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lay before him, and up, and down, and across, it gleamed in the thoughtful radiance of the moon. Never was a picture of lovelier peace. It was like the reflex of the great city in the mind of a saint-all its vice, its crime, its oppression, money-loving, and ambition, all its fearfulness, grief, revenge, and remorse, gently covered with the silver mantle of faith and hope. But Thomas could not feel this. Its very repose was a reproach to him. There was no repose for him henceforth for ever. He was degraded to all eternity. And herewith the thought of Lucy which had been hovering about his mind all day, like a bird looking for an open window that it might enter, but which he had not dared to admit, darted into its own place, and he groaned aloud. For in her eyes, as well as in his own, he was utterly degraded. Not a thousand good actions, not the honour of a thousand crowds, could destroy the fact that he had done as he had done. The dingy, applauding multitude, with its many voices, its kind faces, its outstretched hands, had vanished, as if the moon had melted it away from off the water. Never to all eternity would that praising people, his little consoling populace, exist again, again be gathered from the four corners whither they had vanished, to take his part, to speak for him that he was not all lost in badness, that they at least considered him fit company for them and their children.

Thoughts like these went to and froin his mind as he looked out upon the scene before him. Then it struck him that all was strangely still. Not only was there no motion on the river, but there was no sound-only an occasional outcry in the streets behind. The houses across in Wapping showed rare lights, and looked sepulchral in the killing stare of the moon, which, high above, had not only the whole heavens but the earth as well to herself, and seemed to be taking her own way with it in the consciousness of irresistible power. What that way was, who can tell? The troubled brain of the maniac and the troubled conscience of the inalefactor know something about it; but neither can tell the way of the moon with the earth. Fear laid hold upon Thomas. He found himself all alone with that white thing in the sky; and he turned from the glorious window to go down to the bar. But all the house was dark, the household in bed, and he alone awake and wandering "in the dead waste and middle of the night." A horror seized him when he found that he was alone. Why should he fear? The night covered him. But there was God. I do not mean for a moment that he had a conscious fear of the Being he had been taught to call God. Never had that representation produced in him yet any sense of reality, any the least consciousness of presence-anything like the feeling of the child who placed two chairs behind the window-curtain, told God that that one was for him, and sat down to have a talk with him. It was fear of the unknown God, manifested in the face of a nature which was strange

and unfriendly to the evil-doer. It is to God alone that a man can flee from such terror of the unknown in the fierceness of the sea, in the ghastly eye of the moon, in the abysses of the glaciers, in the misty slopes of the awful mountain-side; but to God Thomas dared not or could not flee. Full of the horror of wakefulness in the midst of sleeping London, he felt his way back into the room he had just left, threw himself on a bench, and closed his eyes to shut out everything. His own room at Highbury, even that of his mother with Mr. Simon talking in it, rose before him like a haven of refuge. But between him and that haven lay an impassable gulf. No more returning thither. He must leave the country. And Lucy? He must vanish from her eyes, that she might forget him and marry some one else. Was not that the only justice left him to do her? But would Lucy forget him? Why should she not? Women could forget honourable men whom they had loved, let them only be out of their sight long enough; and why should not Lucy forget a ? He dared not even think the word that belonged to him now. A fresh billow of shame rushed over him. In the person of Lucy he condemned himself afresh to utter and ineffaceable shame, confusion, and hissing. Involuntarily he opened his eyes. A ghostly whiteness, the sails of a vessel hanging loose from their yards, gleamed upon him. The whole of the pale region of the moon, the spectral masts, the dead houses on the opposite shore, the glitter of the river as from eyes that would close no more, gleamed in upon him, and a fresh terror of loneliness in the presence of the incomprehensible and the unsympathetic overcame him. He fell on his knees and sought to pray; and doubtless in the ear that is keen with mercy it sounded as prayer, though to him who prayed it seemed that no winged thought arose to the Infinite from a "heart as dry as dust." Mechanically, at length, all feeling gone, both of fear and of hope, he went back to his room and his bed.

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When he woke in the morning his landlady's voice was in his ears. Well, how do we find ourselves to-day, sir? None the worse, I hope?

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He opened his eyes. She stood by his bedside, with her short arms set like the handles of an urn. It was a common face that rose from between them, red, and with eyes that stood out with fatness. Yet Thomas was glad to see them looking at him, for there was kindness in them.

"I am all right, thank you," he said.

"Where will you have your breakfast?" she asked. "Where you please," answered Thomas.

"Will you come down to the bar-parlour, then?"

"I shall be down in a few minutes."

Jim Salter's inquirin' after ye." "Who?" said Thomas, starting.

"Only Jim Salter, the man that brought you in last night, sir. I told him to wait till I came up."

"I shall be down in one minute," said Thomas, a hope of his money darting into his mind.

He had to pass through the bar to the little room at the back. Against the counter leaned Jim, smoking a short pipe, with his hand upon a pot of beer. When Thomas entered, he touched his cap to him, saying,

"Glad to see you lookin' middlin', gov'nor. Is there anything I can do for you to-day?"

"Come into the room here," said Thomas," and have something. I'm rather late, you see. I haven't had my breakfast yet."

Salter followed him with his pewter in his hand. Thomas disliked his appearance less than on the preceding evening. What was unpleasant in his face was chiefly owing to the small-pox. He was dirty and looked beery, but there seemed to be no harm in him. He sat down near the door which led to the ladder already mentioned, and put his pot on the window-sill. Thomas asked if he would have a cup of coffee, but he preferred his beer and his pipe.

"You wanted to see me." said Thomas, opening a conversation. "Oh! nothin' perticlar, gov'nor. I only wanted to see if I could do anything for you," said Jim.

