"Get into bed!" he implored. "Meg, you'll catch your death o' cold, my dear. I'll stay and listen here, if it 'ull do any good."
Meg retreated, and Jem gazed out into the dimness. Still he could hear what had so affected Meg, and as he looked, and his eyes became accustomed to the moonlight, which could not shine down into the depths of the courtyard below, but still shed a hazy light on it all, he began to see which-were-which of the houses behind; and could trace—there the back windows of a certain public-house—there the blank darkness of an empty building—and there the twinkling lights in houses which he knew to be general lodgings.
It was from one of these he fancied, up the next court, that the cries came; and as he stood reckoning it up, he turned to Meg and said,
"It is Dickie's attic, I believe! There's a light there, and people movin' back and forwards. Perhaps some one's ill."
"No," said Meg, sitting up, "it's nobody ill. It's some child being beaten or hurt. Oh, Jem, could you go and see—could you get in there, do you think?"
"Not to-night, my girl. But to-morrow I'll see if I can hear anything of it. It's the house where I worked, so they'll know me most like, and not think I'm intrudin' on 'em."
"Jem! that blanket weighs on me," said Meg with a sob. "Those children ought to have had it all this time; but whenever I've been up to the attic to see, the people have been so rough to me, and the other rooms were all let out to several families in each."
"I know," said Jem, coming away from the window, "and very likely he'd have took the children elsewhere, especially if he didn't want you to interfere with 'em, Meg."
Poor Meg, with a weary sigh she lay down on her pillow and tried to sleep. The house where they fancied the sound came from was so near theirs at right angles, that a conversation could be carried on from the back windows if any one had chosen.
As Meg lay wakeful and sad, she fancied she could still hear the cries, growing fainter and fainter, till either they ceased, or Meg ceased to be able to catch them.