They passed on, and, after some difficulty, found the house.
"Does a person named Hallet live here, my little fellow?" asked Mr. Ekworth of a boy who was sitting on the door-sill.
The child was probably eight or nine years of age, but from the precocious cunning of his looks, he might have been an old man. He was disgustingly dirty also, and pale and sallow.
"What will you give me for telling?" he asked, with a sly leer.
"Here is a penny, my poor child," said Mr. Ekworth, compassionately, taking the coin from his pocket. "Now, will you tell me what I want to know?"
The child's eyes glistened at the sight of the penny; and telling the visitors that if they went "right up the stairs, as far as they could go," they would find the person for whom they inquired, he ran off with his prize, and Mr. Ekworth, with his son, slowly and cautiously ascended the dark and broken stairs.
A violent fit of coughing from an apartment just beneath the roof of the house guided Mr. Ekworth to the home of the Hallets; and on gently knocking at the door, it was opened by the wife.
The chamber told of destitution. It was neat, however, and tolerably clean, so was the poor woman, who wept when Mr. Ekworth spoke to her.
"I could not have thought, twenty years ago, sir," said she, when her visitors had entered, and had with difficulty been accommodated with seats, "that you would ever come to see my poor husband and me in a place like this."
"What is the use of talking in that way, Susan?" interposed Hallet, before Mr. Ekworth could reply. "We are born, but we are not buried yet; and nobody can tell what they may come to before they die."