Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/85

Rh night; but no matter for that! You're better, Jim; and if the sun never shone upon the earth again, I don't think I should be able to be sorry, now you are safe."

"Are all the lights out in Blind Peter, lass?" he asked.

"All the lights out? Yes, Jim—these two hours. But why do you ask?"

"And in Slopperton did you meet many people, lass?"

"Not half-a-dozen in all the streets. Nobody would be out in such a night, Jim, that could help it."

He turned his face to the wall again, and seemed to sleep. The old woman kept moaning and mumbling over the broken teacup,—

"To think that my blessed boy should come to this—on such a night too, on such a night!"

The storm raged with unabated fury, and the rain pouring in at the dilapidated door threatened to flood the room. Presently the sick man raised his head a little way from the pillow.

"Lass," he said, "could you get me a drop o' wine? I think, if I could drink a drop o' wine, it would put some strength into me somehow."

"Grandmother," said the girl, "can I get him any? You've got some money; it's only just gone twelve; I can get in at the public-house. I will get in, if I knock them up, to get a drop o' wine for Jim."

The old woman fumbled among her rags and produced a sixpence, part of the money given her from the slender purse of the benevolent Jabez, and the girl hurried away to fetch the wine.

The public-house was called the Seven Stars; the seven stars being represented on a signboard in such a manner as to bear rather a striking resemblance to seven yellow hot-cross buns on a very blue background. The landlady of the Seven Stars was putting her hair in papers when the girl called Sillikens invaded the sanctity of her private life. Why she underwent the pain and grief of curling her hair for the admiration of such a neighbourhood as Blind Peter is one of those enigmas of this dreary existence to solve which the Œdipus has not yet appeared. I don't suppose she much cared about suspending her toilet, and opening her bar, for the purpose of selling sixpennyworth of port wine; but when she heard it was for a sick man, she did not grumble. The girl thanked her heartily, and hurried homewards with her pitiful measure of wine.

Through the pitiless rain, and under the dark sky, it was almost impossible to see your hand before you; but as Sillikens entered the mouth of Blind Peter, a flash of lightning revealed to her the figure of a man gliding with a soft step between the broken iron railings. In the instantaneous glimpse she caught