CHAPTER XXX.THE ABDUCTION.
In a jumbled heap of murky building.—Keats.
In a jumbled heap of murky building.—Keats.
In a jumbled heap of murky building.—Keats.
In a jumbled heap of murky building.—Keats.
There was at this time a wretched old hag who, summer and winter, rain and shine, sat under the shadow of St. Mary’s le Strand begging—but not audibly, for to have done so would have broken the municipal laws, and to have drawn the police upon her and consigned her to the work-house.
On the contrary, she was ostensively peddling in a small way. In her talon-like hands she held a bundle of matches, which she silently tendered to every passer-by. The matches were worthless and were not really intended for sale, but only for a blind to the police and a cloak for her begging; and everybody understood this as well as she did; for though she never opened her lips to ask for alms, every fluttering rag about her was a tongue, and every look a voice.
So occasionally a passer-by would drop a half-penny in the hand that offered the matches and then go on his way.
But the great stream of people pouring through that crowded thoroughfare usually passed without noticing her, for the frequency of such sights, and of much worse sights of misery, in the London streets, and the utter impossibility of relieving them all, hardens the hearts of the people.
But the poor pity the poor. And our poor gentleman, passing the poor beggar twice every day, pitied her—pitied her, even though she had once picked his pocket of his coarse white linen handkerchief, and he knew the fact beyond a doubt. And almost every day, in passing, he gave her a half-penny; and once a quarter, when he got paid off, he gave her a sixpence.
But in all the years in which she had sat there, and inwhich he had passed twice a day in going and returning to and from his employment, he had never happened to see any one else give her anything.
Of course he knew that she must make something by sitting there or she would not stay; but it was so very little and so very seldom, that he never knew it from personal observation. And from all this he concluded that she was deadly poor.
He often wondered where she lived, how she slept, what she ate, with whom she kept company, and who were her kinsfolks, if she had any.
That she consorted with the lowest thieves and vagrants, with the most desperate men and women ready for any crime, he felt morally certain. Had she not picked the pocket of her benefactor?
But, still he pitied her and almost justified her; for he knew what poverty and its bitter temptations were, and besides, while his charity was large his moral sense was not very clear; and, poor as he was, he would have lost every pocket-handkerchief he possessed before he would have prosecuted this miserable old woman, or even withheld from her the tri-weekly half-penny or the quarterly sixpence.
Now, when the vague idea of “disappearance” shaped itself into the distinct thought ofABDUCTION, and the thought grew into a purpose, and the purpose strengthened into resolution, he remembered the old woman under St. Mary’s le Strand, and believed that he could make her subservient to his use.
One rainy day he went out at noon for the usual recess. It was a day and an hour when there were comparatively few passengers in the street. He went in search of the old woman whom he found in her accustomed place, but backed up close against the wall to secure some partial shelter from the pelting rain.
“Have you no umbrella—not even an old wreck of one?” were the first words addressed to her by Everage.
“Umberrelly? Bless the dear gentleman, I never had a umberrelly in my life! How should the likes of me have a umberrelly? They bees for the rich people, honey.”
“But your knees are getting quite wet,” said Everage.
“And so they is, dear gentleman, and I shall get therheumatiz as sure as sure!” said the woman, taking the cue and beginning to whine.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if you did. Why do you sit out here in this weather?”
“Good gentleman, hadn’t I better sit here and sell my matches than stay at home and starve?”
“Sell your matches? Why, that’s the identical box of matches you have had to sell for Heaven knows how long, and you haven’t sold it yet.”
“That is true; but, dear gentleman, I might sell them to-day—I might sell them any time! There is no telling when a stroke of luck might fall.”
Everage knew she was speaking deceitfully; but he not only found excuses for her, but he found in her words an opening for his proposition.
“Yes,” said he, “you are quite right. There is no telling when a streak of luck may fall—even this very day.”
“It has come this very day, good gentleman. Sure the sight of your handsome face is always lucky; and it is worth while to come out and sit in the rain for the chance of seeing it, if one should get no other good.”
“The sight of my face may be lucky to others; but the luck is only skin deep; it never strikes in to do the owner any good,” laughed Everage, as he dropped a sixpence in the hag’s hand.
“Oh! thanky, sir! Sure you’re the great binifactor of the poor! May the Lord——” and here she began a great string of blessings to which a bishop’s benediction would seem a trifle.
“That will do. Now tell me your name. You see as long as I have known you I have never heard it.”
