“And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?”

“She said, miss,” returned Charley, “how that he had once done as much for her.”

My little maid’s face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great difficulty in reading her thoughts.  “Well, Charley,” said I, “it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to Jenny’s and see what’s the matter.”

The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her readiness.  So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went out.

It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind.  The rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission for many days.  None was falling just then, however.  The sky had partly cleared, but was very gloomy—­even above us, where a few stars were shining.  In the north and north-west, where the sun had set three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving.  Towards London a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was as solemn as might be.

I had no thought that night—­none, I am quite sure—­of what was soon to happen to me.  But I have always remembered since that when we had stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something different from what I then was.  I know it was then and there that I had it.  I have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.

It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place where we were going were drinking elsewhere.  We found it quieter than I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable.  The kilns were burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.

We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the patched window.  We tapped at the door and went in.  The mother of the little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor.  He held under his arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook.  The place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar smell.