"I was in hopes you had heard of something I lost, but I suppose it's at the bottom of the river," said Thomas.

"Not your watch?" asked Salter, with some appearance of

anxious interest.

"A great deal worse," answered Thomas; " -a pocket-book." "Much in it?" asked Jim, with a genuine look of sympathetic discomfiture.

"More than I like to think of. Look," said Thomas, turning out the contents of his pocket, " that is all I have in the world."

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"More than ever I had," returned Salter. Keep me a month." Thomas relapsed into thought. This man was the only resemblance of a friend he had left. He did not like to let him go loose in the wilds of London, without the possibility of finding him again. If this man vanished, the only link, Thomas felt, between him and the world of men would be broken. I do not say Thomas thought this. He only felt that he would be absolutely alone when this man left him. Why should he not go away somewhere with him? "Where do you live?" he asked.

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Stepney way," answered Jim.

"I want to see that part of London. What do you do now? mean what do you work at?"

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"Oh! nothin' perticlar, gov'nor. Take a day at the docks now and then. Any job that turns up. I'm not perticlar. Only I never could stick to one thing. I like to be moving. I had a month in

Bermondsey last—in a tan-yard, you know. I knows a bit of everything."

"Well, where are you going now?”

"Nowheres-anywheres you like, gov'nor. If you want to see them parts, as you say, there's nobody knows 'em better than I do, Tiger-bay and all.”

Come then," said Thomas. But here a thought struck him. "Wouldn't it be better though,” he added,-" they're queer places some of those, ain't they?—to put on a workman's clothes?”

Jim looked at him. Thomas felt himself wince under his gaze. But he was relieved when he said with a laugh :

"You won't look much like a workman, gov'nor, put on what you like."

"I can't wear these clothes, anyhow,” said Thomas; “they look so wretchedly shabby after their ducking. Couldn't you take me somewhere, where they'd change them for a suit of fustian ? I should like to try how they feel for a few days. We're about the same size-I could give them to you when I had done with them.'

Jim had been observing him, and had associated this wish of Thomas's with the pocket-book, and his furtive troubled looks. But Jim was as little particular about his company as about any. thing else, and it was of no consequence to him whether Thomas had or had not deeper reasons than curiosity for seeking to disguise himself.

"I tell you what," he said, "if you want to keep quiet for a day or two, I'm your man. But if you put on a new suit of fustian, you'll be more looked at than in your own clo'es."

Thomas had by this time finished his breakfast: it was not much he could eat.

"Well," he said, rising, “if you've nothing particular to do, I'll give you a day's wages to go with me. Only let's get into Stepney, or away somewhere in that direction, as soon as possible.”

He called the landlady, settled his very moderate bill, and then found that his hat must be somewhere about the Nore by this time. Jim ran to a neighbouring shop, and returned with a cloth-cap. They then went out into a long narrow street-Rotherhithe Street, I think-very different in aspect from any he had seen in London before. Indeed it is more like a street in Cologne. Here we must leave him with his misery and Jim Salter, both better companions than Molken.

CHAPTER XLII.

POPPIE CHOOSES A PROFESSION.

WHEN their native red began to bloom again upon the cheeks of Poppie, she began to grow restless, and the heart of the tailor to

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grow anxious. It was very hard for a wild thing to be kept in a cage against her will, he thought. He did not mind sitting in a cage, but then he was used to it, and frequented it of his own free will whereas his child Poppie took after her grandfather-her mother's father, who was a sailor, and never set his foot on shore but he wanted to be off again within the week. He therefore began to reason with himself as to what ought to be done with her. So soon as she was strong again all her wandering habits would return, and he must make some provision for them. It would not only be cruel to try to break her of them all at once, but assuredly fruitless. Poppie would give him the slip some day, return to her Arab life, and render all sealing of the bond between father and daughter impossible. The streets were her home. She was used to them. They made life pleasant to her. And yet it would not do to let her run idle about the streets. He thought and thought what would be best. Meantime the influence of Mattie had grown upon Poppie. Although there was as yet very little sign of anything like thought in her, the way she deferred to the superior intelligence in their common pursuits proved that she belonged to the body of humanity, and not to unassociated animality. Her love of bright colours now afforded the first hold by which to commence her education. Remembering her own childhood, Mattie sought to interest her pupil in dolls, proceeding to dress one, which she called Poppie, in a gorgeous scarlet cloth which the tailor procured for the purpose. And Poppie was interested. The colour drew her to the process. By degrees, she took a part; first only in waiting on Mattie, then in sewing on a button or string, at which she was awkward enough, as Mattie took more than necessary pains to convince her, learning, however, by slow degrees, to use her needle a little. But what was most interesting to find was, that a certain amount of self-consciousness began to dawn during and apparently from the doll-dressing. Her causative association with the outer being of the doll, led to her turning an eye upon her own outer being; and Poppie's redemption-I do not say regeneration-first showed itself in a desire to be dressed. Consciousness begins with regard to the body first. A baby's first lesson of consciousness lies in his blue shoes. But one may object, "You do not call it a sign of redemption in a baby that, when you ask where baby's shoes are, he holds up his little feet with a smile of triumph." I answer, It must be remembered, that Poppie had long passed the age when such interest indicates natural development, and therefore she was out of the natural track of the human being, and a return to that track, indicating an awakening of the nature that was in her, may well be called a sign of redemption. And with a delicate instinct of his own, nourished to this particular manifestation by his trade, the tailor detected the interest shown in the doll by Poppie, as a most hopeful sign, and set himself in the midst of his work to get a dress ready for her, such

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