'Where is she now?' asked Saul, thinking of those he loved at home.
'Bessie! Bessie!' cried Beaver faintly. 'Where are you? O my God! if I could live my life over again!'
Saul thought of George's Bessie as he asked, 'Where do you come from? What part do you belong to?'
It was a long time before he received an answer, and then the words crept up to him, faint and low, through the darkness, as though the speaker's strength were waning fast.
'From London--from Westminster.'
'From Westminster!' echoed Saul, and Beaver's face appeared to his imagination.
'I must tell you,' gasped the dying man; 'I must tell you before I die. You may be saved, and you will take my message home.'
'I will, if I am spared,' replied Saul, in a voice which had no hope in it.
'I have been a bad son and a bad father. My name is not Beaver--it is Sparrow, and my father, if he is alive, lives in Westminster.'
'Old Ben Sparrow, the grocer!' cried Saul, in amazement 'I know him! I saw him a few weeks before last Christmas. You are Bessie Sparrow's father; I thought your face was familiar to me.'