HOW MICKY BECAME A LINKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MR. NIXON. HIS SELF-RESTRAINT, WIX'S MESSAGE. JULIA'S DILEMMA. HER VIEWS ON MARRIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL POLLY! HOW MICKY'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. OUR OLD LADY—GONE! WHO WILL TELL DAVE AND DOLLY? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE. THE END

The irresolute winter only wavered some forty-eight hours, setting to work in earnest on the second day after Christmas Day, following on suggestions of seasonableness on Boxing Day. London awoke to a dense fog and a hard frost, and its spirits went up. Its citizens became possessed with an unnatural cheerfulness, as is their wont when they cannot breathe without choking, when the gas has to be lighted at what should be the hour of daybreak, when the vapour lies thick in places, and will not move from contact; though now and again the darkness, where the sky was once, seems at odds with a languid something, that may be light, beyond. Then, fires within, heaped with fresh coal, regardless of expense, to keep the fog at bay, contribute more and more through chimney-pots without to the unspeakable opacities overhead, and each seeming ultimatum of blackness is followed by another blacker still. Then, while timid persons think the last day has come, the linkboys don't care whether it has or not, and enjoy themselves intensely.

A good example of the former class was Mrs. Treadwell, Michael Ragstroar's great-aunt at Hammersmith; of the latter, Michael himself. On the afternoon of that Wednesday in Christmas week he had conducted an old bloke of enormous wealth, on foot, from the said bloke's residence in Russell Square to his son-in-law's less pretentious one at Chiswick, and had earned liberal refreshments, golden opinions, and silver coin by his intrepidity and perception of London localities in Egyptian darkness. And he had never so much as once asked the name of a blooming street! So ran his communication to his great-aunt, on whom he called afterwards; being, as he said, handy.

"Now you do like I tell you, Micky, and bank it with the Savings Bank, and you'll live to be thankful." This referred to Micky's harphacrownd, just earned. That was his exact pronunciation, delivered ore rotundissimo, to do full justice to so large an amount.

Micky's reply was:—"Ketch me at it! I don't put no faith in any of these here Banks, like you see at street corners. The Bank, where you go on the green bus, is another pair o' stockin's.... No—I ain't going to put it on a 'orse. You carn't never say they ain't doctored." He went on to express an astute mistrust of investments, owing to the bad faith of Man, and wound up:—"The money won't run away of itself, so long as you don't let it out of your porket." Into which receptacle Micky returned it, slapping the same in ratification of its security.

"Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." But Michael shook his head, assuming a farsighted expression. He was immovable. Mrs. Treadwell continued:—"Bein' here, I do declare you might be a useful boy, and write Dog Found large on a sheet of paper, and ask Miss Hawkins to put it up in her window for to find the owner."

"Wot's the dog?"

"Well now, he was here a minute back! Or he run out when you come in." Fog-retarded search discovered a woebegone refugee under the stairs; who had been fetched in, said Mrs. Treadwell, by her puppy in the early morning, and whom she had not had the heart to drive away.

Michael was proud to show his skill as a penman, and with his aunt's assistance composed an intelligible announcement that the owner of a black-and-tan terrier with one eye might recover the same on production of some proof of ownership. Michael devised one, suggesting that any applicant might be told to say what name was wrote on the collar.

"But there now, Micky," said the old charwoman. "He hasn't got no collar!"

"Werry good, then," said her nephew. "When he tells you what's wrote on the collar, you'll know he's a liar, and don't you give him up the dog."

"But shan't I be a story," said Mrs. Treadwell, "for to tell him the collar's wrote upon, when it's no such a thing?"

"Not you, Arnty! Don't you say anything's wrote. Just you ask him what, and cotch him out!"

The puppy wanted to help, and nearly blotted the composition. But this was avoided, and Micky went out into the fog bearing the placard, of which he was rather proud.

A typical sot was the only occupant of the bar, who was so far from sober that he imagined he was addressing a public meeting. Micky distinguished that he was referring to his second wife, and had some fault to find with the chairman. Voices in the little parlour behind the bar caught the boy's ear, and took his attention off. He was not bound to stop his ears. If parties hollered, it was their own lookout. Parties hollered, in this case, and Micky could hear, without listening. He was not sure, though, when he heard one of the voices, that he would not have listened, if he had any call to do so. For it was the voice of his old acquaintance the convict.

"No safety like a thick fog, Juliar! I'll pay her a visit this very afternoon, so soon as ever you've given me some belly-timber. Sapps Court'll be as black as an inch-thick of ink for twelve hours yet. Don't you let that steak burn!"

Michael heard the steak rescued—the hiss of its cookery intercepted. Then he heard Miss Julia say with alarm in her voice:—"You're never going there, Wix! Not to Sapps Court?"

"And why the Hell shouldn't I go to Sapps Court? One place is as safe as another, a day like this." Insert if you will an adjective before "place," here.

Michael, sharp as he was, could not tell why the woman's answer sounded embarrassed, even through a half-closed door. The story knows. She had betrayed the knowledge she had acquired from the letter she had tampered with, that Sapps was being specially watched by the Police. How could she account for this knowledge, without full confession? And would not absolution be impossible? She could only fence with the cause of her confusion. "I got the idea on my mind, I expect," said she uneasily. "Didn't you say she had a man hanging round?"

"Old Mo, sure enough. Yes, there's old Mo. But he won't be there. He'll be swiping, round at The Sun. I can reckon him up! He don't train for fighting, like he did thirty years ago. One sight of him would easy your mind—an old dot-and-go-one image!"

"I got the idea the officers would look to catch you there. I did, Wix."

"And I got the idea no such a thing!" Omission again before this last word. "Why in thunder do you suppose?... Shut to that door!"

"There's no one there—only old Nixon."

"Who's he talking to?"

"Nobody. Empty space!"

"Tell you he is! Look and see." Thereupon Miss Julia, looking through a transparent square in a glass chessboard into the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the impression that he had an audience. He was, in fact, addressing a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, he said—substantially—the reward of self-restraint! He was no mere bigoted doctrinaire, wedded to the absurd and exaggerated theories of the Teatolers. He had not a word to say in favour of Toalabshnensh. It was against Human Naysh. But Manshknewwhairtshtop, like himself, was always on the safe side. He charged Micky to be on his guard against Temptation, who lay in wait for inexperience without his first syllable, which had been absorbed in a hiccup. Micky was not grateful to Mr. Nixon for this, as it interfered with his hearing of the conversation within.

"Who are you, in behind that handle?" asked Miss Hawkins. "Come out and show us your face.... What's this? 'Dog Found'? Yes—very happy to oblige your aunt.... Stick it up against the front-glass yourself.... 'Won't stick of itself,' won't it? Wait till I see for a wafer." She returned into the small parlour, and foraged in the drawer of her inkstand, which had probably done no service since her experiment in faussure, till it supplied Mr. Wix with a simile for the fog, ten minutes since.