“Rooter, sir; Margaret Rooter, at your honor’s service; born in lawful wedlock of honest parients, your worship, and christened in this very same church as you see before you, Sim-Merrily-Strand,[1]sir, as ever was.”
1. St. Mary’s le Strand.
1. St. Mary’s le Strand.
“Well, Mother Rooter,” said the poor gentleman, dropping his voice to a low tone, “would you do a service for me, if it should be to your own advantage?”
“Is it would I do a service for your honor’s worship?” said the woman, gazing on the coin in her hand and chuckling, for she readily divined that the required servicewas an unlawful one, which must be paid for handsomely “on the nail,” and ever afterwards in the shape of of blackmail. “And is it Margaret Rooter as you ask will she do that service for her binnyfactor, as he has kept her from starving this many a day? Aye, will I, even if it is to the setting on fire of Northumberland House, or Sim-Merrily-Strand itself. Marry come up indeed! What has Northumberland House, or Sim-Merrily-Strand either, ever done for the likes of me, that I should prefer them before your honor’s worship, whose bounty have given me many a half ounce of tea and handful of coal? Sim-Merrily-Strand indeed!”
“But I have no grudge against the church, or the palace either, and wish them no harm, but all good. The service I require of you is of another sort, but almost equally dangerous and needing——”
“I don’t care a pen’orth of gin what it needs, nor what it don’t, no, nor yet for the danger, so as it ain’t killing and hanging matter. I never could pluck up courage to take a life or to risk the gallows. But as for the rest—look here, your honor! what has the likes of a poor creature like me to be afraid of in this world? Is it the police? Is it the judge? Is it the jail? Lord love your honor, the police treat me better nor my own brothers, for they never punch my head, nor give me black eyes! and the judge is a gentleman compared to my landlord, for he never turned me out into the street, as every one of them is sure to do sooner or later. And as for the prison, it is a perfect queen’s palace, compared to the leaky, crowded, filthy garret where I stop. Your honor must know I have been in both and know the differ! So as I was taking the liberty to tell your honor, if the service is anything less than a hanging matter, I’m your woman.”
“Speak lower when you do speak; but do not speak at all when people are passing by,” said Everage, in a very low tone, as some street passengers hurried along.
“There, your honor, they have gone now. Now about this service, your honor?” said the old woman, impatiently.
“Well, it is no hanging matter, nor anything of the sort But it is a secret service for all that,” replied Everage.
“A secret service, your honor’s worship! Ah, that is what my heart delights in! Ah, then, I have done more than one secret service for gentlemen of the highest rank! aye, and for ladies too, bless them! and got well paid for them besides! enough money to have kept me in clover all my life, only it always got stole from me by the wretches in the house.”
“Well, you must take better care of the money which I shall pay you. But what was the nature of these secret services of which you speak.”
“Ah, your honor’s worship, if I were to tell you that they wouldn’t be a secret any longer, and neither would you trust such an old blabber as me withyoursecrets,” said the old woman, leering wickedly.
“That is so,” said Everage; “and, besides, this is no place for carrying on a private conversation. Here comes another group of people quite close.”
The group came and passed.
“Now, then, Mother Rooter, tell me where you live, if you have no objection, and whether I can find you at home if I come to you this evening, so that we may arrange this affair,” said Everage, as soon as the coast was again clear.
“Is it where I live your honor asks me? That’s a good ’un! Do you call it living? this life I lead. No, your honor, it is not living, it is lingering.”
“Where, then, do you linger?”
“Well, then, sir, I draws my breath and stretches my bones in the back attic of No. 9 Blood Alley, Burke Lane, Black Street, Blackfriars Road. All B’s, your honor. You can remember it by that. The house is Number Nine. They keep a bone and grease shop in the cellar, and rags and bottles on the first floor, and all the rest of the house is let to lodgers, all poor, but I the poorest, your worship.”
“And shall I come to you there?”
“If your worship will do me the honor.”
“But the house, which seems from your description to be a tenement house of the worst order——”
“Aye, you may say that, your worship,” interrupted the old woman; “but what is a poor body to do?”
“I was about to observe that the house would be full,crowded, so much so that perhaps even your own back attic has other tenants.”
“And so it has, your honor’s worship.”
“In which case I do not see how I am to have an opportunity of speaking to you in private there more than here.”
