“Yes,” said Mr. Bucket.  “Do you know this turning?”

“It looks like Chancery Lane.”

“And was christened so, my dear,” said Mr. Bucket.

We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I heard the clocks strike half-past five.  We passed on in silence and as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and stood aside to give me room.  In the same moment I heard an exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt.  I knew his voice very well.

It was so unexpected and so—­I don’t know what to call it, whether pleasant or painful—­to come upon it after my feverish wandering journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back the tears from my eyes.  It was like hearing his voice in a strange country.

“My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in such weather!”

He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation.  I told him that we had but just left a coach and were going—­but then I was obliged to look at my companion.

“Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt”—­he had caught the name from me—­“we are a-going at present into the next street.  Inspector Bucket.”

Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off his cloak and was putting it about me.  “That’s a good move, too,” said Mr. Bucket, assisting, “a very good move.”

“May I go with you?” said Mr. Woodcourt.  I don’t know whether to me or to my companion.

“Why, Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself.  “Of course you may.”

It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped in the cloak.

“I have just left Richard,” said Mr. Woodcourt.  “I have been sitting with him since ten o’clock last night.”

“Oh, dear me, he is ill!”

“No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well.  He was depressed and faint—­you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes—­and Ada sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came straight here.  Well!  Richard revived so much after a little while, and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him until he had been fast asleep some hours.  As fast asleep as she is now, I hope!”

His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate all this from his promise to me?  How thankless I must have been if it had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the change in my appearance:  “I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!”

We now turned into another narrow street.  “Mr. Woodcourt,” said Mr. Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, “our business takes us to a law-stationer’s here, a certain Mr. Snagsby’s.  What, you know him, do you?” He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.