“Very well,” said Hilliard.  “I tell you what we’ll do.  A couple of hundred pounds shall be put aside for the little girl.  You can’t make any objection to that.”

The mother glanced doubtfully at her future husband, but Marr again spoke with emphasis.

“Yes, I do object.  If you don’t mind me saying it, I’m quite able to look after the little girl; and the fact is, I want her to grow up looking to me as her father, and getting all she has from me only.  Of course, I mean nothing but what’s friendly:  but there it is; I’d rather Winnie didn’t have the money.”

This man was in the habit of speaking his mind; Hilliard understood that any insistence would only disturb the harmony of the occasion.  He waved a hand, smiled good-naturedly, and said no more.

About nine o’clock he left the house and walked to Aston Church.  While he stood there, waiting for the tram, a voice fell upon his ear that caused him to look round.  Crouched by the entrance to the churchyard was a beggar in filthy rags, his face hideously bandaged, before him on the pavement a little heap of matchboxes; this creature kept uttering a meaningless sing-song, either idiot jabber, or calculated to excite attention and pity; it sounded something like “A-pah-pahky; pah-pahky; pah”; repeated a score of times, and resumed after a pause.  Hilliard gazed and listened, then placed a copper in the wretch’s extended palm, and turned away muttering, “What a cursed world!”

He was again on the tram-car before he observed that the full moon, risen into a sky now clear of grosser vapours, gleamed brilliant silver above the mean lights of earth.  And round about it, in so vast a circumference that it was only detected by the wandering eye, spread a softly radiant halo.  This vision did not long occupy his thoughts, but at intervals he again looked upward, to dream for a moment on the silvery splendour and on that wide halo dim-glimmering athwart the track of stars.

CHAPTER III

Instead of making for the railway station, to take a train back to Dudley, he crossed from the northern to the southern extremity of the town, and by ten o’clock was in one of the streets which lead out of Moseley Road.  Here, at a house such as lodges young men in business, he made inquiry for “Mr. Narramore,” and was forthwith admitted.

Robert Narramore, a long-stemmed pipe at his lips, sat by the fireside; on the table lay the materials of a satisfactory supper—­ a cold fowl, a ham, a Stilton cheese, and a bottle of wine.

“Hollo!  You?” he exclaimed, without rising.  “I was going to write to you; thanks for saving me the trouble.  Have something to eat?”

“Yes, and to drink likewise.”

“Do you mind ringing the bell?  I believe there’s a bottle of Burgundy left.  If not, plenty of Bass.”