"I know the rest," said Meg; "and she came into my room at night, and put her hand under my pillow and stole it. I was too frightened to scream. I thought she was Lazarus."
"It was not for herself," said Barnabas eagerly. "Her lover was starving; he'd lost his place; they thought he was one of them that set fire to the ricks in Hampshire that winter; he was a poor creature, and afraid to stand a trial, tho' innocent as a baby of that piece of work; and he hung about in hiding in London, and came and begged at the kitchen door for scraps, and she had given him all she could, and hadn't a penny left, and he thought that if he could get beyond the sea, he might start again and make a home for her. She was anxious to get him off, and the devil tempted her. She knew the lad was sinking lower, loafing round, afeart o' the daylight, and wi' no decent place to put his head in that city of iniquity. She went out meaning to sell the diamonds, and to give him the price, and afore she was three paces fro' the door she got a message fro' her lad to say he was in gaol for stealing a loaf; but she didn't go back to the house. Happen she thought they'd ha' found her out, and couldn face it. Happen she was a bit mazed. She just lived on her savings till they were gone; an' ye can guess the rest. Her lover got the gaol-fever, and made no fight against it; he was dead within the week. She was afeared to sell your locket then, and afeared to give it back. She buried it once, and then got a fancy that the wind 'ud blow the earth away, and the rain 'ud wash it clear, and couldna keep hersel' fro' the place till she had it up again. She's a bit out o' her mind about it by now with the constant thinking; and her mother says as she believes her lover's death turned her queer for a time, an' she wasn't wholly responsible. She drifted away fro' the streets, and wandered home i' the end."
Meg shuddered. "It's a dreadful story," she said. "Too dreadful to think of."
"Do ye say so?" said the preacher. "Ay, ye scatter temptation i' the way o' the poor, ye rich, an' are too soft-hearted to hear tell o' their fall!" after which they both relapsed into silence.
The sun was beginning to beat down on their heads, when they reached the little hamlet of River.
It consisted of one chalk road, on either side of which were very white cottages, which had a deceptive air of comfort and prettiness. Pink china roses clustered against their walls, and low-thatched roofs shone gold in the morning light.
The villagers were out in the fields: only one old man, and a baby with sore eyes and an eruption all over its face, stared open-mouthed at the oddly matched pair. Barnabas stooped to pass through the doorway of one of the cottages; and Meg following him would have tumbled down the one step into the room, if he had not held out his hand to save her.
She never forgot the sudden plunge out of sunshine into that dark room, close and hot, and yet with a damp smell about it.
Labourers' cottages sixty years ago were so bad that one wonders, when one thinks of them, that the wave of revolution that was passing over Europe, did not utterly submerge us too!
Meg stood leaning against the door, watching the preacher; too shy to venture further. Her eyes dilated, and she turned whiter as she looked. The damp clay floor, the sickening odour, the room that was bedroom and sitting-room as well, horrified her. Yet Barnabas had been in many a worse place, and this was no exceptionally bad case; indeed, it was decent compared to many a cottage in Kent. But Meg lived before the day of district visiting, and the world of poverty was a new world to her.