Then the carriage comes round to the front door and the two get in. A contrast indeed! The one small, shrivelled and shrunken, hugging her wreatched garments around her to keep out the biting cold; the other tall and stately, her rich cloak falling gracefully round her slender figure.
The drive is long and dreary; being for the most a long straight road with tall hedges at either side and an occasional cottage or tree releiving the monotony of the scenery. But Helen, leaning back in her comfortable carriage is not thinking of the passing scenery, but of the extraordinary mission she is bent on.
At length the carriage stops, and Mrs. Cotton leads the way up to a small tumble down dirty looking inn, whith an almost illegable incription painted in white letters, "The jolly Dutchman, Thomas Cotton."
Mrs. Cotton opens the door and Helen finds herself in a very small and filthy dirty passage. A strong smell of beer and tobacco greet her on entering. A door on one side of the passage is half open, and looking through, Helen can see three or four rough looking men seated round a table with mugs of beer before them and pipes in their mouths, and the sounds that issue from the room are none of the pleasantest, for the men are talking, laughing and shouting, not to say swearing.
In disgust Helen turns to the door of the other room. It is a kitchen evidently and a remarkably dirty one too. A candle is burning in this room, and by the light of it Helen can see a slovenly looking girl stirring some horrid smelling stuff in a saucpan, while a very small baby is yelling its heart out in a wooden cradle.
"Here Sally" cries Mrs. Cotton to the girl "how is the invalid"
"No better" replies Sally wiping her hands on her apron "I lit a fire for him, 'cause he grumbled so about the cold."
"I dont wonder at it" responds Mrs. Cotton, "well mum," she continues turning to Helen "perhaps you'll step upstairs, its that door there mum with the handle off," and she points with her grimy finger to a door at the top of the stairs. Helen climbs the ricketty staircase with a wild fear and misgiving at her heart, wondering what the result of this strange visit will be. A light is burning in the room she enters. It is a damp cold place, a trifle larger than the passage below. A miserable fire is doing its best to burn in the grate and judging by the amount of matches strewn about, Sally must have been exerting many patient efforts to get it to burn at all.
The window was minus a pane of glass and the cold wind blew right through the room making the door bang to and fro with a madly monotonous tone.
Helen glanced hastily round the room, but the corners being in darkness, she had to hold the candle above her head to see anything at all. In doing so a groan caught her ear and advancing to the corner from whence it issued, Helen perceved a sort of pallet bed streached on the floor, covered with a singal blankett. Placing the candle on the floor close by, Helen knelt down and with trembling hands and a quaking heart pulled the covering away. And then—no wonder Helen uttered that low stifled cry; for there with his pale thin face turned towards her and his skeleton hands clutching at the blankett, there with his eyes dim and sunken and his breath coming quick and short lay Cyril Sheene alias Mr. Harland. For a moment Helen could not utter a sound, the words seemed to stick in her throat, and she knelt gazing in horror and amazement at the fast-dying man. It was Cyril who broke the awful silence, "Helen" he whispered brokenly "what a long time you were coming."