Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/84

80 rain, the girl they have christened Sillikens hastens back to Blind Peter. The feeble glimmer of the candle, with the drooping wick sputtering in a pool of grease, is the only light which illumes that cheerless neighbourhood. The girl's heart beats with a terrible flutter as she approaches that light, for an agonizing doubt is in her soul about that other light which she left so feebly burning, and which may be now extinct. But she takes courage; and pushing open the door, which opposes neither bolts nor bars to any deluded votary of Mercury, she enters the dimly-lighted room. The man lies with his face turned to the wall; the old woman is seated by the hearth, on which a dull and struggling flame is burning. She has on the table among the medicine-bottles, another, which no doubt contains spirits, for she has a broken teacup in her hand, from which ever and anon she sips consolation, for it is evident she has been crying.

"Mother, how is he—how is he?" the girl asks, with a hurried agitation painful to witness, since it reveals how much she dreads the answer.

"Better, deary, better—Oh, ever so much better," the old woman answers in a crying voice, and with another application to the broken teacup.

"Better! thank Heaven!—thank Heaven!" and the girl, stealing softly to the bed-side, bends down and listens to the sick man's breathing, which is feeble, but regular.

"He seems very fast asleep, grandmother. Has he been sleeping all the time?"

"Since when, deary?"

"Since I went out. Where's the doctor?"

"Gone, deary. Oh, my blessed boy, to think that it should come to this, and his dead mother was my only child! dear, dear!" And the old woman burst out crying, only choking her sobs by the aid of the teacup.

"But he's better, grandmother; perhaps he'll get over it now. I always said he would. Oh, I'm so glad—so glad." The girl sat down in her wet garments, of which she never once thought, on the little stool by the side of the bed. Presently the sick man turned round and opened his eyes.

"You've been away a long time, lass," he said.

Something in his voice, or in his way of speaking, she did not know which, startled her; but she wound her arm round his neck, and said—

"Jim, my own dear Jim, the danger's past. The black gulf you've been looking down is closed for these many happy years to come, and maybe the sun will shine on our wedding-day yet."

"Maybe, lass—maybe. But tell me, what's the time?"

"Never mind the time, Jim. Very late, and a very dreadful