He squeezed the silver--Dangerfield's little remembrance--with a furious strain, and ground his teeth.
'I'm like a man surrounded.

I wish I was out of it all!' he muttered, with a care-worn glance.
So he entered the public-house.
There was not much business doing.

Three friends, Smithfield dealers, or some such folk, talking loudly over their liquor of prices and prospects; and one fat fellow, by the fire, smoking a pipe, with a large glass of punch at his elbow.
'Ah, then, Mr.Irons, an' is it yourself that's in it?
and where in the world wor ye all this time ?' said the landlady.
'Business, Ma'am, business, Mrs.Molloy.' 'An' there's your chair waitin' for you beside the fire, Mr.Irons, this month an' more--a cowld evening--and we all wondherin' what in the wide world was gone widg ye--this I do'no how long.' 'Thank ye, Ma'am--a pipe and a glass o' punch.' Irons was always a man of few words, and his laconics did not strike Mistress Molloy as anything very strange.

So she wiped the little table at his side, and with one foot on the fender, and his elbow on his knee, he smoked leisurely into the fire-place.
To look at his face you would have supposed he was thinking; but it was only that sort of foggy vacuity which goes by the name of 'a brown study.' He never thought very clearly or connectedly; and his apathetic reveries, when his mood was gloomy, were furnished forth in a barren and monotonous way, with only two or three frightful figures, and a dismal scenery that seldom shifted.
The three gentlemen at the table called for more liquor, and the stout personage, sitting opposite to Irons, dropped into their talk, having smoked out his pipe, and their conversation became more general and hilarious; but Irons scarce heard it.

Curiosity is an idle minx, and a soul laden like the clerk's has no entertainment for her.