"That's young Ikey," said the convict. "I can tell him by his lip. Fetch him inside. I've a message for him to carry." Miss Julia had found red wafers; and, after instructing Michael how to use them—to suck them in earnest, as they had got dry awaiting their mission in life—induced him into Mr. Wix's presence. Micky's instinctive hatred of this man was subdued by the recollection of the douceurs he had received from him. But do what he would, he was only equal to a nod, as greeting. He hardly received so much himself.

The convict eyed him sleepily from the window-seat, his usual anchorage at The Pigeons, and said nothing for some seconds. Then he roused himself to say:—"Well, young shaver, what the office for you?—that's the point! Look you now—are you going home?"

"Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, neither way. Spit it out, guv'nor!"

Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before he answered:—"You've to carry a message. A message to Aunt M'riar. Got that? You know Aunt M'riar."

"Knew Aunt M'riar afore ever you did."

Mr. Wix looked through his first puff of smoke, amused. "About right you are, that time!" said he. Not that this was untrue enough to be worth telling as a falsehood. Polly the barmaid had no niece or nephew that he knew of, in the early days. "But you could carry a message to her, if you didn't. Just you tell her old Goody Prichard's gone off her hooks."

"The widder two pair up at Number Seven? What hooks?"

"She's slipped her wind, handed in her chips."

"Mean she's dead? Carn't you say so, mister?"

"Sharp boy! That's what she is. Dead."

"That won't soote Aunt M'riar." Micky had only known old Maisie by repute, but he knew the Court's love for her. A wish for some confirmation of the convict's statement arose in his mind. "How's she to know it's not a lie?" said he.

"She'll know, fast enough! Say I told you. Say who I am. She'll twig, when you tell her.... Stop a bit!" He was thinking how to authenticate the death without telling the boy overmuch about himself. "Look here—I'll tell you what you've got to say. Say her son—old mother Prichard's son—was just up from Rocestershire, and he'd seen her dead, with his own eyes. Dead as a boiled lobster. That's your message."

If Micky had known that this man was speaking of himself and his own mother! Perhaps it was some instinctive inwardness that made him glad he had got his message and could be gone. He made short work of his exit, saying:—"All right, mister, I'm your man"—and departed after a word in the bar to Miss Julia:—"Right you are, missis! Don't you let him have another half-a-quartern." For Mr. Nixon being a penny short, her anxiety that he should observe his own rules of life had been reinforced by commercialism. She drew the line of encouraging drunkenness at integers—halves not counting as fractions, by tacit consent. They are not hard enough.

Miss Hawkins had placed herself in a difficulty by that indiscreet tampering with Aunt M'riar's letter. She had done it in a fit of furious exasperation with Daverill, immediately the result of an interview with him on his reappearance at The Pigeons some weeks ago. Some whim had inclined him towards the exhibition of a better selfhood than the one in daily use; perhaps merely to assert the power he still possessed over the woman; more probably to enable him to follow it up with renewed suggestions that she should turn the freehold Pigeons into solid cash, and begin with him a new life in America. She had kept her head in spite of kisses and cajolery, which appealed with some success to her memories of twenty years ago, and had refused to entertain any scheme in which lawful marriage was postponed till after the sale of her property. The parson was to precede the auctioneer.

But an escaped convict with the police inquiring for him cannot put up the banns. Had Daverill seen his way to doing so he would have made light of bigamy. Besides, was it likely his first wife would claim him? He preferred to suppress his real reason for refusing to "make an honest woman" of Miss Julia, and to take advantage of the fact that his "real wife" Polly was still living.

Then Miss Hawkins had made a proposal which showed a curious frame of mind about marriage law. Her idea may be not unknown in the class she belonged to, still. It certainly existed in the fifties of last century. If Aunt M'riar could be deprived of her "marriage lines" her teeth would be drawn, not merely practically by making proof of a marriage difficult, but definitely by the removal of a mysterious influence—most to be likened to the key of a driving-pulley, whose absence from its slot would leave the machinery of Matrimony at a deadlock. Let Mr. Wix, by force or fraud, get possession of this charter of respectability, and he and his lawful wife would come apart, like a steamed postage-stamp and its envelope. Nothing would be lacking then but a little fresh gum, and reattachment. This expresses Miss Julia's idea, however faulty the simile may be in itself.

"She's got her lines to show"—So the lady had been saying, shortly before Michael came into the bar.—"But she won't have them long, if you put your mind on making her give 'em up. You can do it, Wix." She seemed to have a strong faith in the convict's cunning.

He appeared to ponder over it, saying finally:—"Right you are, Juliar! I see my way."

"What are you going to do?"

"That's tellings. I'll get the dockyment out of her. That's enough for you, without your coming behind to see. I'll make you a New Year's present of it, gratish. What'll you do with it?"

"Tear it up—burn it. That'll quiet her off. Lawful Polly! Damn her!" Really Miss Hawkins made a better figure in a rage, than when merely vegetating. And yet her angry flush was inartistic, through so much pearl powder. It made streaks.

It had its effect on Daverill, soothing his complaisant mood, making him even more cunning than before. "I'll get it out of her, Juliar," said he, "and you shall have it to tear up, to your heart's content. It don't make one farthing's worth of difference, that I see. But have it your own choice. A woman's a woman!" There seems no place in this for Mr. Wix's favourite adjective; but it called for omission before "farthing's worth," for all that!

"Not a penny of mine shall go your way, Wix, till I've put it on the fire, and seen it burn." Miss Hawkins dropped her voice to say:—"Only keep safe, just the little while left."

After Micky's exit one or two customers called for attention, and subsided into conversation over one or two quarts. One had a grievance that rumbled on continuously, barely pausing for intermittent sympathy from the other or others. Their quarts having been conceded and paid for, Miss Julia returned. That steak—which you may have felt anxious about—was being kept hot, and Mr. Wix was tapping the ashes out of his finished pipe. "There!" said he. "You run your eye through that, and you'll see there's no more cause to shy off Sapps than any other place." His exact words suggested recent carnage in Sapps Court, but only for rhetoric's sake.

Miss Hawkins picked up the letter he threw across the table, and recognised the one she had stealthily converted to an assurance of the disappearance of extra police from Sapps Court. She felt very uncomfortable indeed—but what could she do?

Ill news is said to travel fast, always. It had not done so in this case, and Sapps Court was still in ignorance of old Maisie's death when Michael passed under its archway, to experience for the first time the feelings that beset the bearer of fatal tidings to those it will wound to hear them far worse than himself. To a not inhuman creature, in such a case, a title to sorrow, that will lessen the distance between his own heart and the one he has to lacerate, is almost a relief.

