The next day they buried the dead man in the churchyard hard by.
But that night there came a slouching figure through the court to the iron gate. It stood looking in for a little while, then with an old broom it softly swept the step and made the archway clean. It was poor Jo; and as he went away, he softly said to himself, "He was very good to me, he was."
Now, there happened to be at the Inquest a kind-hearted little man named Snagsby, and he pitied Jo so much that he gave him half-a-crown.
Jo was very sad after the death of his one friend. The more so as his friend had died in great poverty and misery, with no one near him to care whether he lived or not.
A few days after the funeral, while Jo was still living on Mr. Snagsby's half-crown, he was standing at his crossing as the day closed in, when a lady, closely veiled and plainly dressed, came up to him.
"Are you the boy Jo who was examined at the Inquest?" she asked.
"That's me," said Jo.
"Come farther up the court, I want to speak to you."
"Wot, about him as was dead? Did you know him?"
"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"