Page:Mysteries of Melbourne Life.djvu/8

4 were of a desperate struggle: the ground was disturbed in all directions; the limbs of the poor creature were distorted, her dress disordered. But Billy never forgot the expression upon that pale, upturned face, from which the eyes were starting with the terror of the last agony. The moonlight shone upon it, and revealed to him every feature. It was pitiful, pitiful. Thin and faded was the face, once beautiful; thin and faded the dress, once costly. Thin and faded, gone, dead;—gone to meet the dread Judge, and to cry for vengeance upon the one who had sent her into Eternity, with all her sins upon her head.

That face! Its lineaments seemed to remind him of some dream, some shadow haunting the storehouses of memory!

How the boy shook! That night added whole years to his experience.

Closer still he drew to the dreadful thing, noting everything with the keenness of an observation sharpened by mystery. Suddenly he started. In one of the worn hands was a lock of hair, which in the last struggle she had torn from her destroyer. Billy looked at it closely; it was of a beautiful brown, slightly curling. He jotted that down in his memory.

Standing there, alone with the dead in the moonlight, this poor, untutored outcast, clenched his hands and sot his teeth, as he thought of the cowardly murderer who had in his sight done this deed.

"I'll know him again," said he; "I'm sure I will. I saw his face just as ha turned to go away; it was a face I won't forget. And I'll mark him; that I will! Poor, poor girl!"

And his tears dropped silently over the still, dead form, far beyond human joy or sorrow.

Suddenly steps were heard. The boy turned round with terror on his face, and, knowing it would be fatal to him, in his present predicament, to be found near the body, he sprang away with a bound.

And the body was left alone in the moonlight, guarded by the spectral wattle shadows, that moved hither and thither.

The sunshine was streaming on the busy streets of Melbourne, and men were hurrying hither and thither, intent on the mighty business of money-getting. The week had been one of dull, damp weather; fogs had hovered over the city; and the channels had overflowed and filled the shops of too patient ratepayers, so that it was no wonder people took advantage of this sudden peep of fine weather to saunter out and get through their city affairs. And coming, as it did, after such an inclement interval, the day had the same effect as one of those smiling oases that light up the barrenness of the desert. A clear blue sky vaulted the scene and a fresh, though keen air ruddied the cheeks of all who chose to sally forth. It would have required more than this, however, to have brightened the face of a young man who was walking, or rather slinking, up Collins-street feeling himself out of place amongst the corpulent capitalists and the plethoric matrons in black silk or velvet, full of flesh and finery, who did the block with their daughters under the eyes of the beaux. And yet this young man had moved amongst the Collins-street crowd but very recently, and had been held in as much honor as any of these handsome youths who now turned up their nose at his exceedingly shabby garb.

He was a man of about twenty-five years of age. Life, however, is not counted by years; the body ages otherwise than by the slow process of days and months. Dressed in other clothes, he would have appeared very handsome, but the stamp of the mint of vice would not have been effaced. His face was of that sickly white which tells of dissipation; its once rounded outlines had become pinched, and around his eyes, wild and dark, lines appeared that should not mar the beauty of youth. But it was not these that told of the evil life he had led; it was that indescribable expression of a fallen nature which stamps every vicious face, added to by a vivid despair that marked each feature, and a wild, impatient light in his unfathomable eyes, which told he felt hate not only for all human kind but for himself.

Hugh Hanlon knew too well that he had no one to blame for the shame and ignominy of his position but himself; that, but for his own actions, those who now passed him by as if he were a leper, would have pressed his hand and smiled upon him with every demonstration of friendship. It has been written that on the Last Great Day the Eye of the Judge will convey to each mind in a second the deeds it has done: there are times in this life when the soul is deeply touched—when, with lightning rapidity, there flashes upon the memory every wrong step that we have taken, every opportunity we have neglected; and, if there can be a foretaste of Heaven, surely such moments are a foreshadowing