“Oh, dear gentleman, if you come at nine o’clock, you’ll catch me alone. Sure they’ll all be out then on their tramps, and they won’t be in much before morning. And sure your honor’s worship might even trust them, seeing as they’re all my own family, and would be fast as fast and safe as safe in any secret service as I might undertake. And your honor knows best whether you mightn’t want their aid too, in sommut where they might be of use. I don’t know yet what your service is, your honor. You haven’t told me yet. But I know I am an ole ’oman, your honor’s worship, and might want help, in case the service might require strength, like the breaking into a house and the bringing off of a dockerment or a young lady.”
“It is none of these things, as you might have judged, else I should not have come. Yet it is akin to one supposition that you have advanced; and you really may want help. Who are the people that share your attic room and your confidence? But, hush! here come some of the other passengers; wait till they have gone.”
The two conspirators were silent for a moment, and then, when they had their corner to themselves again, Everage repeated his question, and the old woman answered:
“Who are they? you ask me, sir. Well, there is, first of all, my two brothers, as honest, trusty lads——”
“‘As ever scuttled ship, or cut a throat,’” suggested Everage.
“Yes, that they are, sir; and so you’ll find them,” said the old woman, who did not understand, or, perhaps, did not distinctly hear the quotation,—“honest and trusty, and true and good.”
“Although they knock your head about?” observed Everage, who had not forgotten that piece of news.
“Oh, your worship, that was drink; it wasn’t to saythem.”
“Ay! ‘when the wine’s in the wit’s out,’ I suppose.”
“Just so, your honor; though it’s precious little wine they gets, poor souls. It’s most in general beer, or, if they’re in luck, gin.”
“Aye, to be sure! Well, if they serve me faithfully, they and you shall be kept in gin the rest of your lives.”
“Oh, your honor’s worship’s reverence, that would be heavenly,” exclaimed Mrs. Rooter, with enthusiasm. “They’ll be true to you, sir—they’ll be true to you till death do you part, and arterwards, sir!and arterwards; for I never could see the good of being true till death and then turning false to you arter you’re dead, or arter they are.”
“No, to be sure. But about these brothers of yours,—are they the only persons, or are there any others who share your attic?”
“Well, yes, sir; there’s my grand-darter Meg, as honest and truthful a gal as ever——”
“Picked a pocket, or told a falsehood.”
“No, sir, she don’t, nor she wouldn’t do nyther the one nor yet the other—not even in the way of business, as many an honest tradesman do.”
“But that’s rather hard on the honest tradesman, is it not?” smiled Everage.
“Gurr-r-r!” exclaimed the old woman, grinning and showing her snags of teeth. “Gurr-r-r! They hunt us poor creatures away from their shops and stalls, accusing of us of prowling about to see what we can pick up, when all they theirselves is a doing of the gentlefolks to no end! Don’t tell me!”
“But about this girl? Is she—your granddaughter—and her uncles, the only inmates of your attic chamber?”
“Yes, your honor, the onliest ones, and quite to be depended on.”
“Very well, then, I will look in at your place at nine o’clock this evening.”
“And much good may it do your honor and us, too. The Lord bless you, sir. But mind and don’t forget, your honor’s reverence, the four B’s and Number Nine.”
“I will not forget. I have it down in my note-book.”
And then, as another bevy of foot-passengers came hurrying along the sidewalk, Everage left the crone and went on his way.
At a few minutes past eight, Clarence Everage found himself prowling down Blackfriars’ Road in search of a street that I have called Black street; but which, in fact, is very unfavorably known to the police under another name.
He found it at length; and looking down its cavernous mouth, he thought of Doré’s picture of the entrance to the infernal regions.
He shuddered as he turned into Black street, and followed its windings down into a labyrinth of dark and lurid lanes and alleys, from which sunlight and fresh air must have been almost totally excluded, even at noonday.
Here every sense and sentiment was shocked and revolted. The streets were narrow and murky, muddy and filthy. The houses were old and shattered, and bent forward towards each other till the eaves of the roofs almost met overhead, shutting out much of the light and the air that might have visited the accursed place. The sides of the houses were disfigured by broken and stained window sashes filled up with old rags and hats, and by foul and dilapidated doorways, occupied, for the most part, by rum-stupefied men and women, and by neglected and drowsy children. Those groups were generally in semi-obscurity but here and there a street lamp from without, or a dim candle from within, lighted up their misery.
“Heavens and earth!” thought Everage, holding his handkerchief to his mouth and nose as he threaded his way through the mazes of this Gehenna in search of Blood Alley and Burke Lane, “these must be the waste pipes of all London’s crime, disease and miseries; and yes, by my life, this is the sink!” he added, stopping in the very center of the labyrinth before Number Nine.
