"George?" said I, staring.
"Cursed rich, on my life and soul!" cried the tall gentleman, shaking his head and laughing again. "Mum's the word, of course, and I swear a shaven face becomes you most deyvilishly!"
"Perhaps you will be so obliging as to tell me what you mean?" said I, frowning.
"Oh, by gad!" he cried, fairly hugging himself with delight. "Oh, the devil! this is too rich—too infernally rich, on my life and soul it is!"
Now all at once there recurred to me the memory of Tom Cragg, the Pugilist; of how he too had winked at me, and of his incomprehensible manner afterwards beneath the gibbet on River Hill.
"Sir," said I, "do you happen to know a pugilist, Tom Cragg by name?"
"Tom Cragg! well, I should think so; who doesn't, sir?"
"Because," I went on, "he too seems to labor under the delusion that he is acquainted with me, and—"
"Acquainted!" repeated the tall gentleman, "acquainted! Oh, gad!" and immediately hugged himself in another ecstasy.
"If," said I, "you will have the goodness to tell me for whom you evidently mistake me—"