?' inquired Mr Pinch, with open eyes.

'By my grandfather. I have had no parents these many years. Scarcely
within my remembrance.'

'Neither have I,' said Tom, touching the young man's hand with his own
and timidly withdrawing it again. 'Dear me!'

'Why, as to that, you know, Pinch,' pursued the other, stirring the fire
again, and speaking in his rapid, off-hand way; 'it's all very right
and proper to be fond of parents when we have them, and to bear them in
remembrance after they're dead, if you have ever known anything of them.
But as I never did know anything about mine personally, you know, why, I
can't be expected to be very sentimental about 'em. And I am not; that's
the truth.'

Mr Pinch was just then looking thoughtfully at the bars. But on
his companion pausing in this place, he started, and said 'Oh! of