"Halloa, Mr. Pip," said he; "how do you do? I should hardly have thought this was your beat."

     I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged. "Both flourishing thankye," said Wemmick, "and particularly the Aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two next birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighborhood shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure. However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?"

     "To the office?" said I, for he was tending in that direction.

     "Next thing to it," returned Wemmick, "I am going to Newgate. We are in a banker's-parcel case just at present, and I have been down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word or two with our client."

     "Did your client commit the robbery?" I asked.

     "Bless your soul and body, no," answered Wemmick, very drily. "But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be accused of it, you know."

     "Only neither of us is," I remarked.