‘What?  Something you wanted to tell me, Jane?’

He encouraged her, and at length she made her disclosure.  It was of what had happened in the public-house.  The young man listened with much attention, walking very slowly.  He got her to repeat her second-hand description of the old man who had been inquiring for people named Snowdon.

‘To think that you should have been just too late!’ he exclaimed with annoyance.  ‘Have you any idea who he was?’

‘I can’t think, sir,’ Jane replied sadly.

Sidney took a hopeful tone—­thought it very likely that the inquirer would pursue his search with success, being so near the house where Jane’s parents had lived,

‘I’ll keep my eyes open,’ he said.  ’Perhaps I might see him.  He’d be easy to recognise, I should think.’

‘And would you tell him, sir,’ Jane asked eagerly.

‘Why, of course I would.  You’d like me to, wouldn’t you?’

Jane’s reply left small doubt on that score.  Her companion looked down at her again, and said with compassionate gentleness: 

‘Keep a good heart, Jane.  Things’ll be better some day, no doubt.’

‘Do you think so, sir?’

The significance of the simple words was beyond all that eloquence could have conveyed.  Sidney muttered to himself, as he had done before, like one who is angry.  He laid his hand on the child’s shoulder for a moment.

A few minutes more, and they were passing along by the prison wall, under the ghastly head, now happily concealed by darkness.  Jane stopped a little short of the house and removed the coat that had so effectually sheltered her.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, returning it to Sidney.

He took it without speaking, and threw it over his arm.  At the door, now closed, Jane gave a single knock; they were admitted by Clem, who, in regarding Kirkwood, wore her haughtiest demeanour.  This young man had never paid homage of any kind to Miss Peckover, and such neglect was by no means what she was used to.  Other men who came to the house took every opportunity of paying her broad compliments, and some went so far as to offer practical testimony of their admiration.  Sidney merely had a ‘How do you do, miss?’ at her service.  Coquetry had failed to soften him; Clem accordingly behaved as if he had given her mortal offence on some recent occasion.  She took care, moreover, to fling a few fierce words at Jane before the latter disappeared into the house.  Thereupon Sidney looked at her sternly; he said nothing, knowing that interference would only result in harsher treatment for the poor little slave.

‘You know your way upstairs, I b’lieve,’ said Clem, as if he were all but a stranger.

‘Thank you, I do,’ was Sidney’s reply.

Indeed he had climbed these stairs innumerable times during the last three years; the musty smells were associated with ever so many bygone thoughts and states of feeling; the stains on the wall (had it been daylight), the irregularities of the bare wooden steps, were remembrancers of projects and hopes and disappointments.  For many months now every visit had been with heavier heart; his tap at the Hewetts’ door had a melancholy sound to him.