He himself was not to blame for delay in delivering his message. On the contrary, his sympathetic perception of its unwelcomeness to its recipients took the strange form of a determination not to lose a second in fulfilling his instructions. So deeply bent was he on doing this that he never questioned the reasonableness of his own alacrity until he had passed the iron post Dave fell off—you remember?—and was opposite to his own family residence at the head of the Court. His intention had been to pass it, and go straight on to No. 7. Something made him change his mind; perhaps the painfulness of his task dawned on him. His mother was surprised to see him. "There now," said she. "I thought you was going to be out all day, and your father he'll want all the supper there is for hisself."

"So I was a-going to be out all day. I'm out now, in a manner o' speaking. Going out again. Nobody's going to suffer from an empty stummick along o' me." He had subsided on a rocking-chair, dropping his old cloth cap between his feet.

"Whereabouts have you been to, Micky?" said his mother conciliatorily, to soothe her son's proud independent spirit.

He recited his morning's work rapidly. "Linked an old cock down to Chiswick Mawl what was frightened to ride in a hansom, till half-past eleven, 'cos he could only go slow. Got an early dinner off of his cook by reason of roomuneration. Cold beef and pickles as much as I choose. Slice o' plum pudding hotted up a purpose, only no beer for to encourage wice in youth. Bein' clost handy, dropped round on a wisit to Arnty Lisbeth. Arnty Lisbeth she's makin' inquiry concerning a young tike's owner. Wrote Arnty Lisbeth out a notice-card. Got Miss Horkings next door to allow it up in her window on the street. That's how I came by this here intelligence I got to pass on to Wardle's. Time I was going!"

Mrs. Ragstroar stopped scraping the brown outer skin off a very large potato, and looked reproachfully at Micky. "You've never said nothing of that," said she.

"Who ever went to say I said anything of it?" was the reply. In this family all communications took the form of contradictions or indictments, more or less defiant in character. "I never said not one word. I'd no call to say anything, and I didn't."

"Then how can you ever expect anyone to know unless you say?" She went on peeling.

"Who's ever said I expected anyone to know?" But in spite of his controversial method, he did not go away to give this message; and evidently wanted a helping hand, or at least sympathy.

His mother perceived the fact, and said magnanimously:—"You might just as well up and tell, Micky." Then she nearly undid the effect of her concession by saying:—"Because you know you want to!"

What saved the situation was that Micky did want to. He blurted out the news that was oppressing him, to his own great relief. "Old Mother Prichard, Wardleses Widder upstairs, she's dead."

"Sakes alive! They was expecting her back."

"Well—she's dead, like I tell you!"

"For sure?"

"That's what her son says. If he don't know, nobody don't."

"Was it him told you? I never heard tell she had a son—not Mrs. Prichard."

Micky's family pugnacity preferred to accept this as a censure, or at least a challenge. He raised his voice, and fired off his speech in platoons, to say:—"Never see her son! Shouldn't know him if I was to see him. Wot—I'm telling—you—that's—wot—her—son said to the party what commoonicated it to me. Miss Wardle she'll reco'nise the party, by particklars giv'." This embodied the impression received from the convict's words, which had made no claim to old Maisie as his mother.

"Whatever shall you say to Mrs. Wardle?"

Micky picked up his cap from the ground, and used it as a nose-polisher—after slapping it on his knee to sterilise it, a use which seemed to act in relief of perplexity. "If I know, I'm blest," said he. "Couldn't tell you if you was to arsk me!"

It was impossible to resist the implied appeal for help. Mrs. Ragstroar put a large fresh potato on the table to enjoy its skin yet a little longer, and wiped the memory of its predecessors off on her apron. "Come along, Micky," she said. "I got to see Aunt M'riar; you come along after me. I'll just say a word aforehand." Micky welcomed this, and saying merely:—"Ah!—like a tip!" followed his mother down the Court to No. 7.

Someone, somewhere, must have known, clocks apart, that a day was drawing to a close; a short winter's day, and a dark and cold one at the best. But the someone was not in the Thames Valley, and the somewhere surely was not Sapps Court. There Day and Night alike had been robbed of their birthright by sheer Opacity, and humankind had to choose between submission to Egyptian darkness and an irksome leisure, or a crippled activity by candlelight, on the one hand, and ruin, on the other. Not that tallow candles were really much good—they got that yellow and streaky. Why—the very gaslamps out of doors you couldn't hardly see them, not unless you went quite up close! If it had not been that, as Micky followed his mother down the Court, a ladder-bearer had dawned suddenly, and died away after laying claim to lighting you up a bit down here, no one would never have so much as guessed illumination was afoot. But then the one gaslamp was on a bracket a great heicth up, on the wall at the end of Druitt's garden, so called. And Mrs. Ragstroar and her son had followed along the wood-palings in front of the houses, on the left.

Micky's flinching from his mission had grown on him so by the time they reached the end house, that he hung back and allowed his mother to enter first. He wanted the tip to exhaust the subject of Death, and to leave him only the task of authentication. He did not hear what his mother said in a quick undertone to Aunt M'riar, within, manifestly ironing. But he heard its effect on her hearer—a cry of pain, kept under, and an appeal to Uncle Mo, in some dark recess beyond. "Oh, Mo!—only hark at that! Our old lady—gone!" Then Uncle Mo, emerging probably from pitch darkness in the little parlour, and joining in the undertones on inquiry and information mixed—mixed soon enough with sobs. Then the struggle against them in Mo's own voice of would-be reassurance:—"Poor old M'riar! Don't ye take on so! We'll all die one day." Then more undertones. Then Aunt M'riar's broken voice:—"Yes—I know she was eighty"—and her complete collapse over:—"It's the children I'm thinking of! Our children, Mo, our children!"

Old Mo saw that point. You could hear it in his voice. "Ah—the children!" But he tried for a forlorn hope. Was it possibly a false report? Make sure about that, anyhow, before giving way to grief! "Was it only that young shaver of yours brought the news, Mrs. Ragstroar? Maybe he's put the saddle on the wrong horse!"

"He's handy to tell his own tale, Mr. Wardle. Here, young Micky! Come along in and speak for yourself." Whereupon the boy came in. He had been secretly hoping he might escape being called into council altogether.

"You're sure you got the right of it, Michael," said Uncle Mo. "Tell it us all over again from the beginning."

Whereupon Micky, braced by having a member of his own noble sex as catechist, but sadly handicapped by inability to employ contentious formulas, gave a detailed account of his visit to The Pigeons. He identified the convict by short lengths of speech, addressed to Mr. Wardle's ear alone, suggestive of higher understandings of the affairs of men than aunts and mothers could expect to share. "Party that's givin' trouble to the Police ... Party I mentioned seeing in Hy' Park ... Party that come down the Court inquirin' for widder lady.... came at intervals. Micky's respectful and subdued reference to Mrs. Prichard was a tribute to Death.

"And did he say her son told him, to his own hearing?... All right, M'riar, I know what I'm talking about." This was to stop Aunt M'riar's interposing with a revelation of old Maisie's relation to the party. It would have encumbered cross-examination; which, even if it served no particular end, would seem profound and weighty.

