The night had fallen rapidly; there was no moon, and though the stars were coming out, there was a considerable drift of cloud, so that the sky was gloomy. As the two men walked side by side along the lighted streets, Mr. Foster found himself occasionally outstripping his companion, with whom he was talking familiarly, not exclusively upon topics which had previously engaged them, but with reference to the aspect of Liverpool. On each occasion of the kind he apologised; on the first the stranger complained of a slight lameness, which prevented his keeping up with the alert step of the strange gentleman.
The slowness and the slouchingness of his gait certainly did not decrease during their long walk; their progress was tediously slow; and Mr. Foster would probably have been surprised at the lateness of the hour, had it occurred to him to think about it.
The city was settling down into the silence produced by the general evacuation of its business quarters before that walk commenced. By the time the two turned on Water-street--along the great line of the warehouses past which the sailor who had been Mr. Foster's fellow-traveller from London on the previous day had taken his way the night before--that part of Liverpool was as silent as the City of London at midnight. It presented somewhat of a similar aspect, from a picturesque point of view, of a great centre of wealth and business in isolation and inaction. With this aspect of London Mr. Foster was well acquainted. One of the sights and sensations he had procured for himself some time before was 'the City'--properly so called--when nobody is in it; and Liverpool was now affording him a similar study; but the locality was entirely new, and very shortly Mr. Foster was quite bewildered, and had lost all notion of where he was. Out there lay the river, on the other side of the town, and the great buildings stretched endlessly under the frowning sky, like a giant wall between him and its life.
They had passed along innumerable immense blocks of building, profoundly still, when they reached one where there was a kind of yard surrounded on three sides with high walls, pierced with many windows. The fore wall forming the front was considerably lower than the other three, and in one corner was a door standing ajar, and kept from closing by a stone; the aperture was very slight, and the probability of any passer-by, previously unacquainted with the locality, perceiving that the door was unfastened was exceedingly small. As the two passed it, Mr. Foster, who was on the inner side, would not have been the least aware of the fact, had not his companion stretched his arm across him and pushed the door wide open.
'This is the rookery,' said the stranger, having checked Mr. Foster's steps by the movement of his arm, and stopped with suddenness which took him by surprise; 'clean and quiet as it looks outside, it swarms like a London court.'
Mr. Foster stepped back on the pathway for a moment, while his companion crossed the threshold, and expressed some astonishment at no light being visible.
'They are all at the back,' replied the man, as he kicked away the stone and held the door for Mr. Foster to pass through. He did so, and it was shut behind him. 'Follow me,' said the stranger; 'the door into the house is in an opposite corner, and the stairs are dark till you get to the first landing--mind the step.'
Mr. Foster followed him in silence, and they passed through the narrow door into the flagged passage, from which a steep and narrow staircase, with an iron railing, led to a square landing at some height above them. Still there was no light, except a feeble glimmer emitted from the window above the landing. When they had mounted the staircase so far, and could see each other's faces by the feeble light, Mr. Foster remarked:
'There cannot be any rooks here tonight--there is no cawing.'
It was not, perhaps, any feeling so decided as distrust which lent a peculiar tone to his voice, but it was certainly discomfort.