Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/68

64 "What do you mean by 'the other one'?" asked the man, while Jabez listened intently for the answer.

"Why, my deary, that's a part of the secret you're to know some of these days. Such a secret. Gold, gold, gold, as long as it's kept; and gold when it's told, if it's told at the right time, deary."

"If it's to be told at the right time to do me any good, it had better be told soon, then," said Jim, with a dreary shiver. "My bones ache, and my head's on fire, and my feet are like lumps of ice. I've walked twenty miles to-day, and I haven't had bite nor sup since last night. Where's Sillikens?"

"At the factory, Jim deary. Somebody's given her a piece of work—one of the regular hands; and she's to bring home some money to-night. Poor girl, she's been a fretting and a crying her eyes out since you've been gone, Jim."

"Poor lass. I thought I might do some good for her and me both by going away where I did; but I haven't; and so I've come back to eat her starvation wages, poor lass. It's a cowardly thing to do, and if I'd had strength I should have gone on further, but I couldn't."

As he was saying these words a girl came in at the half-open door, and running up to him, threw her arms round his neck.

"Jim, you've come back! I said you would; I knew you'd never stop away; I knew you couldn't be so cruel."

"It's crueller to come back, lass," he said; "it's bad to be a burden on a girl like you."

"A burden, Jim!" she said, in a low reproachful voice, and then dropped quietly down amongst the dust and rubbish at his feet, and laid her head caressingly against his knee. She was not what is generally called a pretty girl. Hers had not been the delicate nurture which nourishes so frail an exotic as beauty. She had a pale sickly face; but it was lighted up by large dark eyes, and framed by a heavy mass of dark hair.

She took the man's rough hand in hers, and kissed it tenderly. It is not likely that a duchess would have done such a thing; but if she had, she could scarcely have done it with better grace.

"A burden, Jim!" she said,—"a burden! Do you think if I worked for you day and night, and never rested, that I should be weary? Do you think, if I worked my fingers to the bone for you, that I should ever feel the pain? Do you think, if my death could make you a happy man, I should not be glad to die? Oh, you don't know, you don't know!"

She said this half-despairingly, as if she knew there was no power in his soul to fathom the depth of love in hers.

"Poor lass, poor lass," he said, as he laid the other rough