"That's how I took it from him," said Micky.

"Didn't he say who her son was?" Aunt M'riar persisted, with unflinching simplicity.

Micky, instantly illuminated, replied:—"Not he! He never so much as said he wasn't her son, hisself." This did not mean that affirmation was usually approached by denial of every possible negation. It was only the involuntary echo of a notion Aunt M'riar's manner had clothed her words with.

"That was tellings, M'riar," said Uncle Mo. "But it don't make any odds, that I can see. Look ye here, young Micky! What was it this charackter said about coming here this afternoon?"

"Werry first words I heard him say! 'No safety like a thick fog,' he says. 'And I'll pay her a visit this very arternoon,' he says. Only he won't! You may take that off me, like Gospel."

"How do you make sure of that, young master?"

"'Cos he's got nothing to come for, now I've took his message for him. If he hadn't had reliance, he'd not have arxed me to carry it. He knows me for safe, by now, Mr. Wardle."

"Don't you see, Mo," said Aunt M'riar. "He'd no call to come here, exceptin'. It was only to oblige-like, and let know. Once Micky gave his word, what call had he to come four mile through such a fog?"

"That's the whole tale, then?" said Uncle Mo, after reflection. "Onlest you can call to mind something you've forgot, Master Micky."

"Not a half a word, Mr. Moses. If there had a been, I'd have made you acquainted, and no lies. And all I said's ackerate, and to rely on." Which was perfectly true, so far as reporter's good faith went. Had Micky overheard the conversation two minutes sooner, he would have gathered that Mr. Wix had other reasons for coming to Sapps Court than to give the news of Mrs. Prichard's death. Indeed, it is not clear why, intending to go there for another purpose, Wix thought it necessary to employ Michael at all as an ambassador. But a story has to be content with facts.

Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were alone with the shadow of their trouble, and the knowledge that the children must be told.

The boy and his mother, their painful message delivered, had vanished through the fog to their own home. The voices of Dave and Dolly came from the room above through the silence that followed. Mo and M'riar were at no loss to guess what was the burden of that earnest debate that rose and fell, and paused and was renewed, but never died outright. It was the endless arrangement and rearrangement of the preparations for the great event to come, the feast that was to welcome old Mrs. Picture back to her fireside, and its chair with cushions.

"Oh, Mo—Mo! I haven't the heart—I haven't the heart to do it."

"Poor old M'riar—poor old M'riar!" The old prizefighter's voice was tender with its sorrow for his old comrade, who shrank from the task that faced them, one or both; even sorrow—though less oppressive—for the loss of the old lady who had become the children's idol.

"No, Mo, I haven't the heart. Only this very day ... if it hadn't been for the fog ... Dave would have got the last halfpenny out of his rabbit to buy a sugar-basin on the stall in the road ... and he's saving it for a surprise for Dolly ... when the fog goes...."

"Is Susan Burr upstairs with them?"

"No—she's gone out to Yardley's for some thread. She's all right. She's walking a lot better."

They sat silent for a while, the unconscious voices overhead reaching their hearts, and rousing the question they would have been so glad to ignore. How should they bring it to the children's knowledge that the chair with cushions was waiting for its occupant in vain? Which of their unwilling hands should be the first to draw aside the veil that still sheltered those two babies' lives from the sight of the face of Death.

The man was the first to speak. "Young Mick, he saw his way pretty sharp, M'riar—about who was ... her son." His voice dropped on the reference to old Maisie herself, and he avoided her name.

"Did he understand?"

"Oh yes—he twigged, fast enough.... There's a p'int to consider, M'riar. This man's her son—but it don't follow he knows whether she's dead or living, any better than you or me. Who's to say he's not lying? Besides, we should have had a letter to tell.... Who from?... H'm—well—from.... But Mo found the completion of this sentence difficult.

No wonder! How could he reply:—"Her ladyship?" He may have been convinced that Gwen would write, but how could he say so? The sister and daughter, neither of whom were more than names to him, seemed out of the question. Sister Nora would be sure to come with the news, some time. But was she back from Scotland, where they knew she had gone to convalesce?

Aunt M'riar looked the fact in the face. "No—we shouldn't have had no letter, Mo. Not yet a while, at least. Daverill's a bad man, and lies. But not when there's no advantage in it. He'd not go about to send me word she was dead, except he knew."

"How should he know, more than we?"

"Don't you ask me about when I see him, not yet where, nor yet how, and I'll tell you, Mo." She waited, as for a safe-conduct.

"Poor old M'riar!" said Mo pitifully. "I'll not witness-box you. Catch me! No—no!—you shan't tell me nothing you don't like."

"He told me he should try to see his mother again. And I said to him if he went there he would be taken, safe and certain. And he said not he, because the Police were too sharp by half, and would take for granted he would be afraid to go anigh the place again. He said he could always see round them."

"I see what he was driving at. And you think he went."

"None so long ago, I should say. He never see her—not alive. I couldn't say why, only I feel that was the way of it."

"When did you see him last?... No—old girl! I won't do that. It's mean—after sayin' I wouldn't witness-box! Don't you tell me nothing."

"I won't grudge telling you that much, Mo. It's a tidy long time back now. I couldn't say to a day. It was afore I wrote to him to keep away from the Court for fear of the Police.... Yes—I did! Just after Mr. Rowe came round that time, asking inquiries.... I am his wife, Mo—nothing can't alter it."

"I ain't blaming you, old girl."

"Well—it was then he said he'd go to Chorlton again. And he's been."

Silence again, and the sound of the children above. Then a footstep without, recognised as Susan Burr's by its limp.

"She'll have to be told, Mo," said Aunt M'riar. "We've never had a thought for poor Susan."

A commonplace face came white as ashes from the fog without, and a suffocating voice, gasping against sobs. "Oh, M'riar!—Oh, Mr. Wardle!—Is it true she's gone?"

Aunt M'riar could not tighten her lips against their instability and speak, at the same time, so she nodded assent. Uncle Mo said, steadily enough:—"I'm afraid it's true, Mrs. Burr. We can't make it out no otherwise." Then M'riar got self-command to say:—"Yes—she's taken from us. It's the Lord's will." And then they could claim their birthright of tears, the last privilege left to hearts encompassed with the darkness of the grave.

The three were standing, some short while later, at the stairfoot, each looking at the other. Which was to go first?

Aunt M'riar made a hesitating suggestion. "Supposin' you was to step up first, and look back to say...!"

"That's one idear," said Uncle Mo. "Suppose you do!"

Susan Burr, referred to by both, accepted the commission, limping slowly up the stairs while the others waited below, listening. They heard that the door above was opened, when the children's voices came clearer, suddenly. But Susan Burr had only cautiously pushed the door ajar, making no noise, to listen herself before going in. There was a flare from a gas-birth in the fire as she got a sight of the group within, through the opening. It illuminated Dolly, Dave, and the newly christened wax doll; the Persian apparatus on the floor—a mere rehearsal, whose cake had to be pretence cake, and whose tea lacked its vegetable constituent—and the portraits of robed and sceptred Royalty on the wall. Some point in stage-management seemed to be under discussion, and to threaten a dissolution of partnership. For Dave was saying:—"Then oy shall go and play with The Boys, because the fog's a-stopping. You look out at the winder!"

