Page:Gissing - Workers in the Dawn, vol. I, 1880.djvu/31

Rh “Your father is dead, my poor child. He will never wake.”

The boy stared with terror in the speaker’s face, then sprang to the dead man’s side, and grasped the face in his hands. He seemed to understand that the stranger had told him the truth. He fell upon his face on the floor, sobbing as if his heart would break, and between his sobs, crying—

“Father, father!”

It was vain to endeavour to take him away, and Mr. Norman was ultimately obliged to leave him alone in the garret with the corpse. Making his way down the pitch-black, creaking staircase, he passed into the open air. It was with a sigh of relief that he looked upwards, and in the narrow space, between tho tops of the houses, saw a few stars shining, for it bad now ceased snowing and the frost had began to dry the ground. There wore still people moving about Whitecross-street when ho entered it, but the noise of the market had ceased, and all the lights were extinguished. Not without apprehensive glances at some of the figures which slouched by him in the darkness. Mr. Norman hurried along over the half-formed ice, and the still reeking remnants from the stalls, till at length he reached a more open neighbourhood. Here he soon found an opportunity of taking a cab, and before long reached his hotel in Oxford-street.