The house was taller, older, dirtier, and more dilapidated than any he had yet seen. It leaned forward as if ambitious of meeting and saluting its leaning opposite neighbor, and it looked as if it were in danger of toppling down in the attempt.
Here also the doorway was foul and broken, and crowded with drunken and dirty men and women.
Everage inquired of this group if this was Number Nine, and if Mother Rooter lived here.
They stared at him for a minute without replying, andthen all burst out laughing, while one woman called to some one within the passage:
“Hallo, Meg, come here! Here’s a gentleman a-wanting of Mistress Rooter. He have come with the queen’s compliments to her.”
A brown-skinned, black-haired, bare-legged gipsy of about fourteen years old came out of the obscurity, and accosted Everage.
“Be thou the gentleman as grannam was a-looking for?”
“If your grandam is Mrs. Rooter,—yes,” answered Everage scrutinizing the girl, and recognizing her from the description given by the crone.
“Come along then,” said Meg, leading the way through passages and up staircases more foul and nauseating to sight and smell than even the middle of the streets had been—for the streets do sometimes get washed off by rain, whereas these tenement-house passages seem never to have that advantage.
Everage followed his guide up four flights of stairs, noticing, as he passed along the halls of each floor, through the open or half-open doors, heart-sickening and revolting sights of vice and misery within the room.
At the top of the last flight of stairs himself and his young guide reached the attic landing.
She beckoned and led him to a door, which she opened.
He followed her into a back room, with a low, sloping ceiling. It was wretchedly furnished, or rather bare of furniture,—a bed which was a mere heap of foul rags, a shaky little wooden table, a rickety chair, a rusty iron kettle, and a cracked tea-cup and saucer were the only means and appliances of comfort or necessity there.
The only person in the room was old Mother Rooter, who was squatted on the only chair, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.
She got up to meet her visitor, and gave him her chair, saying:
“You are very welcome to my poor place, kind gentleman. Sit down, sir.”
And she seated herself on the side of the bed, that he might not hesitate to take the chair.
He looked at the proffered seat, and took from hispocket a newspaper, and spread over the bottom of the chair before sitting down on it.
“Ah, sir, I see—you gentlefolks blame us a deal for being dirty, but how can we help it? We can’t get bread enough to eat; and where are we to get the extra penny to buy a bit of soap to wash ourselves and our houses, or the horn-comb to red up our hair, not to say the sixpence to buy a broom. Ah, sir, you gentlefolks should know what you are a-talking on before you blame us, poor creatures, for dirt.”
“I am not blaming you,” said Everage.
And then, to change the subject, he remarked:
“You are very high up here; you are high up in the world in one sense, if you are not in another.”
“Ah, yes, sir! but what am I to do? The garret or the cellar is the choice us poor creatures has to make. All the house between them is too dear for the likes of us. And be the same token, there’s little to choose atween them. It’s hard on an ole ’oman like me to live up here; and when, of an evening, I’m a-panting up all these stairs,—sir, there’s ninety on ’em,—steps, I mean—I know it to my sorrow, for I have counted on ’em often, as I panted up ’em, and stopped on every landing to catch my breath,—well, sir, I often think it would be better to live in a cellar. But then, I thinks, as once Ididlive in a cellar and catch the rheumatism by it. So on the whole, I says to myself, it is better to climb and to pant nor to lie flat on my back and groan.”
“And your choice was a very wise one. But listen: if you are faithful to me in the service you have undertaken to perform, you shall live in a first-floor front of any such a house as this, until I shall be better able to provide for you—which I certainly shall be, if you should be successful and faithful.”
“Bless your honor! I will be faithful as faithful. But you haven’t told me yet what the service is agoing to be.”
“I came here to-night to tell you, and I will tell you now—but, is the coast clear?” anxiously inquired Everage, looking around and seeing that the girl, Meg, at least had disappeared, and that himself and the crone were alone or seemed to be so.
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Rooter, “the coast is clear.My brothers have not left the house though, because I hinted to ’em as they might light upon a job.”
“Where are they, then?”
“Up on the leads. I sent them there to wait your honor’s pleasure. And there they shall stay till your honor bids me call them down. If so be you would rather trust the business to me alone, I will, if I can, do it alone and they shall never know anything of it; but if your honor chooses to trust ’em, which I make bold to say—they are just trusty as trusty—why I’ll go call them.”
“Go and call them—I will take a look at them, at all events,” said Everage.