Dolly met this with a firm, though gentle, prohibition. "No, you s'arn't. You is to be Gwanny Mawwowbone vis time, and set on the sofa. And me to be old Mrs. Spicture vis time, and set in the chair wiv scushions. And Pussy to be ve uvvers. And Gweng to paw out all veir teas. Only vey take veir sugar veirselves." Dolly may have had it in view to reduce Dave to impotence by assigning to him the position of a guest. His manhood revolted against a subordinate part. Superhuman tact is needed—an old story!—in the casting of the parts of any new play, and Dolly, although kissable to a degree, and with an iron will, was absolutely lacking in tact.

"Then oy shall go and play with The Boys, because the forg's a-stoarping." But this was an empty threat, as Dave knew perfectly well that Uncle Mo would not allow him to go out of doors so late, even if the fog melted, since its immediate cessation would have left London in the dark, for it was past the Official hour of sunset.

Dolly said again:—"No, you sarn't!" and went on with the arrangements. "You take tite hold of Pussy, and stop her off doin' on ve scushions. Gweng to paw out the tea, only to wait faw the hot water! Ven I shall go in the chair with scushions, and be Mrs. Spicture. And ven you to leave hold of Pussy, and be Gwanny Mawwowbone on the sofa." The supernumeraries were intransigeant and troublesome; that is to say, their representative the Cat was.

Dave, whose enjoyment of these games was beginning to be marred by his coming manhood—for see how old he was getting!—utilised magnanimity as an excuse for concession. He kept the supers in check while Dolly suggested an attitude to Gweng. Gweng had only to wait for hot water, so it was easy to find one. Dolly then scrambled into the chair with cushions, and the supernumeraries wedged themselves round her and purred, in the person of the Cat. But having made this much concession, Dave struck.

Instead of accepting his part, he went to the window. "Oy can see across the way," said he. "Oy don't call it a forg when you can see the gairslamp all the way across the Court. That hoyn't a forg! Oy say, Dolly, oy'm a-going for to see Uncle Mo round to The Sun parlour, and boy a hoypny sorcer coming back. Oy am!"

Dolly shook a mass of rough gold that cried aloud for a comb, and said with sweet gravity:—"You tarn't!"

"Why not?" Dave's indignation at this statement made him shout. "Why carn't oy, same as another boy?"

"Because you're Gwanny Mawwowbone, all ve time. You tarn't help it." Dolly's solemn nods, and a pathos that seemed to grieve over the inevitable, left Dave speechless, struggling in vain against the identity he had so rashly undertaken to assume.

Susan Burr missed a great deal of this, and marked what she heard but little. She only knew that the children were happy, and that their happiness must end. Even her own grief—for think what old Maisie's death meant to her!—was hushed at the thought of how these babies could be told, could have their first great grief burst upon them. She felt sick, and only knew that she herself could not speak the word.

Aunt M'riar stole up after her stealthily—not Uncle Mo; his weight on the old stairs would have made a noise. They stood side by side on the landing, just catching sight of the little poppet in the armchair, all unkempt gold and blue eyes, quite content with her personation of the beloved old presence it would never know again. Aunt M'riar could just follow Susan Burr's stifled whisper:—"She's being old Mrs. Picture, in her chair."

It was confirmed by Dave's speech from the window, unseen. "You ain't old Mrs. Picture. When Mrs. Picture comes, oy shall tell her you said you was her, and then you'll see what Mrs. Picture'll say!" He spoke with a deep earnestness—a champion of Truth against an insidious and ungrounded fiction, that pretence was reality.

Then Dolly's voice, immovable in conviction, sweet and clear in correction of mere error:—"I is Mrs. Spicture, and when she comes she'll say I was Mrs. Spicture. She'll set in her chair wiv scushions, and say I was Mrs. Spicture."

The two listeners without did not wait to hear Dave's indignant rejoinder. They could not bear the tranquil ignorance of the children, and their unconsciousness of the black cloud closing in on them. They turned and went noiselessly down the stairs, choking back the grief they dared not grant indulgence to, by so much as a word or sound. The chronic discussion that they had left behind went on—on—always the same controversy, as it seemed; the same placid assurance of Dolly, the same indignant protest of Dave.

At the stairfoot, Uncle Mo, silent, looking inquiry, mistrusting speech. Aunt M'riar used a touch on his arm, and a nod towards the door of the little parlour, to get safe out of the children's hearing before risking speech, with that suffocation in her throat. Then when the door was closed, it came.

"We c-c-couldn't do it, Mo, we c-couldn't do it." Her sobs became a suppressed wail of despair, which seemed to give relief. Susan Burr had no other tale to tell, and was inarticulate to the same effect. They could not break through the panoply of the children's ignorance of Death, there in the very home of the departed, in the face of every harbinger of her return.

"Poor old M'riar! You shan't have the telling of 'em." Uncle Mo's pitying tones were husky in the darkened room; not quite dark, as the fog was lifting, and the Court's one gas-lamp was perceptible again through its remains. "Poor old M'riar! You shan't tell 'em—nor yet Susan Burr. I'll tell 'em, myself." But his heart sank at the prospect of his task, and he was fain to get a little respite—of only a few hours. "Look ye here, M'riar, I don't see no harm to come of standing of 'em over till we know. Maybe, as like as not, we'll have a letter in the morning."

But Uncle Mo was not to have the telling of the children.

Once it was clearly understood that the news was to be kept back, it became easier to exist, provisionally. Grief, demanding expression, gnaws less when silence becomes a duty. It was almost a relief to Susan Burr to have to be dry-eyed, on compulsion; far, far easier than to have to explain her tears to the young people. She went upstairs to them, mustering, as she went, a demeanour that would not be hypocritical, yet would safeguard her from suspicion of a hidden secret. She had been a long way, and was feeling her foot. That covered the position. Further, the children might stop upstairs a bit longer, if good. Dave was not to go out. Uncle Mo had said so. If Uncle Mo did go round to The Sun to-day, it would be after little boys and girls were abed and asleep. Mrs. Burr made her attitude easier to herself by affecting a Draconic demeanour. It was due to her foot, Dave and Dolly decided.

The unconscious children accepted the fog as all-sufficient to account for the household's gloom, and never knew how heavily the hours went by for its older members. Bedtime came, and the fog did not go, or, at least, went no further than to leave the gaslamp as Dave had seen it, just visible across the Court, or discernible from the archway at a favourable fluctuation. Susan Burr stepped round to Mrs. Ragstroar's, alleging anxiety to hear Michael's story again, and some hopes of further particulars. She may have felt indisposed for the loneliness of her own room, with that empty chair; and yet that a company of three would bear reduction, all that called for saying having been said twice and again.

