“What is the matter, Mrs. Jones? you have no news of him—of—of my—of your master?”
“Dear heart, miss—no,” answered Mrs. Jones; “how should I? But I’m sure I don’t wish to frighten you; there has been two sich robberies in the neighbourhood!”
“Oh, thank Heaven that’s all!” exclaimed Alice.
“Oh, don’t go for to thank Heaven for that, miss; it’s a shocking thing for two lone females like us, and them ‘ere windows all open to the ground! You sees, as I was taking the note to be changed at Mr. Harris’s, the great grocer’s shop, where all the poor folk was a-buying agin to-morrow” (for it was Saturday night, the second Saturday after Ernest’s departure; from that Hegira Alice dated all her chronology), “and everybody was a-talking about the robberies last night. La, miss, they bound old Betty—you know Betty—a most respectable ‘oman, who has known sorrows, and drinks tea with me once a week. Well, miss, they (only think!) bound Betty to the bedpost, with nothing on her but her shift—poor old soul! And as Mr. Harris gave me the change (please to see, miss, it’s all right), and I asked for half gould, miss, it’s more convenient, sich an ill-looking fellow was by me, a-buying o’ baccy, and he did so stare at the money, that I vows I thought he’d have rin away with it from the counter; so I grabbled it up and went away. But, would you believe, miss, just as I got into the lane, afore you turns through the gate, I chanced to look back, and there, sure enough, was that ugly fellow close behind, a-running like mad. Oh, I set up such a screetch; and young Dobbins was a-taking his cow out of the field, and he perked up over the hedge when he heard me; and the cow, too, with her horns, Lord bless her! So the fellow stopped, and I bustled through the gate, and got home. But la, miss, if we are all robbed and murdered?”
Alice had not heard much of this harangue; but what she did hear very slightly affected her strong, peasant-born nerves; not half so much indeed, as the noise Mrs. Jones made in double-locking all the doors, and barring, as well as a peg and a rusty inch of chain would allow, all the windows—which operation occupied at least an hour and a half.
All at last was still. Mrs. Jones had gone to bed—in the arms of sleep she had forgotten her terrors—and Alice had crept up-stairs, and undressed, and said her prayers, and wept a little; and, with the tears yet moist upon her dark eyelashes, had glided into dreams of Ernest. Midnight was passed—the stroke of one sounded unheard from the clock at the foot of the stars. The moon was gone—a slow, drizzling rain was falling upon the flowers, and cloud and darkness gathered fast and thick around the sky.
About this time, a low, regular, grating sound commenced at the thin shutters of the sitting-room below, preceded by a very faint noise, like the tinkling of small fragments of glass on the gravel without. At length it ceased, and the cautious and partial gleam of a lanthorn fell along the floor; another moment, and two men stood in the room.
“Hush, Jack!” whispered one: “hang out the glim, and let’s look about us.”
The dark-lanthorn, now fairly unmuffled, presented to the gaze of the robbers nothing that could gratify their cupidity.
Books and music, chairs, tables, carpet, and fire-irons, though valuable enough in a house-agent’s inventory, are worthless to the eyes of a housebreaker. They muttered a mutual curse.