Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/115

 Dick will stand by you better than I did, now they are growing up. Give them my love, and kiss little Fannie for me.

"."

"Mrs. Hancock——"

He got no further with the address.

III

By some strange turn of the wheel, Darkey gathered several shillings during the next day or two, and feeling both elated and benevolent, he called one afternoon at the hospital, "just to inquire like." They told him the man was dead.

"By the way, he left a letter without an address. Mrs. Hancock—here it is."

"That'll be his mother, he did tell me about her—lived at Endon, Staffordshire, he said. I'll see to it."

They gave Darkey the letter.

"So his name s Hancock," he soliloquised, when he got into the street. "I knew a girl of that name—once. I'll go and have a pint of four half."

At nine o clock that night Darkey was still consuming four half, and relating certain adventures by sea which, he averred, had happened to himself. He was very drunk.

"Yes," he said, "and them five HI gals was lying there without a stitch on 'em, dead as meat; 's'true as I'm 'ere. I ve seen a thing or two in my time, I can tell ye."

"Talking about these Anarchists——" said a man who appeared anxious to change the subject.

"An—kists," Darkey interrupted. "I tell ye what I'd do with