This was soon after supper; when little boys and girls are abed and asleep. The little boy in this case was half asleep. He heard his Aunt's and Uncle's voices get fainter as his own dream-voices came to take their place, and then came suddenly awake with a start to find Uncle Mo looming large beside him in the half-dark room. "Made you jump, did I, old man?" said Uncle Mo, kissing him. "Go to sleep again." Dave did so, but not before receiving a dim impression that his uncle went into the neighbouring room to Dolly, and kissed the sleeping child, too; gently, so as not to wake her. That was the impression, gleaned somehow, under which he went to sleep. Uncle Mo often looked in at Dave and Dolly, so this visit was no surprise to Dave.

Aunt M'riar awaited him at the stairfoot, on his return. "They'll be happy for a bit yet," said she. "Now, if only Jerry would come and smoke with you, Mo, I wouldn't be sorry to get to bed myself."

"May be he'll come!" said Mo. "Anyways, M'riar, don't you stop up on account of me. I'll have my pipe and a quiet think, and turn in presently.... Or look here!—tell you what! I'll just go round easy towards Jeff's, and if I meet Jerry by the way, I meet him; and if I don't, I don't. I shan't stop there above five minutes if he's not there, and I shan't stop all night if he is. Good-bye, M'riar."

"Good-night's plenty, Mo; you're coming back."

"Ay, surely! What did I say? Good-bye? Good-night, I should have made it." But he had said "Good-bye!"

Has it ever occurred to you—you who read this—to feel it cross your mind when walking that you have just passed a something of which you took no notice? If you have, you will recognise this description. Did Uncle Mo, when he wavered at the arch, fancy he had half-seen a figure in the shadow, near the dustbin, and had automatically taken no notice of it? If so, he decided that he was mistaken, for he passed on after glancing back down the Court. But very likely his pause was only due to the fact that he was pulling on his overcoat. It was one he had purchased long ago, before the filling out had set in which awaits all athletes when they relapse into a sedentary life. Mo hated the coat, and the difficulties he met with when getting it on and off.

He was as good as his word about not stopping long at The Sun. Although he found his friend awaiting him, he did not remain in his company above half an hour, including his seven-minutes' walk back to the Court, to which Jerry accompanied him, saying farewell at the archway. He didn't go on to No. 7 at once, remembering that M'riar had said she wouldn't be sorry to go to bed.

Seeing lights and hearing voices in at Ragstroar's, he turned in for a chat, more particularly for a repetition of Micky's tale of his Hammersmith visit. Finding the boy there, he accepted his mother's suggestion that he should sit down and be comfortable. He did the former, having first pulled off the obnoxious coat to favour the latter.

He may have spent twenty minutes there, chiefly cross-examining Micky on particulars, before he got up to go. He forgot the odious coat, for Susan Burr called him back, and tried to persuade him to put it on. He resisted all entreaties. Such a little distance!—was it worth the trouble? He threw it over his arm, and again departed. The two women saw him from the door, and then, as they were exchanging a final word in the passage, were startled by a loud screaming, and, running out, saw Mo fling away the coat on his arm, and make such speed as he might towards a struggling group not over visible in the shadow of the lamp immediately above their heads.

This was within an hour of Mo's good-night, or good-bye, to M'riar at his own doorway.

Aunt M'riar had wavered yet a little before the fire, and had then given way to the thought of Dolly asleep. Dolly would be so unconscious of all things that it would now be no pain to know that she knew nothing of Death. Dolly asleep was always a solace to Aunt M'riar, even when she kicked or made sudden incoherent dream-remarks in the dark.

So, after placing Mo's candlestick conspicuously, that Susan Burr, who was pretty sure to come first, should see that he was still out, and not put up the chain nor shoot to the bolt, M'riar made her way upstairs to bed, very quietly, so as not to wake the children.

She was less than halfway to bed when she heard, as she thought, Susan Burr's return. It could not be Mo, so soon. Besides, he would have struck a match at once. He always did.

She listened for Susan's limping footstep on the stairs. Why did it not come? Something wrong there, or at least unusual! Leaving her candle, she wrapped herself hurriedly in a flannel garment she called her dressing-gown, and went downstairs to the landing. All was dark below, and the door was shut, to the street. She called in a loud whisper:—"Is that Susan?" and no answer came:—"Who is that?" and still no answer.

She went back quickly for her candle, and descended the stairs, holding it high up to see all round. No one in the kitchen itself, certainly. The little parlour-door stood open. She thought she had shut it. Could she be sure? She looked in, and could see no one—advanced into the room, still seeing no one—and started suddenly forward as the door swung to behind her.

She turned terrified, and found herself alone with the man she most dreaded—her husband. He had waited behind the door till she entered, and had then pushed it to, and was leaning against it.

"Didn't expect to see me, Polly Daverill, did you now? It's me." He pulled a chair up, and, placing it against the door, sat back in it slouchingly, with a kind of lazy enjoyment of her terror that was worse than any form of intimidation. "What do you want to be scared for? I'm a lamb. You might stroke me! This here's a civility call. For to thank you for your letter, Polly Daverill."

She had edged away, so as to place the table between them. She could only suppose his words sardonically spoken, seeing what she had said in her letter. "I wrote it for your own sake, Daverill," said she deprecatingly, timidly. "What I said about the Police was true."

"Can't foller that. Say it again!"

"They had put on a couple of men, to keep an eye. They may be there now. But I'd made my mind up you should not be taken along of me, so I wrote the letter."

"Then what the Hell...!" His face set angrily, as he searched a pocket. The sunken line that followed that twist in his jaw grew deeper, and the scar on his knitted forehead told out smooth and white, against its reddening furrows. He found what he sought—her letter, which she recognised—and opened it before he finished his speech. "What the Hell," he repeated, "is the meaning of this?" He read it in a vicious undertone, biting off each word savagely and throwing it at her.

She had rallied a little, but again looked more frightened than ever. It cost her a gasping effort to say:—"You are reading it wrong! Do give an eye to the words, Daverill."

"Read it yourself," he retorted, and threw the letter across the table.

She read it through and remained gazing at it with a fixed stare, rigid with astonishment. "I never wrote it so," said she at last.

"Then how to God Almighty did it come as it is? Answer me to that, Polly Daverill."

Her bewilderment was absolute, and her distress proportionate. "I never wrote it like that, Daverill. I declare it true and solemn I never did. What I wrote was for you to keep away, and I made the words according. I can't say no other, if I was to die for it."

"None of your snivelling! How came it like it is?—that's the point! Nobody's touched the letter." He used his ill-chosen adjective for the letter as he pointed at it, so that one might have thought he was calling attention to a stain upon it. He dropped his finger slowly, maintaining his reproachful glare. Then suddenly:—"Did you invellop the damned thing yourself?"

