| 212 | 213 | 214 | 215 | 216 |
| 1 | 133 | 265 | 398 | 530 |
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wise landlord, that it was no business of his. At any rate, he counted
out the change, and gave it her. The child was returning to the room
where they had passed the evening, when she fancied she saw a figure
just gliding in at the door. There was nothing but a long dark passage
between this door and the place where she had changed the money,
and, being very certain that no person had passed in or out while she
stood there, the thought struck her that she had been watched.
But by whom? When she re-entered the room, she found its inmates
exactly as she had left them. The stout fellow lay upon two chairs,
resting his head on his hand, and the squinting man reposed in a
similar attitude on the opposite side of the table. Between them sat
her grandfather, looking intently at the winner with a kind of hungry
admiration, and hanging upon his words as if he were some superior
being. She was puzzled for a moment, and looked round to see if any
else were there. No. Then she asked her grandfather in a whisper
whether anybody had left the room while she was absent. 'No,' he
said, 'nobody.'
It must have been her fancy then; and yet it was strange, that,
without anything in her previous thoughts to lead to it, she should
have imagined this figure so very distinctly. She was still wondering
and thinking of it, when a girl came to light her to bed.
The old man took leave of the company at the same time, and they
went up stairs together. It was a great, rambling house, with dull
corridors and wide staircases which the flaring candles seemed to
make more gloomy. She left her grandfather in his chamber, and
followed her guide to another, which was at the end of a passage, and
approached by some half-dozen crazy steps. This was prepared for
her. The girl lingered a little while to talk, and tell her grievances. She
had not a good place, she said; the wages were low, and the work was
hard. She was going to leave it in a fortnight; the child couldn't
recommend her to another, she supposed? Instead she was afraid
another would be difficult to get after living there, for the house had a
very indifferent character; there was far too much card-playing, and
such like. She was very much mistaken if some of the people who
came there oftenest were quite as honest as they might be, but she
wouldn't have it known that she had said so, for the world. Then there
were some rambling allusions to a rejected sweetheart, who had
threatened to go a soldiering - a final promise of knocking at the door
early in the morning - and 'Good night.'
The child did not feel comfortable when she was left alone. She could
not help thinking of the figure stealing through the passage down
stairs; and what the girl had said did not tend to reassure her. The
men were very ill-looking. They might get their living by robbing and
murdering travellers. Who could tell?
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