"Why?—" But the look of interrogation was succeeded by a hopeless blankness.
"Why!" I repeated with assuring accents.
"Why," he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering over his face, "is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean, casting a flood of light o'er hill and dale, like— Why," he repeated, with a feeble smile, "is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean—" He hesitated,—stammered,—and gazed at me hopelessly, with the tears dripping from his moist and widely opened eyes.
I took his hand kindly in my own. "Casting a shadow o'er hill and dale," I repeated quietly, leading him up the subject, "like— Come, now."
"Ah!" he said, pressing my hand tremulously, "you know it?"
"I do. Why is it like—the—eh—the commodious mansion on the Limehouse Road?"
A blank stare only followed. He shook his head sadly. "Like the young men wanted for a light, genteel employment?"
He wagged his feeble old head cunningly.
"Or, Mr. Ward," I said, with bold confidence, "like the mysterious disappearance from the Kent Road?"
The moment was full of suspense. He did not seem to hear me. Suddenly he turned.