She answered tremulously:—"I wrote it in this room at this table, where you sit, and put it in its invellop, and stuck it to, firm. And I put back the blotting-book where I took it from, not to tell-tale...."

He interrupted her roughly. "Got the cursed thing there? Where did you take it from?... Oh—that's your blotting-book, is it? Hand it over!" She had produced it from the table-drawer close at hand, and gave it to him without knowing why he asked for it.

There is no need to connect his promptness to catch a clue to a forgery with his parentage. The clue is too simple—the spelling-book lore of the spy's infancy. The convict pulled out the top sheet of blotting-paper, and reversed it against the light. The second line of the letter was clear, and ended "now not." The "not" might, however, have been erased independently—probably would have been. But how about the end of the fourth line, also clear, with the word "run" on an oasis of clean paper, and nothing after it. That "no" in the letter was not the work of its writer.

"I put it in its invellop, Daverill, and not a soul see inside that letter from me till you...."

"How do you know that?" He paused, reflecting. "It wasn't Juliar. She'd got no ink." This man was clever enough to outwit Scotland Yard, with an offer of fifty pounds for his capture, but fell easily to the cunning of a woman, roused by jealousy. It wasn't Julia, clearly? "Who had hold of the letter, between you and her?" said he, quite off the right scent.

"Only young Micky Ragstroar...."

"There we've got it!" The man pounced. "Only that young offender and the Police. That was good for half a sov. for him.... Don't see what I mean? I'll tell you. He delivered your letter all right, after they'd run their eyes over it. I'll remember him, one day!" A word in this is not the one Daverill used, and his adjective is twice omitted. Aunt M'riar's puzzled face produced a more temperate explanation, to the effect that Micky had carried the letter to a "tec," or detective, who had "got at him," and that the letter had been tampered with at the police-station.

"I wouldn't believe it of Micky, and I don't," said Aunt M'riar. "The boy's a good boy at heart, and no tale-bearer." She ventured, as an indirect appeal on Micky's behalf, to add:—"I'm shielding you, Daverill, and a many wouldn't."

He affected to recognise his indebtedness, but only grudgingly. "You're what they call a good wife, Polly Daverill. Partner of a cove's joys and sorrows! Got your marriage lines to show! That's your style. You stick to that!"

Something in his tone made M'riar say:—"Why do you speak like that? You know that I have." Her speech did not seem to arise from his words. She had detected a sneer in them.

"You've got 'em to show.... Ah! But I shouldn't show 'em, if I were you."

"Am I likely?"

"That's not what I was driving at."

"What do you mean?"

"Shall I tell you, Polly, my angel? Shall I tell you, respectable married woman?"

"Don't werrit me, Daverill. I don't deserve it of you!"

"Right you are, old Polly! And told you shall be!... Sure you want to know?... There, there—easy does it! I'm a-telling of you." He suddenly changed his manner, and spoke quickly, collectedly, drily. "The name on your stifficate ain't the correct name. I saw to that. Only you needn't fret your kidneys about it, that I see. You're an immoral woman, you are! Poor Polly! Feel any different?"

Anyone who knows the superstitious reverence for the "sacred" marriage tie that obtains among women of M'riar's class and type will understand her horror and indignation. And all the more if he knows the extraordinary importance they attach to a certificate which is, after all, only a guarantee that the marriage-bond is recorded elsewhere, not the attested record itself. For a moment she was unable to speak, and when words did come, they were neither protest nor contradiction, but:—"Let me out! Let me out!"

The convict shifted his chair without rising, and held the door back for her exit. "Ah," said he, "go and have a look at it!" He had taken her measure exactly. She went straight upstairs, carrying her candle to the wardrobe by Dolly's bed, where her few private possessions were hidden away. Dolly would not wake. If she did, what did it matter? Aunt M'riar heard a small melodious dream-voice in the pillow say tenderly:—"One cup wiv soody." It was the rehearsal of that banquet that the great Censorship had disallowed.

A lock in a drawer, refractory at first, brought to terms at last. A box found far back, amenable to its key at sight. A still clean document, found and read by the light of a hurriedly snuffed candle. Then an exclamation of relief from the reader:—"There now! As if I could have been mistook!" It was such a relief that she fairly gasped to feel it.

No doubt a prudent, judicious person, all self-control and guiding maxims, would have refolded and replaced that document, locked the drawer, hidden the key, and met the cunning expectancy of the evil face that awaited her with:—"You are entirely mistaken, and I was absolutely right."

But M'riar was another sort. Only one idea was present in the whirlwind of her release from that hideous anxiety—the idea of striking home her confutation of the lie that had caused it in the face of its originator. She did the very thing his subtlety had anticipated. As he heard her returning footsteps, and the rustle of the paper in her hand, he chuckled with delight at his easy triumph, and perhaps his joy added a nail in the coffin of his soul.

The snicker had gone from his face before she returned, marriage certificate in hand, and held it before his eyes. "There now!" said she. "What did I tell you?"

He looked at it apathetically, reading it, but not offering to take it from her. "'Taint reg'lar!" said he. "Name spelt wrong, for one thing. My name."

"Oh, Daverill, how can you say that? It's spelt right."

"Let's have a look!" He stretched out his hand for it in the same idle way. Aunt M'riar's nature might have been far less simple than it was, and yet she might have been deceived by his manner. That he was aiming at possession of the paper was the last thing it seemed to imply. But he knew his part well, and whom he had to deal with.

Absolutely unsuspicious, she let his fingers close upon it. Even then, so sure did he feel of landing his fish, that he played it on the very edge of the net. "Well," said he. "Just you look at it again," and relinquished it to her. Then, instead of putting his hand back in his pocket, he stretched it out again, saying:—"Stop a bit! Let's have another look at it."

She instantly restored it, saying:—"Only look with your eyes, and you'll see the name's all right." And then in a startled voice:—"But what?—but why?" provoked by the unaccountable decision with which he folded it, never looking at it.

He slipped it inside the breast-pocket of his coat, and buttoned it over. "That was my game, you see!" said he, equably enjoying the dumb panic of his victim.

As for her, she was literally speechless, for the moment. At last she just found voice to gasp out:—"Oh, Daverill, you can't mean it! Give it me back—oh, give it me back! Will you give it me back for money?... Oh, how can you have the heart?..."

"Let's see the money. How much have you got? Put it down on this here table." He seemed to imply that he was open to negotiation.

With a trembling hand M'riar got at her purse, and emptied it on the table. "That is every penny," she said—"every penny I have in the house. Now give it me!"

"Half a bean, six bob, and a mag." He picked up and pocketed the sixteen shillings and a halfpenny, so described.

"Now you will give it back to me?" cried poor Aunt M'riar, with a wail in her voice that must have reached Dolly, for a pathetic cry answered her from the room above.

"Some o' these days," was all his answer, imperturbably. "There's your kid squealing. Time I was off.... What's that?"