The beldam went out into the passage, and climbed a ladder leading to the open trap-door of the roof, and summoned her brothers; and presently their heavy steps came lumbering down the ladder; and she brought them into the presence of Everage.
They were two ill-looking fellows enough, somewhere between forty and fifty years of age.
The elder was tall, sallow, black-haired and black-eyed.
The younger was short and thick-set, with broad shoulders, bull neck and bullet head covered with a thick shock of red hair.
Both men were in rags.
They came and stood before Everage and pulled their forelocks by way of salutation.
“Well, my men, are you to be trusted in a service the faithful performance of which will accrue to your own profit?” inquired Everage, as he scanned his “tools.”
Now the only ideas the ruffians gained from this speech was that there were secret services required, for which money was to be paid. So one of them, the dark one, replied:
“What we undertakes to do, your honor, that we does faithful. But it depends on what the service is, and how it pays, whether we undertakes it.”
“But if we undertakes it, we performs it faithful,” added the other, the red one.
“Then, Mother Rooter, secure the door; and now all gather around me. You two men, and you, mother, situpon the bedside, and bend close to me as I sit upon the chair before you.”
The three arranged themselves as their employer directed.
Then he, stooping towards them, and they towards him, so that all their mischief-brewing heads were together, began in a low whisper to unfold his plans. He came immediately to the point.
“It is a child to be carried off,” he said, and then waited for the effect of his words. He saw that they were rather stunning even to these reckless villains.
“A child to be carried off, your honor! that’s not over easy nor yet over safe,” said the dark ruffian.
“Nor are you ever paid handsomely for jobs that are over easy and over safe! But I can tell you one thing—it is not over difficult nor over dangerous.”
“Is it from a house, your honor?” inquired the dark ruffian.
“No, from the streets.”
“Carry off a child from the crowded streets of London, your honor? That seems to be impossible,” put in the red ruffian.
“Hold your tongue, Roger,” said his black brother.
“Now, don’t go quarrel before the gentleman! Manners is manners. If so be, you’re decent men, behave as sich!” put in the crone.
“I only said it was impossible to carry off a child from the streets of London; and I’ll not deceive the gentleman. I’ll stick to it, as it is,” persisted Red Roger, who was called thus by his “pals.”
“You will find that it is very easy. I have studied it out and matured a plan that must be perfectly successful.”
“Let us hear it, your honor,” said the black one.
“Well, listen,” whispered Everage, in a very low voice. “This child is about two years and a half old. He is the child of foreign parents who know not much of English life. He is sent out with his nurse, a black girl who wears a plaid turban instead of a bonnet; you may know her by that. He is sent out with this girl morning and evening of every fair day. She is a fool, and she takes him about Trafalgar square and up and down the street, andto St. Mary le Strand and along Fleet Street. And they stop and gaze in the shop windows, and stand with the crowd around every organ-grinder and monkey, and especially around every Punch and Judy. This is my plan. I will take an opportunity to point out the nurse and child to Mother Rooter. She can afterwards point them out to you. Once having seen them, you cannot possibly mistake them. Are you attending to me?”
“With all our ears, sir,” answered the black villain, while the red one nodded emphatically.
“Then listen! when you have once seen this nurse and child, you must watch for them, and arrange something like this manœuvre between you: One must be the abductor, the other must be the assistant. The one who is to carry off the child must have in his pocket a bottle of chloroform. Do you know what that is?”
“Don’t we, sir? It has saved the slitting of many a windpipe!” chuckled the red wretch.
“Very well. Let the one who is to carry off the child take a bottle of chloroform, which I will provide; also a dark shawl. Then watch until you see the child and nurse standing in some crowd around a street show. Then, the abductor must keep very near the child, having the shawl and the chloroform at hand. The assistant may then go farther up or down the street and at the right moment raise the hue and cry of ‘Stop thief!’ and lead the chase up or down the street towards the crowd in which the child stands. Then let him who is to carry off the child uncork his chloroform and have it ready, snatch up the child, throw the shawl quickly over his head, and run with the rest, shouting ‘Stop thief!’ at the top of his voice; but all the time letting the fumes of the chloroform escape within the folds of the shawl, so as to overpower the child and render him incapable of struggling or calling out.”
“But it might kill the baby, and that would be murder and we don’t want nothink to do with sich at no price,” objected the black scamp.
“Do you think, Bill, as the gentleman would ax us to do murder? I don’t. True, there might be a accident from chloroform, as there often bees to the ’ospitals, but that wouldn’t be murder,” said Red Roger.
