"No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps, or vagrants of any sort, out there?"

     "No," said Joe; "none but a runaway convict now and then. And we don't find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?"

     Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented; but not warmly.

     "Seems you have been out after such?" asked the stranger.

     "Once," returned Joe. "Not that we wanted to take them, you understand; we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. Didn't us, Pip?"

     "Yes, Joe."

     The stranger looked at me again,--still cocking his eye, as if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun,--and said, "He's a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?"

     "Pip," said Joe.

     "Christened Pip?"

     "No, not christened Pip."

     "Surname Pip?"