Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/460

32 —a fair, yellow-haired woman; she jobbed at me with the knife, twice over."

The landlord's pale cheeks grew paler. lie looked at Isaac eagerly by the flickering light of his candle; and his face began to get red again — his voice altered, too, as well as his complexion.

"She seems to have missed you twice," he said. "I dodged the knife as it came down," Isaac went on, in the same scared whisper.—" It struck the bed each time."

The landlord took his candle into the bedroom immediately. In less than a minute he came out again into the passage in a violent passion.

"The devil fly away with you and your woman with the knife! What do you mean by coming into a man's place and frightening his family out of their wits about a dream?"

"I'll leave your house," said Isaac, faintly. "Better out on the road, in rain and dark, on my way home, than back again in that room after what I've seen in it. Lend me a light to get on my clothes by, and tell me what I'm to pay."

"Pay!" cried the landlord, leading the way with his light sulkily into his bedroom. "You'll find your score on the slate when you go downstaies. I wouldn't have taken you in for all the money you've got about you, if I'd known your dreaming, screeching ways beforehand. Look at the bed. Where's the cut of a knife in it? Look at the window—is the lock bursted? Look at the door (which I heard you fasten myself)—is it broke in? A murdering woman with a knife in my house? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Isaac answered not a word. He huddled on his clothes; and then they went downstairs together.

"Nigh on twenty minutes past two!" said the land-lord, as they passed the clock. "A nice time in the morning to frighten honest people out of their wits!"

Isaac paid his bill, and the landlord let him out of the front door, asking with a grin of contempt, as he undid the strong fastenings whether the "murdering woman got in that way?" They parted without a word on either side. The rain had ceased; but the night was dark, and the wind bleaker than ever. Little did the