Was it a new terror, or a thing to thank God for? Uncle Mo's big voice at the end of the court.

The convict made for the street-door—peeped out furtively. "He's turned in at young Ikey's," said he. Then to M'riar, using an epithet to her that cannot be repeated:—"Down on your knees and pray that your bully may stick there till I'm clear, or ... Ah!—smell that!" It was his knife-point, open, close to her face. In a moment he was out in the Court, now so far clear of fog that the arch was visible, beyond the light that shone out of Ragstroar's open door.

Another moment, and M'riar knew what to do. Save Mo, or die attempting it! If the chances seemed to point to the convict passing the house unobserved she would do nothing.

That was not to be the way of it. He was still some twenty paces short of Ragstroar's when old Mo was coming out at the door with the light in it.

Aunt M'riar, quick on the heels of the convict, who was rather bent on noiselessness than speed, had flung herself upon him—so little had he foreseen such an attack—before he could turn to repel it. She clung to him from behind with all her dead-weight, encumbering that hand with the knife as best she might. She screamed loud with all the voice she had:—"Mo—Mo—he has a knife—he has a knife!" Mo flung away the coat on his arm, and ran shouting. "Leave hold of him, M'riar—keep off him—leave hold!" His big voice echoed down the Court, resonant with sudden terror on her behalf.

But her ears were deaf to any voice but that of her heart, crying almost audibly:—"Save him! Never give that murderous right hand its freedom! In spite of the brutal clutch that is dragging the hair it has captured from the living scalp—in spite of the brutal foot below kicking hard to reach and break a bone—cling hard to it! And if, power failing you against its wicked strength, it should get free, be you the first to meet its weapon, even though the penalty be death." That was her thought, for what had Mo done that he should suffer by this man—this nightmare for whose obsession of her own life she had herself alone to blame?

The struggle was not a long one. Before Mo, whose weak point was his speed, had covered half the intervening distance, a kick of the convict's heavy boot-heel, steel-shod, had found its bone, and broken it, just above the ankle. The shock was irresistible, and the check on the knife-hand perforce flagged for an instant—long enough to leave it free. Another blow followed, a strange one that M'riar could not localise, and then all the Court swam about, and vanished.

What Mo saw by the light of the lamp above as he turned out of Ragstroar's front-gate was M'riar, dressing-gowned and dishevelled, clinging madly to the man he could recognise as her convict husband. He heard her cry about the knife, saw that her hold relaxed, saw the blade flash as it struck back at her. He saw her fall, and believed the blow a mortal one. He heard the voice of Dolly wailing in the house beyond, crying out for the missing bedfellow she would never dream beside again. At least, that was his thought. And there before him was her slayer, with his wife's blood fresh upon his hands.

All the anger man can feel against the crimes of man blazed in his heart, all the resolution he can summon to avenge them knit the muscles of his face and set closer the grip upon his lip. And yet, had he been asked what was his strongest feeling at this moment, he would have answered:—"Fear!"—fear, that is, that his man, more active than himself and younger, should give him the slip, to right or to left, and get away unharmed.

But that was not the convict's thought, with that knife open in his hand. Indeed, the small space at command might have thwarted him. If, for but two seconds, he could employ those powerful fists that were on the watch for him on either side of the formidable bulk whose slow movement was his only hope, then he might pass and be safe. It would have to be quick work, with young Ikey despatched by the screaming women at Ragstroar's to call in help; either his father's from the nearest pot-house, or any police-officer, whichever came first.

Quick work it was! A gasp or two, and the man's natural flinching before the great prizefighter and his terrible reputation had to yield to the counsels of despair. It had to be done, somehow. He led with his left—so an expert tells us we should phrase it—and hoped that his greater alacrity would land a face-blow, and cause an involuntary movement of the fists to lay the body open. Then his knife, and a rip, and the thing would be done.

It might have been so, easily, had it been a turn-to with the gloves, for diversion. Then, twenty years of disuse would have had their say, and the slow paralysing powers of old age asserted themselves, quenching the swift activity of hand and eye, and making their responsive energy, that had given him victory in so many a hard-fought field, a memory of the past. But it was not so now. The tremendous tension of his heartfelt anger, when he found himself face to face with its dastardly object, made him again, for one short moment, the man that he had been in the plenitude of his early glory. Or, short of that, a near approach to it.

For never was a movement swifter than old Mo's duck to the left, which allowed his opponent's "lead off" to pass harmless over his right shoulder. Never was a cross-counter more deadly, more telling, than the blow with his right, which had never moved till that moment, landing full on the convict's jaw, and stretching him, insensible or dead, upon the ground. The sound of it reached the men who came running in through the arch, and made more than one regret he had not been there a moment sooner, to see it.

Speechless and white with excitement, all crowded down to where Mo was kneeling by the woman who lay stretched upon the ground beyond. Not dead, for she was moving, and speaking. And he was answering, but not in his old voice.

"I'm all as right as a trivet, M'riar. It's you I'm a-thinkin' of.... Some of you young men run for the doctor."

One appeared, out of space. Things happen so, in events of this sort, in London. No—she is not to be lifted about, till he sees what harm's done. Keep your hands off, all!

By some unaccountable common consent, the man on the ground, motionless, may wait his turn. Two or three inspect him, and one tentatively prods at the inanimate body to make it show signs of life, but is checked by public opinion. Then comes a medical verdict, a provisional one, marred by reservations, about the work that knife has done. A nasty cut, but no danger. Probably stunned by the fall. Bring her indoors. Ragstroar's house is chosen, because of the children.

Uncle Mo never took his eyes off M'riar till after a stretcher had come suddenly from Heaven knows where, and borne his late opponent away, with a crowd following, to some appointed place. He thought he heard an inquiry answered in the words:—"Doctor says he can do nothing for him," and may have drawn his inferences. Probably it was the frightened voices and crying of the children that made him move away slowly towards his own house. For he had asked the boy Micky "Had anyone gone to see to them?" and been answered that Mrs. Burr was with them. It was then that Micky noticed that his voice had fallen to little more than a whisper, and that his face was grey. What Micky said was that his chops looked awful blue, and you couldn't ketch not a word he said.

But he was able to walk slowly into the house, very slowly up the stairs. Dave, in the room above, hearing the well-known stair-creak under his heavy tread, rushed down to find him lying on the bed in his clothes. Mo drew the child's face to his own as he lay, saying:—"Here's a kiss for you, old man, and one to take to Dolly."

"Am oy to toyk it up to her now this very minute?" said Dave.

"Now this very minute!" said Uncle Mo. And Dave rushed off to fulfil his mission.

When Susan Burr, a little later, tapped at his door, doubting if all was well with him, no answer came. Looking in and seeing him motionless, she advanced to the bed, and touched his hand. It never moved, and she listened for a breath, but in vain. Heart-failure, after intense excitement, had ended this life for Uncle Mo.

THE END