Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/83

Rh since a man cut his wife's throat down in Windmill Lane, because she hadn't put no salt in the saucepan when she boiled the greens."

The frightful parallel between the woman who boiled the greens without salt and Jabez North two hours after his time, struck such terror to the hearts of the young women, that they were silent for some minutes, during which they both looked uneasily at a thief in the candle which neither of them had the courage to take out—their nerves not being equal to the possible clicking of the snuffers.

"Poor young man!" said the housemaid, at last. "Do you know, Miss Smithers, I can't help thinking he has been rather low lately."

Now this word "low" admits of several applications, so Miss Smithers replied, rather indignantly,—

"Low, Sarah Anne! Not in his language, I'm sure. And as to his manners, they'd be a credit to the nobleman that wrote the letters."

"No, no, Miss Smithers; I mean his spirits. I've fancied lately he's been a fretting about something; perhaps he's in love, poor dear."

Miss Smithers coloured up. The conversation was getting interesting. Mr. North had lent her Rasselas, which she thought a story of thrilling interest; and she had kept his stockings and shirt buttons in order for three years. Such things had happened; and Mrs. Jabez North sounded more comfortable than Miss Smithers, at any rate.

"Perhaps," said Sarah Anne, rather maliciously—"perhaps he's been forgetting his situation and giving way to thoughts of marrying our young missus. She's got a deal of money, you know, Miss Smithers, though her figure ain't much to look at."

Sarah Anne's figure was plenty to look at, having a tendency to break out into luxuriance where you least expected it.

It was in vain that Sarah Anne or Miss Smithers speculated on the probable causes of the usher's absence. Midnight struck from the Dutch clock in the kitchen, the eight-day clock on the staircase, the time-piece in the drawing-room—a liberal and complicated piece of machinery which always struck eighteen to the dozen—and eventually from every clock in Slopperton; and yet there was no sign of Jabez North.

No sign of Jabez North. A white face and a pair of glazed eyes staring up at the sky, out on a dreary heath three miles from Slopperton, exposed to the fury of a pitiless storm; a man lying alone on a wretched mattress in a miserable apartment in Blind Peter—but no Jabez North

Through the heartiest storm, dripping wet with the pelting