“You’d find as the jury would bring it in murder,” answered Black Bill.
“There is no sort of danger. I will only put enough of the stuff in the bottle to quiet the child, and not enough even to make him insensible. Besides am I not as responsible for the thing as you are?”
“Well, your honor knows best!” said the black scamp.
“And now let me go on. As soon as the child is quiet, leave the rushing crowd that your brother is still leading with his cry of ‘stop thief;’ leave it leisurely, and take the nearest cut for Blackfriars’ Road and your mother’s, no, sister’s room, here. Here you may conceal him until I can take him off your hands. Do you understand this?”
“Yes, your honor. But now, how about the pay?”
“You shall have five pounds each down, as soon as I see the child in your hands. You shall have all the jewelry that you find on his person, which, as I have seen pearls and turquoise among them, may amount to as much more, or twice as much more. And finally, when I shall reap the advantage that I expect from this child’s disappearance, you shall have a comfortable income from me for the rest of your lives.”
The men wrangled and haggled with their employer for a higher price for their crime, and after much dispute obtained their own terms—ten pounds each down and a crown a week for keeping the child.
After this, Everage left the house, promising to see Mother Rooter at her stall the next day and every day, until he should have a chance of pointing out the boy and nurse to her, that she might afterwards show them to her brothers.
Everage kept his word, and the next morning stopped on his way to his school, to leave a bottle of chloroform on Mother Rooter’s stand, and to watch for the possible appearance of little Lenny and his nurse, on their morning walk.
The demon helped Everage to wonderful luck, for presently came Pina leading little Lenny, by the hand.
They passed quite close to where the crone squatted and Everage stood. They seemed to be going up Fleet street, upon some little shopping errand.
Everage turned his back upon them until they hadpassed and had their backs to him. Then he touched the beldam and pointed them out to her.
“There they are. Shall you know them again?”
“Why, I’d know ’em among a hundred! That black gal, with the plaid turban on her head, isn’t easy forgot, nor yet the beautiful boy, with all that finery about him! which it’s a world’s wonder I never noticed of ’em before!” said the beldam.
“You would not have noticed them now, perhaps, if I hadn’t pointed them out.”
“Well, maybe not, to be sure. I don’t commonly look after children and nursemaids.”
“But you will remember them now, and take the first opportunity of pointing them out to your brothers.”
“I’ll bet you! Beg your honor’s pardon. One or t’other on ’em will be here morning and evening until I gets a chance to show ’em. And be the same token, here comes Bill now.”
“So he does; well, keep him here till the nurse and child return; they will have to come back this way; and then you can point them out to him. And now my time is up,” said the poor gentleman, looking at his gold repeater, a family heirloom, the sole relic of better days that had not yet been dedicated to the necessities of his wife and children; but was destined soon to be sacrificed to raise money to pay the instruments of his meditated crime.
Everage then hurried away to his school duties, leaving the beldam and her accomplice to carry out his instructions.
As you, of course, already know, the plot was accomplished.
Little Lenny was carried off in the manner planned by Everage; and afterwards described by Pina.
He was a brave little fellow, and when he saw a great crowd of people rushing on and crying, “Stop thief;” and when he felt himself caught up in the arms of a strange man, and hurried along with the rest, he only supposed some frolic was afoot, and he laughed and shouted, “Top Teef!” with all the strength of his baby lungs.
But soon the fumes of the chloroform overpowered him, and his head dropped on the shoulder of his captor.
Black Bill, keeping the old shawl over the child, taking his way through the darkened streets and lanes, at length bore his prize safely to Number Nine, Blood Alley.
He hurried up-stairs to the attic room and placed the still unconscious child in the arms of the beldam, who was there seated in her only chair.
“There, Peg! uncover him quick and do some’at to bring the life back to him,” said Black Bill, a little nervously, as he himself with eager hands helped to relieve the boy of the shawl.
“Meg!” called the crone to her granddaughter, “fetch a cup of water here. Bill, run and fetch a little rum.”
Meg, who was idling about the place, ran and fetched a cup of water from the nearest room-neighbor.
Mother Rooter dipped her fingers in the cup and sprinkled it in the boy’s face. The air had already half revived him, and the water completed the work. With a gasp and a sneeze the little fellow awoke.
They gathered around him, those wretches, like a pack of wolves around a lamb.
One tore off his pearl and turquoise necklace; another seized his hat and feather; another his sash; another his jeweled armlets. What a prize!