By Jove!' said the chairman, whispering across the table to Mr

Pickwick, 'you have hit upon something that one of us, at least, would

talk upon for ever. You'll draw old Jack Bamber out; he was never

heard to talk about anything else but the inns, and he has lived alone

in them till he's half crazy.'

The individual to whom Lowten alluded, was a little, yellow, high-

shouldered man, whose countenance, from his habit of stooping

forward when silent, Mr Pickwick had not observed before. He

wondered, though, when the old man raised his shrivelled face, and

bent his gray eye upon him, with a keen inquiring look, that such

remarkable features could have escaped his attention for a moment.

There was a fixed grim smile perpetually on his countenance; he

leaned his chin on a long, skinny hand, with nails of extraordinary

length; and as he inclined his head to one side, and looked keenly out

from beneath his ragged gray eyebrows, there was a strange, wild

slyness in his leer, quite repulsive to behold.

This was the figure that now started forward, and burst into an

animated torrent of words. As this chapter has been a long one,

however, and as the old man was a remarkable personage, it will be

more respectful to him, and more convenient to us, to let him speak

for himself in a fresh one.

The Pickwick Papers